In this article, I want to discuss the product development tools that permit us to build flexible application products that let corporations shape knowledge management applications to their specific needs, avoiding the context problem I discussed last time. Standards such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), XSL (eXtensible Style Language), XSL Transforms and XSL Schema provide a rich, standards-based toolset as a foundation for dynamically building and intelligently generating context-reconfigurable applications quickly in order to meet the specific needs of corporate users.

The power of Java
The advent of Java has been a tremendous boon in bringing the power of complex computer processing to a much wider range of application experts who are more solutions-oriented, rather than technology-oriented. This is driving computing in a new direction, where subject knowledge experts become essential to building and delivering meaningful application products to corporate users and, in fact, to themselves.

Java Beans, for those of you who are uninitiated, are standalone Java functions that have their internals exposed so they can be driven from the outside. Java Beans are truly a remarkable advancement that permits product vendors and corporations alike to bring the value of computing to the next level. Knowledge Management applications developed in Java Beans will change the competitive landscape. This is especially true when Knowledge Management applications are built from the context of the user, rather than the other way around (for reasons discussed in the previous article).

When combined with a high-level application component configuration language like IBM's BML (Bean Mark-up Language), you have a new breed of highly configurable, highly productive, component applications that can adjust themselves dynamically to the user's context, growing relevant context from the control of the user's need, out to the productive limits of their learning potential, to their semantic horizon.

A flexible Knowledge Management wiring harness
IBM has been working with Java for many years now, and their recent offerings have taken them to a new plateau in recognizing and delivering what corporations need to succeed today. Those who've had the opportunity to visit IBM's Alphaworks Web site (at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com), where IBM shares its new concepts and ideas through working Java code, will be impressed with the work they are sharing in an open source manner. As these products mature towards something releasable, they're shaped by the feedback of corporations and product vendors who sample their wares and see the fit. Some of the tools are ready for market release.