School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering

The University of Queensland

Details for Bob Colomb

Designation:

Reader

Retired 30 March 2007, but retaining an honorary position.

E-mail:

colomb@itee.uq.edu.au

Member of the Data and Knowledge Engineering group

From mid-2003 I have been working with DSTC, IBM Almaden, Sandpiper Software and ATT/Gentleware on a submission to the OMG of an Ontology Development Metamodel. The sixth submission was recommended for adoption by the OMG Architecture Board at the July 2006 meeting. Revised submission 6 June 2006

Research interests
Research students
Student project proposals
Most recent teaching (2006)

INFS3101 / INFS7100 Ontology and the Semantic Web (new in semester 1, 2005)
INFS4206 / INFS7206 Advanced Topics in Database (new in semester 2, 2005)
INFS3200 / INFS7907 Advanced Database Systems (revised semester 1 2006)

Selected bibliography
Abstracts of publications and research student theses
Previous incarnations

Last updated 28 March 2007

Research Interests

The main focus of my research in the past few years has been on ontologies for interoperating communities of agents. Although I have been working in interoperability since 1993, the work in ontology began with a study leave in 2002 at the laboratory of Ing. Nicola Guarino at the Italian National Research Laboratory in Padua, Italy. This led to participation with DSTC, IBM Almaden, Sandpiper Software and AT&T/ Gentleware on a submission to the Object Management Group for an Ontology Devlopment Metamodel, which is ongoing. Selected bibliography

I am particularly interested in ontology servers, ontologies of state for interoperating applications, and on immanent ontologies (ontologies which emerge from histories of interoperation). Also more generally in the philosophy of information. A proposal in the area of immanent ontologies was unsuccessfully submitted to the Australian Research Council for funding in 2006.

Research students

PhD candidates

James Cole, working on a study of the nature of information (with Tom Mandeville of the School of Economics and Peter Bruza of QUT). Started February, 2004, confirmed February, 2005.
Desmond Schmidt, working on techniques to visualize complex structures of text fragments (part time). Started October, 2004, confirmed July 2005.
Mohammad Nazir Ahmad Sharif, working on problems in ontology servers. Started November, 2005, confirmed November, 2006.

MPhil candidates

Paul Gearon, working on structure of and reasoning on RDF and OWL databases. Started August, 2004, confirmed April, 2005.

PhD candidates supervised through to award of degree:

Paul O'Brien, An architecture for ubiquitous mobile service delivery August, 2006.
Ahmad Kayed, Conceptual Structures and Ontologies to Support E-Commerce January, 2003.
Yi-Ping Phoebe Chen, Generating Database Presentations of L-systems in Virtual Plant Applications December, 2000.
Hung Wing Managing complex, open, web-deployable trade objects September, 1998.
Andrew Goodchild Database Discovery in the Organisational Environment September, 1998
Nirad Sharma A Theory for Multi-function Model-Based Reasoning through Context Management January, 1998.
Anthony Berglas Non-Monotonic Reasoning and End-User Conceptual Modelling March, 1997
Mohsen Rohani EDI-based interoperation of information systems September, 1996
Ok Hyeong Cho Foundations of massively parallel relational and deductive databases August, 1996

Research Masters candidates supervised through to award of degree:

Wei Seng Alan Ho - Structuring and visualising risk management. July 2006.
Andrew Smith - Content analysis of large document collections with application to real problems. November, 2002.
Marcin Metter - Design guidelines for Wireless Application Protocol applications. June, 2001
Vincent Guerrini Interfacing Essential Drug Informatics. November, 1999
Sonya Finnigan Distributed Querying with Z+SQL over the Internet July, 1999

Honours students - 2005

· Brendan Mauger – Tools for helping an agent commit to an ontology

Honours students - 2004

· Vang Nguyen - Testing the OMG Ontology Development Metamodel by building an ontology in it. (with Zoran Milosevic of DSTC).

· Chuan Michael Li - Visualising an ontology developed using the OMG Ontology Development Metamodel.

Honours students - 2003

Jo-Anne Scougall - Information Fields
Fook Sing Tang - Ontology Repository
Tee Wan Yeo - Chatterbots and ontologies
Keegan Teo - Knowledge representation for explanations in medical diagnosis and treatment

Honours students - 2001

Alun Coppack - Interoperability among information systems related to UQ Centre for Magnetic Resonance
Matthew Holmes - Industry-specific intelligent web-crawler technology
Mark Verstege - Prudent expert system for automatic postal code recognition
Maurice Wieland - Greenhouse control software based on a prudent expert system architecture

Honours students - 2000

Peter Strong - Knowledge Filtering proposal
Kathryn Robinson - Evaluation of Adaptive User Interfaces (with Helen Purchase)
Ather Saeed - Database View of the World proposal

Honours students - 1999

Anthony Wilkinson - Provide access to Z39.50 facilities to CORBA client. proposal
Jesse Kappler - Beyond the search engine: how to make databases visible on the internet proposal
Nerys Olver - Integration of browsing and querying proposal

Student project proposals - open

P30. Why do different debates on the same subject have different outcomes?

