The IODE™ is an integrated tool set for creating and managing ontologies – high-fidelity models of an application domain. This is the first commercially available tool designed to facilitate the production of ontologies specifically for managing large data volumes. The high fidelity models created in the IODE™ are compiled to Ontology Works’ Knowledge Server (OW KS™) products without loss of expressiveness. Our OW KS™ products include the OW eXtensible Knowledge Server (XKS), our enterprise-scale ontology-based deductive Database Management System (DBMS) for inference over complex ontologies and large datasets, giving proven knowledge discovery.

The Ontology Works IODE™ includes an upper level ontology that provides both ontological structure and data integrity constraints, enabling the user to quickly and efficiently produce rigorous and robust ontologies. Available optional ontology libraries include

1. An upper-level model of geographical regions which implements the Region Connection Calculus of Randall and Cohn. This model includes:
   • Classes of geographical regions including, for example, land masses, continents, mountains and water bodies;
   • Classes of geopolitical regions including countries, states, cities, provinces, counties and postal zones;
   • Relations among regions, including, for instance, connectedness, parthood, and location in;
   • Inference rules for reasoning about regions, parts of regions, connected regions, and the objects that can found in regions.
2. An upper-level temporal model which implements, in part, the Temporal Interval Calculus of J. F. Allen. This model includes:
   • Classes of temporal regions, including time points, time spans and dates, which can be specified with as much or as little precision as needed;
   • Temporal relations such as before and after, temporal containment, temporal intersection, cotemporality;
   • A “holds in” relation for temporally constraining assertion in the XKS.
3. An upper-level event model, including role relations such as agent, patient, participant, instrument and object, for relating event participants to the events in which they participate.
4. A naming and designation model which recognizes that various kinds of names, identifiers and other designators are used to refer to, among other things,
5. A model of measures which implements the National Institutes of Standards and Technology special publication 330.