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.