Rhetorical structure theory (RST) is a theory of text organization that describes relations that hold between parts of text. It was originally developed by William Mann, Sandra Thompson, Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen and others at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI) and defined in a 1988 paper. The theory was developed as part of studies of computer-based text generation. Natural language processing researchers later began using RST in automatic summarization and other applications. It explains coherence by postulating a hierarchical, connected structure of texts, which are labeled using a small, predefined inventory of relation types - for example, one part of a text may provide an elaboration on another part, provide background or specify a cause for another. In the 2000s, following the release of the first large-scale dataset implementing the theory, the RST Discourse Treebank (RST-DT), Daniel Marcu demonstrated the feasibility of practical applications of RST to discourse parsing and summarization at ISI. Originally limited to written text, subsequent work in the 2010s expanded RST to spoken language analysis, and the framework has been applied to a variety of languages including Farsi, German, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Following the introduction of Transformers, LLMs have been applied to automatic RST parsing, with results approaching human performance on parsing text in English. == Rhetorical relations == Rhetorical relations, also called coherence or discourse relations, are paratactic (coordinate) or hypotactic (subordinate) relations that hold across two or more text spans. The logical arrangement of relations in a text contributes to its coherence by connecting different propositions in a relational structure. RST using rhetorical relations provides a systematic way for an analyst to analyze the underlying intention of a text. The analysis is usually built by reading the text and constructing a tree using the relations. The following example is a title and summary, appearing at the top of an article in Scientific American magazine (adapted from Ramachandran and Anstis, 1986). The original text, broken into numbered units, is: [Title:] The Perception of Apparent Motion [Abstract:] When the motion of an intermittently seen object is ambiguous the visual system resolves confusion by applying some tricks that reflect a built-in knowledge of properties of the physical world. In the figure, the numbers 1-5 show the corresponding units from the text above. Unit 5 provides an "elaboration" on unit 4, and therefore constitutes a less prominent satellite of unit 4, which acts as a nucleus for the relation. Units 4-5 form a relation "Means", explaining the means by which the visual system resolves confusion. Unit 3 is the Central Discourse Unit (CDU) of the text, since all units point to it directly or indirectly. Similarly units 1 and 2 form "preparation" and "circumstance" relations relative to their nuclei. Groups of units which serve as a satellite or nucleus together are called complex discourse units, and always span a set of adjacent EDUs. == Nuclearity in discourse == RST establishes two different types of units. Nuclei are considered as the most important parts of text whereas satellites contribute to the nuclei and are secondary. Nucleus contains basic information and satellite contains additional information about nucleus. The satellite is often incomprehensible without nucleus, whereas a text where satellites have been deleted can be understood to a certain extent. == Hierarchy in the analysis == RST relations are applied recursively in a text, until all units in that text are constituents in an RST relation. The result of such analyses is that RST structure are typically represented as trees, with one top level relation that encompasses other relations at lower levels. == Why RST? == From linguistic point of view, RST proposes a different view of text organization than most linguistic theories. RST points to a tight relation between relations and coherence in text From a computational point of view, it provides a characterization of text relations that has been implemented in different systems and for applications as text generation and summarization. == In design rationale == Computer scientists Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia and Clarisse Sieckenius de Souz have used RST as the basis of a design rationale system called ADD+. In ADD+, RST is used as the basis for the rhetorical organization of a knowledge base, in a way comparable to other knowledge representation systems such as issue-based information system (IBIS). Similarly, RST has been used in representation schemes for argumentation.