P14. Navigating in an information space using a joystick

People often take tours through museums, botonical gardens, and urban districts guided by an audio tape. The tape tells some basic information about a particular object, then tells the user how to get to the next object. However, there is generally a large amount of information available about each object which could be deliverered to the headset using wireless communication technologyes, and a particular person may be interested in varying amounts for particular objects. For an interesting object, the user might want considerable information, with each item leading to more. For other objects they might be content with a brief basic spiel. Also, the path from object to object might not be fixed, so the user could ask for directions to the next object near the current one by one of several semantic dimensions.

The project is to see if this flexible tour can be managed with a simple hand-held device with a very small number of controls that could be manipulated by feel (a palm-sized terminal with say five distinctly shaped or located buttons, for example). The specific issue is to determine if it is possible to organise the information space in such a way that navigation by joystick is feasible.

P15. Querying a complex information space by varying a sample path

Some information spaces are quite complex, and a user wants a complex pattern of information from them. For example, the space could be a university calendar with subject descriptions and course rules, together with a student's academic record. A student wants to develop and update a study plan for a course that takes into account the student's interests, the course rules, and the availability and prerequisite structure of the subjects. Another example might be trying to figure out how to accomplish some new task with a desktop computer, which involves configuring and commands to several interacting software products. The information space here is the software documentation and interfaces. In both cases, the information space can be represented by XML documents.

The thought is that the user could be presented with a number of somehow representative sample solutions, and could incrementally modify a selected path to reach a satisfactory solution. The system would support this incremental modification with views of the information regions around aspects of the working solution according to a number of semantic dimensions. In the course case, the standard solutions would be a number of suggested feasible course plans. In the software case, the standard solutions would be a selection of sample configurations. The issue is how to organise the information space that such an approach is possible, how to represent the navigation, and to explore the feasibility of the approach. This project is closely related to P16, but has a more information space structuring focus.

P19 Information Fields

We can search for information using queries. We can subscribe to information push services, either by interest profiles or by self-description (permission-based marketing). We can customise portals (My xxx).We have lists of bookmarks. How can we organise all of this into a personal view of the world? We need to make our own interests visible at the browser level. We need agents to negotiate with push services and customisable portals. We need to be able to control the volume of information coming in. The vision is of a field of information that we can navigate in and that flows to us, with control flows in the reverse direction, and which changes as our interests change.

P20. Managing personal information

We manage our lives with a large amount of information. Some of it is structured and some not: bank and credit card statements; telephone bills, ISP bills, bank fees, fly-buys and other ways one can run up a large bill with lots of small transactions; diary and address book; kilojoule counters; e-mail; web bookmarks; newspaper clippings; etc. Suppose all this is stored in our local computing environment, to which we are connected by a mobile voice device. Assume that the environment is equipped with a continuous speech recognition system which can cope with vocabularies of a hundred or so words. The issue is how can we interact with this local information environment by speech?

Schemas and semantic dimensions of the personal environment
command and control language used
how to manage the context of the spoken dialog

P21. Can Ontologies improve Chatterbots?

Chatterbots are autonomous programs which can converse with a human in a somewhat natural way. The first such program was called Eliza, and recent developments have been inspired by the Loebner prize competition for the Turing Test. These programs typically use quite shallow knowledge of English to generate conversations. There have also been natural-language discourse programs like Chat-80, which converse in a very restricted domain. The purpose of this project is to see whether ontologies (standard descriptions of things in a domain) can improve the performance of chatterbots. There are domain-specific ontologies, general purpose ontologies like Cyc, and linguistic pseudo-ontologies like Wordnet, among other kinds.

The project will:

Survey the field of chatterbots and develop an understanding of the technology used in them.
Sketch a domain of discourse where chatterbots might be used, preferably one where an ontology exists.
See to what extent the domain-specific ontology, Cyc and Wordnet can improve the chatterbots' performance in that domain of discourse.

P22. Design for an Ontology Server

An ontology is a collection of terms and formulas designed to facilitate interoperation among information systems (web sites). It is conceptually outside any of the interoperating sites, although it can be hosted by one of them. The ontology is held in a repository called an ontology server, which has several functions, including:

Provide schemas and formulas related to objects to participating sites
Certify messages between sites for their conformance to the ontology
Assist the management of the interoperation with maintenance of the ontology.

The ontology comes from possibly several sources, each of which is some sort of organizational constraint on the interoperation. The goal of this project is to understand how an ontology based on several sources fits together. The approach will be to analyze a large ontology such as SNOMED, isolating the sources of its various aspects and seeing how these aspects interact with each other. This will suggest structural relationships that need to be represented. The product of the research will be a scheme for representing these structural relationships and a set of methods useful to maintenance of the ontology by the various sources of organizational constraints.

