Knowledge Representation: A Classification with Applications in Telecommunications and the Web

Knowledge representation is often treated as an integral part of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, formal languages and other research areas. However, knowledge representation applications can be found today in different sectors of industry, including e-commerce, manufacturing, and telecommunications. This paper reviews knowledge representation schemes found in the AI literature, and identifies commonalities in perspectives and underlying philosophies of the various representation schemes. A close examination of the different schemes reveals that they can be classified under one or more of the four major knowledge representation philosophies: objects, networks, frames, and logic. Newer knowledge representation applications of these philosophies, specifically XML, UML and ontologies, are discussed and examples of their use in telecommunications and Web applications are given.