Object Data Management Group
The Object Data Management Group (ODMG) was conceived in the summer of 1991 at a breakfast with object database vendors that was organized by Rick Cattell of Sun Microsystems. In 1998, the ODMG changed its name from the Object Database Management Group to reflect the expansion of its efforts to include specifications for both object database and object–relational mapping products. The primary goal of the ODMG was to put forward a set of specifications that allowed a developer to write portable applications for object database and object–relational mapping products. In order to do that, the data schema, programming language bindings, and data manipulation and query languages needed to be portable. Between 1993 and 2001, the ODMG published five revisions to its specification. The last revision was ODMG version 3.0, after which the group disbanded. == Major components of the ODMG 3.0 specification == Object Model. This was based on the Object Management Group's Object Model. The OMG core model was designed to be a common denominator for object request brokers, object database systems, object programming languages, etc. The ODMG designed a profile by adding components to the OMG core object model. Object Specification Languages. The ODMG Object Definition Language (ODL) was used to define the object types that conform to the ODMG Object Model. The ODMG Object Interchange Format (OIF) was used to dump and load the current state to or from a file or set of files. Object Query Language (OQL). The ODMG OQL was a declarative (nonprocedural) language for query and updating. It used SQL as a basis, where possible, though OQL supports more powerful object-oriented capabilities. C++ Language Binding. This defined a C++ binding of the ODMG ODL and a C++ Object Manipulation Language (OML). The C++ ODL was expressed as a library that provides classes and functions to implement the concepts defined in the ODMG Object Model. The C++ OML syntax and semantics are those of standard C++ in the context of the standard class library. The C++ binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. Smalltalk Language Binding. This defined the mapping between the ODMG ODL and Smalltalk, which was based on the OMG Smalltalk binding for the OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL). The Smalltalk binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. Java Language Binding. This defined the binding between the ODMG ODL and the Java programming language as defined by the Java 2 Platform. The Java binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. == Status == ODMG 3.0 was published in book form in 2000.[1] By 2001, most of the major object database and object-relational mapping vendors claimed conformance to the ODMG Java Language Binding. Compliance to the other components of the specification was mixed.[2] In 2001, the ODMG Java Language Binding was submitted to the Java Community Process as a basis for the Java Data Objects specification. The ODMG member companies then decided to concentrate their efforts on the Java Data Objects specification. As a result, the ODMG disbanded in 2001. In 2004, the Object Management Group (OMG) was granted the right to revise the ODMG 3.0 specification as an OMG specification by the copyright holder, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. In February 2006, the OMG announced the formation of the Object Database Technology Working Group (ODBT WG) and plans to work on the 4th generation of an object database standard. == ODMG Compliant DBMS == Orient ODBMS: http://www.OrienTechnologies.com Objectivity/DB C++, Java and Smalltalk interfaces.
Actifsource
Actifsource is a domain-specific modeling workbench. It is realized as plug-in for the software development environment Eclipse. Actifsource supports the creation of multiple domain models which can be linked together. It comes with a UML-like graphical editor to create domain-specific languages and a general graphical editor to edit structures in the created languages. It supports code generation using user-defined generic code templates which are directly linked to the domain models. Code generation is integrated into Eclipse's incremental build process. == Interoperability == Actifsource can use models from other modelling tools by importing and exporting the ecore format which is defined by the Eclipse Modeling Framework. == Licensing policy == There are two versions of actifsource available: The free community edition which can be used freely for non-commercial projects and the enterprise edition which contains additional features. The enterprise edition comes with customer support and maintenance for a limited period of time. This package allows the customers to upgrade to new versions and maintenance releases during their support period.
Sahara Net
Sahara Net is an information and communications technology provider (ICT) serving the Saudi market, the company has rapidly grown since 1989 to offer various complementary services such as connectivity, internet, hosting, cloud, optimization, cyber security, and managed services. == History == Sahara Net is a Saudi Joint Stock Company (JSC) and its history goes back to 1989 when Sahara Net established the 1st Saudi Bulletin Board Service (BBS) in the Kingdom. During this period, it operated as a hub for email exchange in the FidoNet network. And in 1994 Sahara Net started offering Internet connectivity and other related services like internet email, web design, web hosting, and Domain name registry services. These services made the first ISP in Saudi Arabia before the official licensing in 1998, when the Saudi Internet market was regulated and Sahara Net received Internet Service Provider (ISP) license and was appointed as the official Local Internet Registry (LIR) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. == Today == The company grew over these years to become one of the main ICTs in the Saudi Arabian market, extending network coverage to all major cities in Saudi Arabia, and offering various connectivity options to business as well as home users. In 2009, the company was partially acquired by Telindus (the ICT investment arm of Belgacom), the famous telecom operator in Belgium and Europe. Then, in 2014, the company was fully acquired by its original founders. Recently, Sahara Net was converted from an LLC to a JSC with over 1200 shareholders by a capital raise (original founders still control 70% of the shares).