P23. Knowledge representation for explanations in medical diagnosis and treatment

The business problem is that when a patient is diagnosed with a particular condition, there is a need for an explanation of how the symptoms are explained by the condition diagnosed. Also, to help patients understand the reason for the particular treatments prescribed, there is a need for an explanation of how the treatment works in terms of the underlying physiology, the condition and the symptoms.
A key element in generating explanations is a causal or qualitative model of the physiology which permits abductive reasoning (reasoning back from effects to causes). The core of the project is to develop such a model supporting commonly occurring cardiac conditions, ideally by adapting existing modeling software. Further development calls for integration of the qualitative model of the physiology into a query system capable of producing an explanation in a story form suitable for understanding by patients, in a service for delivery over the Web. The interface should integrate images of the organs in normal and disease states, and also animations of the physiological processes modeled. Research will be performed in collaboration with Dr. Rosario Russo, a cardiologist at the University of Padua, in Italy.

P25. Design for an Ontology Server

Provide schemas and formulas related to objects to participating sites
Certify messages between sites for their conformance to the ontology
Assist the management of the interoperation with maintenance of the ontology.

This project will create a detailed functional specification for an ontology server, which will be verified by developing an application in a tool like Microsoft Access.

P26. Orienting in the pay-per-click search engine advertising world

Organisations can purchase sponsored links on keywords used in search engines, in particular Google. The organization pays for the sponsored link each time a searcher using those key words clicks on it. To prevent spamming, the search engine presents the ad with a certain frequency to searchers with those key words depending on a number of things including how often searchers click on the sponsored link. To the advertiser, the cost is paid whenever a searcher enters their site, but a benefit is gained only when the searcher completes a transaction. The aim of the project is to find strategies for choice of key words which will maximize the ratio of benefit to advertising cost. There are a number of resources provided by Google and the web site host which can help.

There is an ontology dimension to the project, since it seems a good idea to build a model of the world of the potential user of the advertiser’s site which is represented in the key words expected. There is also an optimization dimension to the project, hence the requirement for a knowledge of calculus, which is needed to understand the various kinds of hill-climbing optimization algorithms to be used.

P27. Testing the OMG Ontology Development Metamodel by building an ontology in it.

An ontology is a collection of terms and formulas designed to facilitate interoperation among information systems (web sites). The Object Management Group is developing an enhancement to UML called the ODM (Ontology Development Metamodel) to support ontology development. The aim of this project is to test the ODM and its associated design guidelines by implementing in it a major ontology. A convenient candidate is an ontology of architectural structures which is part of a project managed by Michael Docherty of the School. The implementation will be done in Rational Rose or an equivalent tool.

P28. Visualising an ontology developed using the OMG Ontology Development Metamodel.

An ontology is a collection of terms and formulas designed to facilitate interoperation among information systems (web sites). The Object Management Group is developing an enhancement to UML called the ODM (Ontology Development Metamodel) to support ontology development. The aim of this project is to develop a method of visualising an ontology developed in the ODM with its associated guidelines. The visualisation will be prototyped using Rational Rose or a similar tool.

P29. Tools for helping an agent commit to an ontology

In order for an agent to participate in an exchange (say for e-commerce) it needs to commit to at least some of the exchange's ontology. This involves the agent subscribing to an aspect of the ontology (expressed in for example OWL) and integrating that ontology with the agent's conceptual model (expressed for example in UML). The project will explore tools to help with this, using various metamodeling toolkits available through the DSTC and other sources.

P30. Why do different debates on the same subject have different outcomes?

Debates on the same subject in different places often have different outcomes. For example, the debates on stem cell research have had different outcomes in Australia, the UK, the US Federally and the US state of California. The Institute of Molecular Bioscience Office of Public Policy and Ethics is interested in questions like this. We have access to a tool called Leximancer which can identify important concepts in a body of text and their relationships. The project is to work with the IMB OPPE to analyse the bodies of text expressing the opinions in debates in different places using Leximancer networks to see how the networks differ with different outcomes.

Selected bibliography

2007

07-03 COLOMB, R.M. and AHMAD, M.N. (2007) "Merging Ontologies Requires Interlocking Institutional Worlds" Applied Ontology to appear.

07-02 COLOMB, R.M. (2007) Ontology and The Semantic Web IOS Press, to appear
07-01 AHMAD, M.N. and COLOMB, R.M. (2007) "Managing Ontologies: A Comparative Study of Ontology Servers" In Proc. Eighteenth Australasian Database Conference (ADC 2007), Ballarat, Australia. CRPIT, 63. Bailey, J. and Fekete, A., Eds., ACS. 13-22.

2006

06-06 BROCKMANS, S., COLOMB, R.M., HAASE, P., KENDALL, E.K., WALLACE, E.K., WELTY, C. and XIE, G.T. (2006) "A Model Driven Approach for Building OWL DL and OWL Full Ontologies" in Cruz, I., Decker, S., Allemang, D., Preist, C., Schwabe, D., Mika, P.; Uschold, M. and Aroyo, L. (Eds.) 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2006) Springer LNCS 4273 187-200.

