Good knowledge organization is crucial in two cases-in the representation of semantically related information and in the representation of huge quantities of data. The answer to the problem of semantic knowledge representation is given by various knowledge representation techniques used in Artificial Intelligence, while for the representation of large quantities of data, relational databases represent the optimal choice. If we analyze the characteristics important from the knowledge organization point of view, we could say that structure representation provides means for knowledge representation, unique object representation ensures representational efficiency, while representation of bottom-up hierarchies (e.g. indexing scheme in relational databases) brings search efficiency. Furthermore, unique object representation and bottom-up (contextual) hierarchies provide support for semantically organized knowledge. In this paper we describe a knowledge representation technique, Hierarchical Semantic Form (HSF), which, together with the Space Of Universal Links (SOUL) algorithm, aims at supporting both of the above mentioned characteristics of well organized knowledge. HSF represents a hybrid solution that enables both structure and context representations, combining the characteristics of classicist approach (symbolic and semantic processing) with the characteristics of connectionist approach (parallelism, learning). (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