CPanel
cPanel is a web hosting control panel software developed by cPanel, L.L.C. It provides a graphical interface (GUI) and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site for the website owner or "end user". It enables administration through a standard web browser using a three-tier structure. While cPanel is limited to managing a single hosting account, cPanel & WHM allow the administration of the entire server. In addition to the GUI, cPanel also has command line and API-based access that allows third-party software vendors, web hosting organizations, and developers to automate standard system administration processes. cPanel & WHM is designed to function either as a dedicated server or virtual private server. The latest cPanel & WHM version supports installation on AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, CloudLinux OS, and Ubuntu. == History == cPanel is currently developed by cPanel, L.L.C., a privately owned company headquartered in Houston, Texas, United States. WebPros is the parent company of cPanel, L.L.C. It was originally designed in 1996 as the control panel for Speed Hosting, a now-defunct web hosting company. The original author of cPanel, J. Nick Koston, had a stake in Speed Hosting. Webking quickly began using cPanel after its merger with Speed Hosting. The new company moved its servers to Virtual Development Inc. (VDI), a now-defunct hosting facility. Following an agreement between Koston and VDI, cPanel was only available to customers hosted directly at VDI. At the time, there was little competition in the control panel market, with the main choices being VDI and Alabanza. Eventually, due to Koston leaving for college, he and William Jensen signed an agreement in which cPanel was split into a separate program called WebPanel; this version was run by VDI. Without the lead programmer, VDI was not able to continue any work on cPanel and eventually stopped supporting it completely. Koston kept working on cPanel while also working at BurstNET. Eventually, he left BurstNET to focus fully on cPanel. cPanel 3 was released in 1999: main additions over cPanel 2 were an automatic upgrade and the Web Host Manager (WHM). The interface was also improved when Carlos Rego of WizardsHosting made what became the default theme of cPanel. With the release of cPanel 11, cPanel adopted a four-tier versioning system, "Parent.Major.Minor.Patch" (e.g., 11.32.0.3). As of version 11.52, the "Parent" representation is deprecated, with 11.54 stylized as "Version 54." cPanel 11.30 is the last major version to support FreeBSD. On August 20, 2018 cPanel L.L.C. announced that it had signed an agreement to be acquired by a group led by Oakley Capital (who also own Plesk and SolusVM). While Koston sold his interest in cPanel, he will continue to be an owner of the company that owns cPanel. In April 2026, a severe vulnerability was discovered that affected all cPanel and WHM versions after 11.40, affectively allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to access the control panel. According to some web hosters the vulnerability was already being actively exploited, with some attempts even dating back to late February 2026. == Add-ons == cPanel provides front-ends for a number of common operations, including the management of PGP keys, crontab tasks, mail and FTP accounts, and mailing lists. Several add-ons exist, some for an additional fee, including auto installers such as Installatron, Fantastico, Softaculous, and WHMSonic (SHOUTcast/radio Control Panel Add-on). The add-ons need to be enabled by the server administrator in WHM to be accessible to the cPanel user. WHM manages some software packages separately from the underlying operating system, applying upgrades to Apache, PHP, MySQL and MariaDB, Exim, FTP, and related software packages automatically. This ensures that these packages are kept up-to-date and compatible with WHM, but makes it more difficult to install newer versions of these packages. It also makes it difficult to verify that the packages have not been tampered with, since the operating system's package management verification system cannot be used to do so. == WHM == WHM, short for WebHost Manager, is a web-based tool which is used for server administration. There are at least two tiers of WHM, often referred to as "root WHM", and non-root WHM (or Reseller WHM). Root WHM is used by server administrators and non-root WHM (with fewer privileges) is used by others, like entity departments, and resellers to manage hosting accounts often referred to as cPanel accounts on a web server. WHM is also used to manage SSL certificates (both server self generated and CA provided SSL certificates), cPanel users, hosting packages, DNS zones, themes, and authentication methods. The default automatic SSL (AutoSSL) provided by cPanel is powered by Let's Encrypt. Additionally, WHM can also be used to manage FTP, Mail (POP, IMAP, and SMTP) and SSH services on the server. As well as being accessible by the root administrator, WHM is also accessible to users with reseller privileges. Reseller users of cPanel have a smaller set of features than the root user, generally limited by the server administrator, to features which they determine will affect their customers' accounts rather than the server as a whole. From root WHM, the server administrator can perform maintenance operations such as upgrading and recompiling Apache and PHP, installing Perl modules, and upgrading RPMs installed on the system. == Enkompass == A version of cPanel & WHM for Microsoft Windows, called Enkompass, was declared end-of-life as of February 2014. Version 3 remained available for download, but without further development or support. In the preceding years, Enkompass had been available for free as product development slowed. == Pricing == On June 27, 2019 cPanel announced a new account-based pricing structure. After backlash from their customers, cPanel issued a second announcement but did not change the new structure.
