• A hyperbolic tree that permits us to visually incrementally explore and discover the interrelated latticework of knowledge themes and their associated text snippets.

Good news from Lotus and IBM
As Domino users, you'll be pleased to know this is possible from inside embedded Domino R5.03 Views, once you've mastered the concept of how to prescript application programs in XML, XSL, and XML-Schema through Remote Reflection. And the pending XML-QL from W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) will extend XSL into an SQL-like function-rich query language, driving the power of your remotely assembled intelligent knowledge management applications to a much higher plateau of functionality.

Furthermore, Netscape's pending V6 release will harness an operating kernel called the Geko engine that will provide even more power with a smaller footprint through DOM and XML, creating an omnipresent array of remote Internet Smart Devices to which you can beam Intelligent Knowledge Application Program assembly instructions through XML and Open IP.

The good news IBM and Lotus are bringing us doesn't stop there. You can build Java Server Pages on the Domino Server using Java Servlets or even LotusScript agents. Servlets, however, are much more scalable because they become shared, persistent, multi-threaded processes that are instantiated as native server processes. This optimizes server resource utilization for high volume multi-user usage. JavaServer pages can also be transformed into Active Server Pages on-the-fly using server-side XSLT (XSL transforms) with Remote Reflection.

You can do all this with Zero-Footprint on the browser workstation, PDA, or whatever Internet device you are sending these XML wired or wireless application assembly signals to. Zero-Footprint, of course, translates into Zero-Administration… at least on the client-side. The server-side, while much harder to build, should be much easier to manage and operate and be infinitely more scalable given the Internet's omnipresence.

Conclusion
Once you've become a Knowledge Application XML JavaScripter who can master the art of Remote Reflection, your ability to productively create knowledge management business solutions that simplify your users' Information environment will increase greatly. This is a new era--a revolution in application building. Your ability to use auto-classification to build knowledge primitives that harness the knowledge hidden within unstructured text will determine your success.

Bain McKay is Chief Scientist with Knowledge Management Technology, CIRI Lab. Bain can be reached at bmckay@ciri.net or at http://www.ciri.net.