An event-trigger-rule model for supporting collaborative knowledge sharing among distributed organizations

The Internet has become the major platform for future inter-organizational knowledge-based applications. There is a need for knowledge modeling and processing techniques to perform event management and rule processing in such a distributed environment. We present an Event-Trigger-Rule (ETR) model, which differs from the conventional ECA rule model in that events and rules can be defined and managed independently by different people/organizations at different sites. Triggers are specifications that link distributed events with potentially complex structures of distributed rules to capture semantically rich and useful knowledge. Triggers can also be specified by different people/organizations in a distributed environment. Based on the ETR model, we have implemented an ETR Server that can be installed at multiple sites over the Internet. The ETR Server provides platform independence, extensibility, processing of event histories and rule structures, dynamic rule change at run-time, and Web-based GUI tools. The ETR Model and the implemented ETR Server can support various inter-organizational collaborative knowledge-based applications such as a Web-based negotiation system, supply chains, dynamic workflow management system, Knowledge Networks, and transnational information system.