Semantic analytics
Semantic analytics, also termed semantic relatedness, is the use of ontologies to analyze content in web resources. This field of research combines text analytics and Semantic Web technologies like RDF. Semantic analytics measures the relatedness of different ontological concepts. Some academic research groups that have active project in this area include Kno.e.sis Center at Wright State University among others. == History == An important milestone in the beginning of semantic analytics occurred in 1996, although the historical progression of these algorithms is largely subjective. In his seminal study publication, Philip Resnik established that computers have the capacity to emulate human judgement. Spanning the publications of multiple journals, improvements to the accuracy of general semantic analytic computations all claimed to revolutionize the field. However, the lack of a standard terminology throughout the late 1990s was the cause of much miscommunication. This prompted Budanitsky & Hirst to standardize the subject in 2006 with a summary that also set a framework for modern spelling and grammar analysis. In the early days of semantic analytics, obtaining a large enough reliable knowledge bases was difficult. In 2006, Strube & Ponzetto demonstrated that Wikipedia could be used in semantic analytic calculations. The usage of a large knowledge base like Wikipedia allows for an increase in both the accuracy and applicability of semantic analytics. == Methods == Given the subjective nature of the field, different methods used in semantic analytics depend on the domain of application. No singular methods is considered correct, however one of the most generally effective and applicable method is explicit semantic analysis (ESA). ESA was developed by Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Shaul Markovitch in the late 2000s. It uses machine learning techniques to create a semantic interpreter, which extracts text fragments from articles into a sorted list. The fragments are sorted by how related they are to the surrounding text. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is another common method that does not use ontologies, only considering the text in the input space. == Applications == Entity linking Ontology building / knowledge base population Search and query tasks Natural language processing Spoken dialog systems (e.g., Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana) Artificial intelligence Knowledge management The application of semantic analysis methods generally streamlines organizational processes of any knowledge management system. Academic libraries often use a domain-specific application to create a more efficient organizational system. By classifying scientific publications using semantics and Wikipedia, researchers are helping people find resources faster. Search engines like Semantic Scholar provide organized access to millions of articles.
Cloud Native Computing Foundation
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a subsidiary of the Linux Foundation founded in 2015 to support cloud-native computing. == History == It was announced alongside Kubernetes 1.0, an open source container cluster manager, which was contributed to the Linux Foundation by Google as a seed technology. Founding members include Google, CoreOS, Mesosphere, Red Hat, Twitter, Huawei, Intel, RX-M, Cisco, IBM, Docker, Univa, and VMware. Today, CNCF is supported by over 450 members. In August 2018 Google announced that it was handing over operational control of Kubernetes to the community. == Projects == Argo is a collection of tools for getting work done with Kubernetes. Among its main features are Workflows and Events. It was accepted to CNCF on March 26, 2020 at the Incubating maturity level and then moved to the Graduated maturity level on December 6, 2022. cert-manager provisions and manages TLS certificates in Kubernetes. It was accepted to CNCF on November 10, 2020, moved to the Incubating maturity level on September 19, 2022, and then moved to the Graduated maturity level on September 29, 2024. Cilium provides networking, security, and observability for Kubernetes deployments using eBPF technology. It joined the CNCF at incubation level in October 2021 and the CNCF announced its graduation in October 2023. containerd is an industry-standard core container runtime. It is currently available as a daemon for Linux and Windows, which can manage the complete container lifecycle of its host system. In 2015, Docker donated the OCI Specification to The Linux Foundation with a reference implementation called runc. Since February 28, 2019 it is an official CNCF project. Its general availability and intention to donate the project to CNCF was announced by Docker in 2017. CoreDNS is a DNS server that chains plugins. Its graduation was announced in 2019. Dapr, the distributed application runtime, provides APIs for building secure and reliable microservices and agentic AI systems. Dapr was donated to the CNCF in November 2021 and joined at incubation level. The CNCF announced its graduation in November 2024. Envoy: Originally built at Lyft to move their architecture away from a monolith, Envoy is a high-performance open source edge and service proxy that makes the network transparent to applications. Lyft contributed Envoy to Cloud Native Computing Foundation in September 2017. etcd is a distributed key value store, providing a method of storing data across a cluster of machines. It became a CNCF incubating project in 2018 at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon North America in Seattle that year. Falco is an open source and cloud native runtime security initiative. It is the "de facto Kubernetes threat detection engine". It became an incubating project in January 2020 and graduated in February 2024. Flux is an open source project for powering GitOps in Kubernetes clusters. It provides the GitOps Toolkit, a set of Kubernetes APIs that allow you to define how configuration