In December, Lotus announced the release of the K-station Web portal. Combined, the K-station and the Discovery Server form the Lotus Knowledge Discovery System, which started out code-named Raven. Together, the products offer an enterprise-capable knowledge management solution.

To understand how the Lotus Knowledge Discovery System brings together the Lotus knowledge management strategy and the ability to build relationships between people, places, and things, it's important to understand the individual functions of both K-station and the Discovery Server and how they work together.

Lotus K-station portal
Lotus K-station is a Web-based portal that not only provides organization of information, but a means to collaborate on that information in a secure environment. K-station is organized into two major elements, "personal places" and "community places."

Personal places are unique to each user, where the user customizes the presentation of information, commonly referred to as "knowledge views," ranging from email, Notes and Domino applications, other Web sites, or file types. This is a giant step forward in allowing you to develop your own content that you can access from anywhere.

Community places provide an area for groups of people to collaborate on information. Community places are either public or team-oriented. Public community places are open for anyone to join, and team oriented community places require an invitation.

The K-station install, which is configured through a Web browser, includes QuickPlace as well as several Sametime elements, such as place-based awareness and chat.

Knowledge views can be created to a multitude of data sources, such as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), URLs, Lotus Notes Information (Views, email, To Do, Calendar, and Discussion), Domino.Doc, Image, Text, Microsoft Exchange 2000, Hotmail, and of course the Discovery Server.

K-station is based on the use of open and available standards. Utilizing the latest in DHTML (Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language), XML (eXtensible Markup Language), JavaScript, and Java Servlet technology, K-station has a high degree of customization available for end-users and developers alike.

The Discovery Server
The Discovery Server can best be characterized as a search engine that's capable of analyzing the relationships between content, people, topics, and activity.