06-05 AHMAD, M.N., COLOMB, R.M. and COLE, J. (2006) "An Ontology Server: A Knowledge Tool For Systems Interoperability in Semantic Web Context" Malaysian Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 18 No. 1, 1-23, June 2006. (not refereed)

06-04 WYELD, T. G and COLOMB, R.M (2006) "Using the Amazon Metric to Construct an Image Database based on what people do, not what they say" 10th International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV 2006) London, UK, 5-7 July 2006 IEEE Press, pp 74-79.

06-03 COLOMB, R.M., RAYMOND, K., HART, L., EMERY, P., WELTY,C., XIE, G.T., KENDALL, E.K. (2006) "The Object Management Group Ontology Definition Metamodel" in Calero, Coral, Ruiz, Francisco and Piattini, Mario (editors) Ontologies for Software Engineering and Software Technology, Springer, pp 217-247.

06-02 PADMANABHAN, V., GOVERNATORI, G., SADIQ, S., COLOMB, R.M. and ROTOLO, A. (2006) "Process Modelling: The Deontic Way". In Markus Stumptner, Sven Hartmann and Yasushi Kiyoki, editors, Database Technology 2006, number 53 in Conference Research and Practice of Information Technology. Australian Computer Science Association, ACS, 16-19 January 2006.

06-01 COLOMB, R.M (2006) Formal versus Material Ontologies for Information Systems Interoperation in the Semantic Web The Computer Journal vol. 49, no. 1 pp. 4-19.

2005

05-01 COLOMB, R.M (2005) Information Systems Technology Grounded on Institutional Facts Workshop on Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising 16-17 July 2004, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia pp 77-86.
05-02 O BRIEN, P. and COLOMB, R.M. (2005) Generic Context-Driven Situation Detection and Management IASTED International Conference on Internet and Multimedia Systems Grindelwald, Switzerland 21-23 February, 2005 pp 101-106.
05-03 KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2005) Using BWW Model to Evaluate Building Ontologies in CGs Formalism Information Systems vol. 30, no. 5 pp. 379-398.
05-04 COLOMB, R.M and DAMPNEY, C.N.G (2005) An Approach to Ontology for Institutional Facts in the Semantic Web Information and Software Technology Volume 47, Issue 12, pp 775-783.

2004

04-01 COLOMB, R.M, GERBER, A. and LAWLEY, M (2004) Issues in Mapping Metamodels in the Ontology Development Metamodel 1^st International Workshop on the Model-Driven Semantic Web (MSDW 2004) Monterey, California, USA. 20-24 September, 2004. (Not refereed).

04-02 BRUZA, P. and COLOMB, R.M (2004) Operationalising Epistemic Modality DSTC Symposium Brisbane, Australia 16-17 August, 2004. (Not refereed).
04-03 SONG, I., GOVERNATORI, G., and COLOMB, R. (2004) An Interaction Model for Affect Monitoring in G. Webb and X Yu (eds.) 17^th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Cairns, Australia, 6-10 December, 2004 Springer LNCS 3339 pp. 979-984.
04-04 HART, Lewis, Patrick Emery, Robert Colomb, Kerry Raymond, Dan Chang, Yiming Ye, Elisa Kendall & Mark Dutra (2004) Usage Scenarios and Goals For Ontology Definition Metamodel in Zhou, X., Su, S., Papazoglou, M., Orlowska, M. and Jeffery, K. (eds.) Web Information Systems Engineering Conference (WISE’04) 22-24 November, 2004, Brisbane, Australia. Springer LNCS 3306 596-607.
04-05 HONG, H-S and COLOMB, R.M (2004) Ontology Mapping between Heterogeneous Systems for Semantic Web, Journal of Korea Information Science Society (TE), Vol.1, No.1, pp.25-32 (in Korean).

2003

03-01 CHEN, Y.-P. P. and COLOMB, R.M. (2003) "Database Technologies for L-system Simulations in Virtual Plant Applications on Bioinformatics" Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS) Journal Vol. 5, No. 3 pp 288-314.

