Ontology Development for Context-Sensitive Decision Support

Semantics have become acceptable techniques for data integration, data interoperability and data visualization in many software engineering domains and Web developments over the past few years. This paper describes a software development where semantic ontology techniques have been used for developing a generic knowledge model applicable across rural industries. This technique enables us to outline a single access point for building end-user specific knowledge based systems. We have called the new solution prototype an end-user enabled design environment (EUEDE) where the knowledge components from the problem ontology is used in building specific decision systems that are context-sensitive to end-user factors. Illustrating with an application from the dairy industry, we describe the design architecture and theory, and argue its generic capability to application in other problem domains.