Gellish English is a variant of Gellish and is a formal language, which means that it is structured and formalised subset of natural English that is computer interpretable. Its definition includes an English dictionary of concepts that is arranged in a taxonomy and that is extended into an ontology. From an information technology perspective Gellish English is a standard data model for information modelling and for knowledge representation. It is a data exchange language for the Semantic Web and can be used as a successor of electronic data interchange technologies. In principle, for every natural language there is a variant that is specific for that language. For example, Gellish Dutch (Gellish Nederlands), Gellish German (Gellish Deutsch), etc.

Gellish is intended for the expression of complete and unambiguous specifications of products, facilities and processes, suitable to specify, buy, fabricate, install, operate and maintain such objects and to exchange such information in a system independent and computer interpretable way or to integrate such data from different sources.

Gellish English has an object-relation-object (ORO) structure and therefore it includes a large number of standard relation types, which define a semantically rich expression capability. The Gellish English Dictionary is extended with a knowledge base with basic engineering knowledge. That knowledge base is itself expressed in Gellish English. The dictionary with definitions of the concepts in Gellish English can be used for various purposes. For example as standard terminology to harmonize data in various computer systems, for selection of classes for classification or as a basis for searching information with a search engine. The Gellish Dictionary also defines the standardrelation types that enable to create computer interpretable Gellish English expressions.

Gellish English is typically expressed in the form of Gellish Database tables. A Gellish Database table is a standard table that is suitable to represent any expression in the Gellish language. Its table columns are standardised. The tables can be used as a database or as an exchange file. A Gellish Database table can be implemented in any tabular format. For example, it can be implemented as as SQL database tables, as XML data stores, as STEPfiles (according to ISO 10303-21), or as one or more simple spreadsheet tables. Gellish English is defined in the Gellish English dictionary, also called STEPlib. The Gellish dictionary itself is also expressed as a Gellish Database table.

References

Gellish is further described in a SourceForge projecthttp://gellish.wiki.sourceforge.net/. The Gellish English dictionary and knowledge base and the definition of a Gellish Database table is free available under ?open source? conditions via http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=28353). For a definition of ?open source' see http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php).

• . A pdf version is available via http://www.library.tudelft.nl/ws/search/publications/search/metadata/index.htm?docname=306185