2002

02-01.COLOMB, R.M. (2002) Information Spaces: the architecture of cyberspace Springer.
02-02 KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2002) "Using ontologies to index conceptual structures for tendering automation" Thirteenth Australasian Database Conference (ADC2002, Jan. 28 - Feb. 1, 2002, Melbourne, Australia) pp95-102.
02-03 KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2002) “Using ontologies to index conceptual structures for teaching automation” Database Technologies 2002, Thirteenth Australian Database Conference, Vol. 24 Australian Computer Society, Melbourne, pp. 95 - 101

2001

01-1. COLOMB, R.M. (2001) "Why Do People Pay for Information?" Prometheus Vol 19, No. 1 pp. 45-53.
01-2. KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2001) "Business-to-business Electronic Commerce: Electronic Tendering", in S.M. Rahman and R.J. Bignall (eds) Internet Commerce and Software Agents: Cases, Technologies and Opportunities Idea Group Publishing 231-250. also in Warkentin , Merrill (ed.) Business to Business Electronic Commerce: Challenges and Solutions Idea Group Publishing, 2002, 147-174,
01-03. KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2001) "Re-engineering approach to building domain ontologies" First Asia-Pacific Conference on Web Intelligence, Maebashi City, Japan, October 23-26, 2001. Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2198, pp 461-472.
01-04. KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2001) "Extracting Ontological Concepts for Tendering Conceptual Structures" Data and Knowledge Engineering, vol 41 No 1 pp 71-89.
01-05. KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2001) "Conceptual Structures for Tendering Ontology" in Kowalczyk, R, Loke, S.W., Reed, N. and Williams, G.J. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence: PRICAI 2000 Workshop Reader Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2112 pp 135--146.
01-06. COLOMB, R.M., DAMPNEY, C.N.G & JOHNSON, M. (2001) "Category-Theoretic Fibration as an Abstraction Mechanism in Information Systems" Acta Informatica Vol 38, pp 1-44.

2000

00-1. CHEN, Y.-P. P. and COLOMB, R.M. (2000) "Querying Recursive Structures Without Recursive Queries" in M. Orlowska (ed) Proc Australasian Database Conference Canberra, Australia 31 January - 2 February 2000. IEEE Computer Society 21-27.
00-2. METTER, M. and COLOMB, R.M. (2000) "WAP Enabling Existing HTML Applications" in B. Thomas and J. Warren (eds) Proc First Australasian User Interface Conference Canberra, Australia, 31 January - 2 February 2000. IEEE Computer Society49-57.
00-3. KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (2000) "Ontological and Conceptual Structures for Tendering Automation" International Conference on Information Systems: 2000 Brisbane, Australia 10-13 December 2000 1 - 8.
00-4. COLOMB, R.M. (2000) "Where does the ontology bottom out?" Position paper for panel discussion "Foundations of Information Systems" Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2000 Brisbane, Australia 6-8 December 2000

1999

99-1. FINNIGAN, S.M., BIRD, L., GOODCHILD, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (1999) "Distributed Searching Across Cultural Resources Using Z39.50 and SQL - a Powerful Combination" Information Online and Ondisc 99 Australian Library and Information Association Sydney, Australia 19-21 January 64-88.
99-2. COLOMB, R.M. (1999) "Representation of Propositional Expert Systems as Partial Functions" Artificial Intelligence 109 pp. 187-209.
99-3. CHEN, Y-P and COLOMB, R.M. (1999) "Generic Process Solution in Database Systems and L-systems for Bioinformatics Research" Second International Symposium on Cooperative Database Systems for Advanced Applications (CODAS'99), March 27-28, 1999, Wollongong, Australia, Springer-Verlag pp.328-339.
99-4 CHEN, Y.-P. P. and COLOMB, R.M. (1999) "Decision Support in Bioninformatics Research" Proc: The Fifth International Conference of The International Society for Decision Support Systems (ISDSS'99), 20-23 July 1999, Melbourne, Australia. 1-9.
99-5 COLOMB, R.M. (1999) "Information Systems Founded on Practice" Position paper for Information Systems Foundations: Practice and Ontology Workshop Macquarie University, Sydney Australia, 29 September, 1999.
99-6 KAYED, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (1999) "Infrastructure for Electronic Tendering Interoperability" The Australian Workshop on AI in Electronic Commerce, Sydney, Australia, 6 December 1999 Springer 87-101.

1998

98-1. CHEN, Y-P and COLOMB, R.M. (1998) "Design: A Visual Database Development System" in B. Verma, Z. Liu, Z. Sattar, R. Surawski and J. You (eds) 2nd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Processing Systems (ICIPS'98) Gold Coast, Australia 4-7 August, 1998 pp. 198-202.
98-2. WING, H., MINEAU, G. and COLOMB, R.M. (1998) "Using CG Formal Contexts to Support Business System Interoperations" in Marie-Laure Mugnier and Michel Chein (Eds) Conceptual Structures: Theory, Tools and Applications 6th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS'98), Montpellier France, 10-13 August, 1998 pp. 431-438.
98-3. SHARMA, N. and COLOMB, R.M. (1998) "Mechanising Shared Configuration and Diagnosis Theories through Constraint Logic Programming" Journal of Logic Programming Vol 37(1-3) Oct-Dec 98, pp 255--283.
98-4. COLOMB, R.M. and WEBER, R. (1998) "Completeness and Quality of an Ontology for an Information System" in N. Guarino (ed.) Formal Ontology in Information Systems (International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems - FOIS'98 - Trento, Italy, 6-8 June, 1998). IOS-Press (Amsterdam, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington, DC) 207-217.
98-5. GOODCHILD, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (1998) "Using Enterprise Models in Database Discovery" in C. McDonald (ed.) Proceedings 9th Australasian Database Conference (ADC'98) Perth Feb, 1998, Springer-Verlag. pp. 141-152.
98-6. COLOMB, R.M. (1998) Deductive Databases and their Application London: Taylor and Francis Ltd. 1998 (textbook)
98-7. CHO, O-H and COLOMB, R.M. (1998) "Associative Random Access Machines and Data-Parallel Multiway Binary-Search Join" Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 13 pp. 441-467.
98-8. GUERRINI, V.H., COLOMB, R.M. AND FILLIPICH, L.J. "Essential Drug Informatics" Proceedings Australian Document Computing Symposium, Sydney University, 21 August, 1998. pp 43-47.