source code is securely pulled into your cluster and deployed by popular Kubernetes manifests rendering engines like Kustomize and Helm. The most recommended source mechanism is the OCIRepository API, which provides enhanced security and benefits from container image tooling out there. Flux has also notification integrations with popular services like Prometheus Alertmanager, PagerDuty, Slack and so on. Flux has graduated in CNCF in 2022. Harbor is an "open source trusted cloud native registry project that stores, signs, and scans content." It became an incubating project in September 2019 and graduated in June 2020. Helm is a package manager that helps developers "easily manage and deploy applications onto the Kubernetes cluster." It joined the incubating level in June 2018 and graduated in April 2020. Istio is a service mesh technology. It was accepted by CNCF in September 2022 and graduated on July 12, 2023. Jaeger, Created by Uber Engineering, Jaeger is an open source distributed tracing system inspired by Google Dapper paper and OpenZipkin community. It can be used for tracing microservice-based architectures, including distributed context propagation, distributed transaction monitoring, root cause analysis, service dependency analysis, and performance/latency optimization. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation Technical Oversight Committee voted to accept Jaeger as the 12th hosted project in September 2017 and became a graduated project in 2019. In 2020 it became an approved and fully integrated part of the CNCF ecosystem. Kubernetes is an open source framework for automating deployment and managing applications in a containerized and clustered environment. "It aims to provide better ways of managing related, distributed components across the varied infrastructure." It was originally designed by Google and donated to The Linux Foundation to form the Cloud Native Computing Foundation with Kubernetes as the seed technology. The "large and diverse" community supporting the project has made its staying power more robust than other, older technologies of the same ilk. In January 2020, the CNCF annual report showed significant growth in interest, training, event attendance and investment related to Kubernetes. Linkerd is CNCF's fifth member project, and the project that coined the term "service mesh". Linkerd adds observability, security, and reliability features to applications by adding them to the platform rather than the application layer, and features a "micro-proxy" to maximize speed and security of its data plane. Linkerd graduated from CNCF in July 2021. Open Policy Agent (OPA) is "an open source general-purpose policy engine and language for cloud infrastructure." It became a CNCF incubating project in April 2019. OPA graduated from CNCF in February 2021. Prometheus is a cloud monitoring tool sponsored by SoundCloud in early iterations. In August 2018, the tool was designated a graduated project by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It is now a Cloud Native Computing Foundation member project. Rook is CNCF's first cloud native storage project. It became an incubation level project in 2018 and graduated in October 2020. SPIFFE is an open standard and framework for workload identity, much the same way that OAuth is an open standard and framework for human identity. It is built from the ground up to accommodate modern computing environments, which operate with systems scale and velocity (as opposed to human scale and velocity), while still maintaining interoperability with existing technologies like OAuth and X.509 Public key infrastructure. Unlike other identity standards, SPIFFE supports multiple credential types for a single identity, ensuring that the highly varied needs of production environments are consistently met without compromise. SPIFFE joined the CNCF as a sandbox project in 2018, was accepted to incubation in 2020, and graduated in 2022. SPIRE is an open source identity provider for workloads based on the SPIFFE framework. It is highly pluggable, and fills the attestation and issuance needs required by any workload identity solution. The plugin interfaces it exposes allows users to write integrations with in-house systems, build internal self-service portals, and more. It is a very powerful building block for issuing short-lived identity credentials to dynamic cloud workloads. SPIRE became a CNCF Graduated project in 2022. The Update Framework (TUF) helps developers to secure new or existing software update systems, which are often found to be vulnerable to many known attacks. TUF addresses this widespread problem by providing a comprehensive, flexible security framework that developers can integrate with any software update system. TUF was CNCF's first security-focused project and the ninth project overall to graduate from the foundation's hosting program. TiKV provides a distributed key–value database. Vitess is a database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL, first created for internal use by YouTube. It became a CNCF project in 2018 and graduated in November 2019. Contour is a management server for Envoy that can direct the management of Kubernetes' traffic. Contour also provides routing features that are more advanced than Kubernetes' out-of-the-box Ingress specification. VMWare contributed the project to CNCF in July 2020. Cortex offers horizontally scalable, multi-tenant, long-term storage for Prometheus and works alongside Amazon DynamoDB, Google Bigtable, Cassandra, S3, GCS, and Microsoft Azure. It was introduced into the ecosystem incubator alongside Thanos in August 2020. CRI-O is an Open Container Initiative (OCI) based "implementation of Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface". CRI-O allows Kubernetes to be container runtime-agnostic. It became an incubating project in 2019. gRPC is a "modern open source high performance RPC framework that can run in any environment." The project was formed in 2015 when Google decided to open sou