The Cogito Knowledge Center provides a suite of middleware engines, servers, and development tools with which to build powerful graph-based applications. Graph-based information representation and analytic capabilities may be embedded in stand-alone applications or deployed among client applications interacting with Cogito servers.

The Cogito Knowledge Center is implemented in .NET and runs on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. All Knowledge Center SDKs provide C# APIs. The Graph Server also provides a standard Web Service interface through which applications on other platforms (such as Java) may access the system.

COMPONENTS

Graph Engine

The Cogito Graph Engine provides the ability to create, modify, query, analyze, and operate on a graph store. The Graph Engine is used as a component of an application. The Graph Engine is embodied in a set of DLLs and is provided with an SDK.

Graph Server

The Cogito Graph Server is a Windows service that hosts one or more graph stores for multiple clients. The Graph Server can only host existing graphs, it cannot create new ones.

Graph Server clients can be created using the Graph Server SDK. The Graph Server APIs are similar to the Graph Engine APIs, but have been optimized for remote access. For example, where the Graph Engine API has a method with which to retrieve a single node, the Graph Server API allows a client to retrieve a set of nodes in a single request/response transaction. The Graph Server API also provides asynchronous methods to better manage client/server interactions.

The Graph Server also includes an optional Web Service interface, which may be installed to support SOAP-based interactions with other platforms such as Java-based systems.

Data Integration Broker

The Cogito Data Integration Broker (DIB) mediates, or brokers, data exchanges between a graph store and other data stores. It can extract data from multiple sources, transform it (in simple but useful ways), and load it into a graph data store or deliver the data to another process for further manipulation.

Web-based Administration Tools

The Cogito Knowledge Center includes Web-based interfaces through which administrators may connect to and monitor one or more Graph Servers or Data Integration Brokers. The interfaces for both components can configure and monitor a dynamic set of server performance and behavior measures. The interface for the Data Integration Broker also provides pages for configuring data sources, destinations, queries, and event schedules.

Workbench

The Cogito Knowledge Center Workbench is a Windows application for prototyping graph data stores and ingesting static data sets, browsing and diagramming the contents of those data stores, and understanding the information in those stores through ad-hoc queries and analytic tools.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KITS

The Cogito Knowledge Center 2.3 includes software development kits (SDKs) for the Graph Engine and Graph Server. Each SDK contains:

• DLLs
• Documentation (a developer guide and Help docs for classes and methods)
• Example Code

You will need to include some or all of the DLLs with the applications you create. The rest of the material in the SDK is provided to support your application developers.

Requirements (minimum):

The Cogito Knowledge Center is a .NET-based Windows system that requires:

• Memory: 1GB RAM
• Operating System: Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP, or better
• .NET Framework version: 1.1

Some components have additional requirements:

• The Graph Server and Data Integration Broker Web-based Admin interfaces require Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) to be installed and running before they can be installed.
• The Data Integration Broker requires access to Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Server Express in order to support its scheduler databases.