1997

97-1. COLOMB, R.M. (1997) "Impact of Semantic Heterogeneity on Federating Databases" The Computer Journal Vol 40, No. 5, pp. 235 -244.
97-2. COLOMB, R.M. and CHEN, Y-P (1997) "Use of Partial Functional Dependencies to make Practical Approximate Translations Among Forms of Propositional Expert Systems" in A. Sattar (ed.)Tenth Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'97) Perth, Dec 1997. Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1342. pp 167-176.
97-3. COLOMB, R.M. and FINNIGAN, S.M. (1997) "Protocol Support for Commercial Access to Complex Databases" Australian World-Wide Web Technical Conference Brisbane, Queensland 7-9 May.
97-4. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1997) "On a Flexible EDI Message Protocol for Internet-based Business Communications" in P. Swatman, P. Swatman and J. Cooper (eds.)1st Pacific Asia Workshop on Electronic Commerce, Brisbane Queensland 6 April, 1997 pp. 5-1 - 5-25.
97-5. WING, H., LIU, C. and COLOMB, R.M. (1997) "A Bottom-up Approach to Distributed Workflow" in G. Gable and R. Weber (eds.) Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, Brisbane Queensland 2-5 April, 1997 pp. 157-173.
97-6. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1997) "Supporting Electronic Commerce with Interoperable Trade Documents" in G. Gable and R. Weber (eds.) Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, Brisbane Queensland 2-5 April, 1997 pp. 119-135.
97-7. COLOMB, R.M. & EILERTSEN, A.-G. (1997) "Use of a Persistent Graph Abstract Data Type for Representing CASE Tool Repositories" DASFAA'97 Melbourne Australia 1-4 April, 1997 World Scientific. pp. 155-164.
97-8. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1997) "An Architecture to Facilitate Trade Interoperability, Common in Electronic Commerce" Third International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems Berlin, 9-11 April IEEE Computer Society Press pp. 221-228.

1996

96-1. GOODCHILD, A. and COLOMB, R.M. (1996) "On Using Enterprise Models in Resource Discovery" Proc Workshop Challenges of Applications and Challenges of Design, Part of 15th Int Conf on Conceptual Modelling, ER'96, Cottbus, Germany, pp. 107-117.
96-2. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1996) "Behaviour sharing in Adaptable User Interfaces" Australian Human-Computer Interaction Conference (OZCHI'96), IEEE Computer Society Press 197-204.
96-3. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1996) "A CASE for Electronic Documentary Dossier" Australian Human-Computer Interaction Conference (OZCHI'96), IEEE Computer Society Press 86-93.
96-4. COLOMB, R.M. and FINNIGAN, S.M. (1996) "Z39.50/SQL+ - Stateful Web Access to Relational Databases" World Wide Web Consortium Distributed Indexing/Searching Workshop, May 28-29, 1996, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
96-5. COLOMB, R.M. (1996) "Category-Theoretic Co-Products, Schema Discrepancies and Role Abstractions in Information Systems" R. Topor (ed)1996 Seventh Australasian Database Conference Melbourne, Australia, 29-30 January, 1996. Australian Computer Science Communications, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp 121-130.
96-6. CHO, O-H and COLOMB, R.M. (1996) "Datalog Rule Evaluation in Associative Computers and Massively Parallel SIMD Machines"in Rodney Topor (ed.), Seventh Australasian Database Conference Proceedings 29-30 January, 1996 Melbourne Australia Australian Computer Science Communications, Vol 18, No. 2, pp 56-65.

