Dan Kuokka kuokka@pal.xerox.com

Fuji-xerox Palo Alto Research Lab

(ex Lockheed AI lab)

New problem: Integration over the Web.

Earlier experience in Integrating Industrial Information System.

<put Gunning slide on the CS446 web>

<A HREF="http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/gio/slides/I3.ps"> ARPA I3 slides</A>

<A HREF="http://www.isx/pub/I3">Medaitor projects</A>

Agents: Software module that help exchange semantically coherent information.

Perform actions on behalf of others. AI`ish definition: Possess goals and perform reasoning to achieve them. SW'ish definition: a super object. Work in communication with other agents, All these definitions can unify in practice.

KQML: a transport protocol for Querying and manipulating knowlwdge.

A KQML query specifies

1. a performative, that is an operation as ASK(=GET), TELL (=PUT), SUBSCRIBE, ADVERTISE, ... extensible <BR>

2.an ontology to partition the world of knowledge into terminological distinct domains (for Maintenance) i.e., tanks in the military, in gas stations, in cars, a refinery, ....3. the representation: objects (say per CORBA), rules (say per KIF), equations, database tuples, text (constrained or not by a domain ontology)...

Matchmaker speaks KQML to facilitate information transfer.

Expands simple communication to a brokered approach.

Benefits of matchmakers:

Locating unknown information sources

Locating consumers

Comparing sources

Enables having a flexible architecture.

Issues:

Expressiveness of advertisements and requests

Error recovery

Persistence of requests

Content-based routing

Consistency, efficiency, efficacy

Troubles due to

WWW for machine consumption.