Publication refers to the process of making sentences available to other KBs (or external systems). Subscription refers to the process of making use of sentences published by other KBs (or external systems).

PUBLISHING NETWORK

A publishing network consists of either an open share or one or more sentence type publications. An SQL server can include any number of publication networks. Publication networks are documented in three tables (pub_net, publication and subscription) in the p3publications database.

OPEN SHARE

A KB which publishes to an open share, publishes all sentences in the KB, however, excluding sentences forming part of the KB's internal administration as well as its terminology and sentence model. These include the following sentence groups:

• derives
• determines
• is referred by
• is in the KB
• is in the model
• is in the sentence model
• is in the terminology
• is an inexact rule input facility
• is noted
• is recorded

Several KBs can publish to the same open share, and a KB can both publish to and subscribe to the same open share. In this way an open share constitues the total knowledge of all participating KBs. There are four possible formats for the shared knowledge:

• NL
• PR
• XML/NL
• XML/PR

KBs subscribing to an open share must necessarily have the same sentence model and terminology (since sentence model and terminology sentences also are found in the open share). This means that their only significant difference is their rules and functions.

An open share is implemented as one SQL table.

SENTENCE TYPE PUBLICATIONS

A KB can publish one or more sentence types in either incremental mode or in replacement mode. Incremental mode refers to a situation where the KB simply adds (new) sentences to the set of published sentences. Sentences already published are never subject to change or deletion. There can be more than one publishing KB in the case of incremental mode publishing.

Replacement mode refers to a situation where there is only one publishing KB, and where that KB is replacing the whole set of published sentences each it publishes.

There can be only one publication of a sentence type in a network when replacement mode is used. There can be more than one publications of the same sentence type when incremental mode is used, however they must all publish to the same table (and thus use the same format).

SENTENCE TYPE SUBSCRIPTIONS

A KB can subscribe to one or more sentence types in either incremental mode or replacement mode. Incremental mode refers to a situation where only (newly) published sentences are used by the subscribing KB (in addition to whatever sentences of the same type the KB already know of). Replacement mode refers to a situation where the KB ignores previously known sentences of the type and instead uses the complete set of published sentences of the type.

It is important to note that the subscribing KB must have a terminology and sentence model which includes  the subscribed sentence types. One way to facilitate this is by using one KB as the terminology and sentence model master, and thus make this KB publish the terminology and sentence model sentences types. These include:

• syntagm is in the terminology
• synonym is in the terminology
• data element type is in the sentence model
• entity type is in the sentence model
• predicate type is in the sentence model
• inexact rule declaration is in the sentence model
• deterministic function declaration is in the sentence model
• nondeterministic function declaration is in the sentence model
• domain is in the sentence model
• procedure is in the sentence model

AD-HOC PUBLICATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS OF SENTENCE TYPES

Ad-hoc publications and subscriptions of sentence types can be carried out from Pro/3 e.g. for transfer of sentences to or from external systems. Ad-hoc publications and subscriptions are not defined in the KB. Ad-hoc publications and subscriptions replace all sentences in the target SQL table.

MANAGING PUBLICATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

Publication networks are documented in three tables (pub_net, publication and subscription) in the p3publications database. The database lists all publishing networks as well as all publications and subscriptions in each network.

PUBLICATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS-WINDOW

The Publications and Subscriptions-window has the following functions related to the p3publications database:

• to (re-)create the database
• to create or remove a publishing network
• to add or delete a publication record
• to add or delete a subscription record

The database can alternatively be created and maintained outside Pro/3.