1995

95-1. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1995) "Cooperative User Interface Architecture" 5th Workshop on Information Technology and Systems, Nijenrode University, The Netherlands, 9-10 December, 1995 Aachener Informatik - Berichte 95-15 pp. 176-185.
95-2. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1995) "Active View: A Framework for User Interface Development" Australian Human-Computer Interaction Conference (OZCHI'95), Ergonomics Association of Australia.
95-3. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1995) "A General Architecture for Cooperative User Interface" Australian Human-Computer Interaction Conference (OZCHI'95), Ergonomics Association of Australia.
95-4. COLOMB, R.M. and SIENKIEWICZ, J. (1995) "Analysis of Redundancy in Expert Systems Case Data" in Yao, X. (ed.) Eighth Australian Joint Artificial Intelligence Conference (AI'95) World Scientific pp. 395-402.
95-5. CHO, O-H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1995) "Associative Broadcast Communication in Massively Parallel SIMD Machines" 2nd Australasian Conference on Parallel and Real-Time Systems (PART'95), Fremantle, WA, Australia, Sep. 1995.
95-6. COLOMB, R.M. and ORLOWSKA, M.E. (1995) "Interoperability in Information Systems" Information Systems Journal , Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 37-50.
95-7. COLOMB, R.M. and CHUNG, C.Y. (1995) "Strategies for Building Propositional Expert Systems" International Journal of Intelligent Systems Vol. 10, No. 3, pp 295-328.

1994

94-1. WING, H. and COLOMB, R.M. (1994) "Towards Cooperative User Interfaces: An Object-Oriented Application Integration Approach" IEEE GLOBCOM'94 Stanford University, Palo Alto CA, 27 Nov- 1 Dec, 1994.
94-2. ROHANI, M and COLOMB, R.M. (1994) "Using Extended Transaction Models for EDI-Based Interoperation of Information Systems" in Shanks, G. and Arnott, D. (eds.) 5th Australian Conference on Information Systems (Melbourne, Australia, November ) Department of Information Systems, Monash University ISBN 0 947186 69 7, pp. 57-66.
94-3. COLOMB, R.M. (1994) "Use of Managers for Complex Types in User Interface for Open Network Applications" International Workshop on Research Issues in the Intersection Between Software Engineering and Human-computer Interaction (SE/HCI'94) (Workshop associated with International Conference on Software Engineering, Sorrento, Italy) 16-17 May, 1994 pp 229-231.
94-4. DAMPNEY, C.N.G. and COLOMB, R.M. (1994) "Semantic Correspondence in Integrating CASE tool repository schemas" Information and Software Technology, vol 36 No 2, pp 87-96.
94-5. COLOMB, R.M. (1994) "Management of Complex Types" 17th Australasian Computer Science Conference (Christchurch, New Zealand, 19-21 January, 1994) Australian Computer Science Communications, Vol. 16, No. 1 (ISBN 0-473-02313-X) pp. 639-646.

1993

93-1. (ES) SHARMA, N. and COLOMB, R.M. (1993) "Federating Propositional Expert Systems" Sixth Joint Australian AI Conference (Melbourne, Australia, 17-19 November, 1993) World Scientific, Singapore, pp.197-202.
93-2. (ADT) COLOMB, R.M. (1993) "Developing Information Systems For the Expert User" in Ledington, P. (ed.)Fourth Australian Conference on Information Systems (Brisbane, Australia, 26-28 September, 1993), Department of Commerce, The University of Queensland (ISBN 0 86776 543 8) pp 861-866.
93-3. COLOMB, R.M. (1993) "Use of a Personal Workstation to Access Open Network Services" Australian Computer Journal Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 7-13.

1992

92-1. ZHANG, Y., ORLOWSKA, M.E. and COLOMB, R.M. (1992) "An Efficient Test for the Validity of Unbiased Hybrid Knowledge Fragmentation in Distributed Databases" International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Vol. 2, No. 4, December, 1992 pp. 589-609.
92-2. COLOMB, R.M. (1992) "A Problem Calling for an Open Distributed Processing Solution" in MacGregor, M, Clarke, R., Little, S., Gould, T. & Ang, A. (eds.)Third Australian Conference on Information Systems 5-8 October 1992, pp. 227-236.
92-3. COLOMB, R.M. and CHONGVILAIWAN, Y. (1992) "Personal Productivity Tools as User Interface Type Managers" in Rees, M.J. & Ianella, R. (eds.)OZCHI'92 26/27 November 1992, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia, pp. 15-21.
92-4. COLOMB, R.M. (1992) "Computational Stability of Expert Systems" Expert Systems With Applications, Vol 5, No 2/3 pp 411-419.
92-5. JANSEN, B., COLOMB, R.M., HENDERSON-SELLERS, A., GALLAGHER, J., ROBERTSON, J. and BRAY, G. (1992) "Printed Material as a Knowledge Representation" Proceedings Hyperoz'92 (Australian Hypertext Conference) Adelaide, February, 1992.
92-6. COLOMB, R.M. (1992) "A Join Algorithm for a Main-Memory Database Operating on a Fine-Grained Parallel Computer" Third Australian Database Conference, Melbourne, 3-4 February.

Previous Incarnations

Education

B.Sc. (Mathematics) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, 1964
Ph.D. (Computer Science) University of New South Wales, 1987.
BA (Philosophy) The University of Queensland, 2004.

Work Experience

January 1991 - June 1991: Visiting Professor in School of Computing Sciences at University of Technology, Sydney. Duties included responsibility for teaching a final-year elective in Logic Programming as well as a number of guest lectures in other subjects.

