kindlat

Kindlat is a term used in information science to describe a modular, language-agnostic framework for knowledge representation. The name is a portmanteau of kind and lattice, reflecting its aim to organize entities by type (kinds) and their interconnections in a structured network. The concept arose in late 2010s discussions of semantic interoperability and is often presented as a design space rather than a single standard.

Definition and scope: Kindlat provides a data model in which knowledge is captured as kind blocks that define entity types, attributes, and allowed relationships. Instances are records that reference a kind and carry provenance metadata. Relationships are explicit and labeled, enabling reasoning over heterogeneous data sources while preserving multilingual data.

Architecture and data model: The core idea is a layerable, modular graph with a core kind graph and optional extensions. Serialization commonly relies on JSON-LD or RDF-like structures to enable integration with existing knowledge graphs. Proponents emphasize multilingual support via aligned labels and localized attributes; provenance is tracked with versioning and lineage data.

Applications and use cases: Kindlat is discussed in contexts such as digital libraries, cultural heritage projects, enterprise knowledge bases, and AI training data pipelines, where structured cross-domain semantics and traceability are valuable.

Challenges and status: As a conceptual framework, Kindlat faces standardization challenges, tooling maturity, and performance considerations for large-scale deployments. Critics caution against over-fragmentation of standards and the risk of inconsistent interpretations of kinds across domains.

See also: Knowledge graph, Entity-relationship model, RDF, JSON-LD, Ontology.