KIX is a web-based collaboration framework, which has been designed to support the integrated development and dissemination of knowledge.
KIX was designed to support
- integrated development of new knowledge
- integrated refinement of existing knowledge
- immediate distribution of all knowledge events to all stake-holders
- automatic (or semi-automatic) distribution of knowledge into scalable computer aided training systems.
- automatic (or semi-automatic) dissemination of changes into the re-development of dependent products and services.
KIX makes only one necessary assumption: relevant knowledge can be represented in documents, either informally (various formats) or formally (RDF, UML, XML etc).
How KIX Works
A KIX server implements a multiple version document repository. It supports dependencies between such live documents even if the dependent documents are located at different KIX servers. These servers may in turn belong to different organisations.
KIX also supports the development of automation of pre-defined responses to changes in dependency documents. This includes the storage of the results of an automatic response in a newly created version of one's own KIX document.
In this way changes to one KIX document may create a cascade of changes to chains of dependent documents located in many different KIX servers.
Equally important, each version of a KIX document is associated with a threaded web conference. This allows all stake-holders of a particular KIX document to discuss any issues with the current version of the document or with proposed changes.
The World-Wide-Web was designed to support a distributed web of interlinked static documents. KIX, on the other hand, has been designed to support an integrated web of interdependent live documents.
KIX is a Model-View-Control Framework
KIX is a web-based OO-framework with several hotspots for plugins. The document model is supported by an RDF triple database. Different document types can be supported via plugins, which extend the model into the internal structure of the document. This is then reflected in how the document is viewed and controlled.
Furthermore there are plugin hotspots for
- the automatic processing of document events in dependent documents
- the exporting the results of document processing to the outside world
- access control
KIX is Fully Scalable
KIX is fully scalable. This is achieved by the configuration of federations of KIX peers. The peers in a federation mainly exchange read-only information; the only exceptions are the distribution of subscriptions to live documents and the publication of live document events to the subscribers.
The peer-to-peer communication uses an implementation of the extensible and negotiating X3P protocol over HTTP. X3P is fully open and non-proprietary.
KIX as an Open Source Project at Sourceforge
KIX is now to be developed as a Sourceforge Open Source Project.
The current KIX is presented at SourceForge via some screen shots.
KixFw was first released in April 2008 for open source download by the public.
You can browse the KixFw sources at the SourceForge Repository.
An analysis of the KixFw sources can be found at the OhLoh site.
More information on KixFw can be found at the SourceWell site.
Further Information on KIX
The development of KIX was started in 2003. The KIX white paper provides an in depth presentation of the motivation for the KIX development and the ideas behind the KIX design.
One of the main objectives of the KIX development was to provide a fully integrated but distributed collaboration tool to support collaborations such as ITER, CERN, EFDA-JET and ISS. These are complex distributed scientific and technical collaborations on a large scale.
However, the scope for KIX applications is much, much wider. Please see the KIX overview and the KIX technology overview.