Mapping Knowledge Into A Database Model

Abstract

In a highly competitive business environment, organizations are looking for improved tools which could provide them a greater opportunity to succeed and to create a strategic advantage in their market. Their primary concern therefore is continuous, effective and secure access to their accumulated knowledge. Knowledge Management tools and methods are emerging, primarily for the use of big organizations, but more and more small and medium enterprise (SME) are interested in adopting them. Knowledge is a step ahead of Information, and deals with the capturing and the gathering of Information along its steps and rules related to a Working Process, in order to perform the latter at an optimal level. The dilemma is, that in order to access knowledge, one must store it, in the most effective and efficient way. This paper offers various definitions of Knowledge by differing authors, examines the general difficulties and the problems of Capturing and Storing Knowledge, and presents our particular attempt to map and store it into a database structure. It relates to the author’s current ongoing project, which objective is to convert a plain text knowledge system, into a common database system, for the use of a Property Management enterprise. The motivation behind our attempt is, once knowledge is stored in such a structure, we believe it will attain our dual objective: an effective and efficient access to knowledge that is stored in a secure manner.