November 1985-December 1990: Finished as Principal Research Scientist, Manager of Knowledge-Based Systems Engineering Program, CSIRO Division of Information Technology, Sydney, Australia. Responsibilities included establishment and management of group and research program ab initio to a level of 12 staff and four research projects.

Starting from zero, the group was assembled, largely from people inexperienced in the specific skills needed to perform research in the indicated areas, trained and organized to the point that the group produced a total of 65 publications over the period, including 23 international. A patent was granted.

Projects included:

Knowledge Processing, including fine-grained parallel computing and expert systems rule processing;

Expert Systems Engineering: the application of software engineering methods to artificial intelligence applications, particularly expert systems. Techniques employed include relational database, data dictionary and formal specifications (the Z language). Involved with two major second generation expert systems.

Hypertext: development of hypertext system integrating structured knowledge (e.g. expert system), mathematical models, text, graphics and data.

Parallel Systems Architecture (until July 1989): the development of a data flow computer in collaboration with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Included hardware, systems software, and a number of end-use applications.

These projects involved collaboration with a number of other organizations, including the CSIRO Divisions of Plant Industry, Wool Technology, Mineral Physics and Minerology, Molecular Biology and Centre for Irrigation and Freshwater Research; and University of New South Wales, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Macquarie University, Telectronics Ltd., Ausonics Pty Ltd, Digital Equipment Corporation, Scientia Computing, Garvan Institute for Medical Research and the AMP Society.

The group attracted senior visitors from the University of Technology, Sydney; Heriot-Watt University, UK; and Brunel University, U.K.; as well as junior researchers from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and VTT, Finland.

July 1984- Nov 1985 Studying towards Ph. D. in Computer Science at the University of New South Wales. (Submitted thesis Sept 1986, accepted April, 1987).Thesis title:A Hardware-Intended Implementation of Prolog Featuring a General Solution to the Clause Indexing Problem . Tutored in a second year course in fundamental algorithms featuring the Prolog programming language (one session) and in a third year course in data base design, featuring relational methods (two sessions). Worked part-time as contract programmer.

Feb 1980-July 1984 Systems Architect for Commercial Dynamics Pty Ltd in Sydney, responsible for overall hardware and software systems design, including: multi-processor hardware organization, operating system layer above single-user CP/M to process multiple terminal data access on shared data base; programming tools, including comprehensive screen handler, general ISAM file maintenance system, full editing data entry system, menu and security control, report generator; and application systems, including complete business package, incorporating Order entry, Inventory, Accounts Receivable and Payable, General Ledger, specialized order management system for newsagencies and a number of special projects, including one for the insurance industry and several in the retail and distribution areas.

In this position, I was responsible for a staff of up to seven, who developed and managed through several versions what ultimately became 250,000 lines of code installed in approximately 25 sites. We used a number of software engineering methods, including structured programming, top-down design, various metrics for estimation of development cost and error rate, management techniques for version control, and a species of rapid prototyping using a word processor. Data bases were designed using relational database methods.

Feb 1976- Dec 1979 Online Systems Pty Ltd, Sydney, as systems analyst and consultant. Developed system to collect, bill for, and typeset classified advertisements for Weekly Trading Post on Data General Nova 2. Managed project with at most one assistant. Designed and managed NSW Police Department Eagle Communications gateway which, residing on a Data General Nova 3, connects the network of terminals in police stations and the telex network to the Police Department's UNIVAC and the Department of Motor Transport's IBM 370 data bases. Staff of four. Responsible for installation and support of KEYMASTER, an on-line data entry system product running as an application under CICS on an IBM 370 system. Reorganized Data Processing Department for a major grocery wholesaler. Supervised team of six consultants and, as acting Data Processing Manager, their ITEL AS5 system and staff of 30.

In several of these projects, used software engineering techniques including structured programming, structured analysis and design, IBM's HIPO diagrams, and software metrics for estimation.

Jan 1972- Jan 1976 Migrated to Australia. Did a number of things outside the computer industry, including owning a greengrocer shop in a small country town in NSW.

May 1969- Dec 1971 City Development Department, City of Kansas City, Missouri, USA, as Chief of Analysis. Responsible for research and analysis of data used in land use, economic and social planning. Responsible for population and economic base projections, including an input/output model of the regional economy. Developed a small-scale thematic mapping data base and associated software. Supervised staff of up to seven. Published several in-house reports.

Feb 1964- Sept 1968 Systems Research Laboratories, Dayton, Ohio, USA, a contractor to the US Military, as project leader for a number of research and development projects in signal analysis, multivariate statistics, biomedical problems, and neural net modelling. Developed numerical/statistical method for principal components analysis of large covariance matrices. During 1965 was acting manager of the Mathematics Division, with a staff of 15, and from 1966 to 1968 started and managed the New England Branch in Boston, Massachusetts, with a staff of two. Published several research reports.