Using a Topic Grid and Semantic Wikis for Ontology-Based Distributed Knowledge Management in Enterprise Software Development Processes

Enterprise software development is a very knowledgeintensive process. Modern component-based application development organizations often require collaboration of several stakeholders distributed between different sites. To support developers in performing their tasks, suitable knowledge management tools are required that are able to leverage semantics. Recent developments in the context of the Semantic Web and ontologies including technologies such as Topic Maps or RDF/OWL show potential to address those issues. In this paper, we present an architecture for a distributed knowledge management information system that uses Topic Maps in the background and Semantic Wikis as front end for developers to document and access relevant software development knowledge. The backbone is a Topic Map application infrastructure (called "Topic Grid" in the following) allowing transparent, node-spanning access to different Topic Maps distributed in a network.