A brief history of PCPACK
PCPACK was born out of academic research in the early 1990s involving
Professor Nigel Shadbolt's Artificial Intelligence Group
at the University of Nottingham. The aim of this work was to define and
explore ways in which software tools could help knowledge engineers to acquire
knowledge for the development of knowledge-based systems (i.e. AI systems that
emulate the reasoning of experts, such as a physicians
or engineers).
In 1993, Professor Nigel Shadbolt co-founded Epistemics to turn this research
and prototype software into a robust, practical system. The first versions
of PCPACK were written (funded by the UK Defence Research Agency) for use on
military projects.
During the period from 1995 to 1997, PCPACK was further developed and used as a commercial
product for knowledge engineers working on the development of knowledge-based systems.
From 1997 to 2000, PCPACK began to be evaluated for use as a Knowledge Management tool.
A number of lessons and design requirements emerged from this work, such as enabling PCPACK to be useable by
novice knowledge engineers for acquiring organizational knowledge for publication on intranet sites.
Latest Developments...
PCPACK5 was developed over a 3-year period from 1999 to 2002. Since then, developments have
continued to be made especially in the publishing capabilities. The aim throughout the development
has been to fully update the software to meet the requirements of both advanced Knowledge
Engineering and Knowledge Management projects. There have been four major changes
from previous versions.
- The number of tools has been rationalised to focus on those that are
most often used in Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management projects
- The flexibility of the tools has been greatly enhanced thus allowing
users to customise many aspects of the tools
- The user interface has been greatly improved to increase the ease of
learning and using the tools
- A publishing capability has been added so that a website can be created
"at the press of button"
To create a fully flexible tool, various templates have been included within PCPACK5:
- Ontology templates: These are special forms of knowledgebase that are used
as the basis for new knowledgebases.
- Diagram templates: These are used to define the format of diagrams used
in the Diagram Tool.
- Annotation templates: These are used to define the structure, style and
contents of annotation pages.
- Publication templates: These are used to define the structure, style and
contents of the websites created using the Publisher Tool.
PCPACK5 is available in two versions:
- A network application that allows knowledgebases to be stored and
accessed by multiple users over a network
- A single user version that operates on a local PC or laptop
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