DAML Tools forDAML Tools forIntelligent Information Intelligent Information

Annotation, Sharing and Annotation, Sharing and RetrievalRetrieval

UMBCJohns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab

MIT Sloan School

July 19, 2001

UMBC/JHU/MIT TeamUMBC, JHU/APL, and MIT/Sloan are working together on a set of issues

UMBCIntegrating communicating agents, DAML and web applications

Tim Finin, Charles Nicholas, Yun Peng, Anupam Joshi, Scott Cost

JHU APLDAML and information retrieval

Jim Mayfield, Paul McNamee, Wayne Bethea

MIT Sloan SchoolDAML, rules based technology and distributed belief

Benjamin Grosof

To be integrated in agent-based applications involving search and using rule-based reasoning.

DEMODEMO

DEMODEMO

UMBCWHAT'S HOT?

• ITTALKS as a useful DAML-based application–Automatic classification of talks and

users wrt DAML topic ontologies; multiple topic ontologies, with manual and mapping between them.

–Agents get DAML talk notifications and make entries on a user’s calendar if it matches interests, location and schedule.

–Agents use DAML as ACL and incorporate a DAML reasoning engine (XSB, YAJXB, RDF API)

–A DAML distributed trust model including permissions, obligations, authorization and delegation.

•DAMLized Jini registration service•DAMLized Bluetooth service discovery protocol

CHALLENGES!

•Need for a range of DAML reasoning engines– Offering varying degrees of services

and completeness– Implementations in Java?

•Full DAML may be too large for some interesting applications– e.g., using in Jini for light-weight

devices– e.g., use in Bluetooth service

discovery protocol

•Lack of DAML rules– Required for distributed trust

policies.

JHU WHAT'S HOT?

Search on DAML, text, or both•Normalized DAML tags are used as indexing terms. Queries may include DAML, text, or both.

•Automated relevance feedback adds related words and DAML tags to the user's query. System finds DAML tags or words most closely related to a given word, phrase, or DAML tag.

Ontology mapping•Given a node in an ontology, system finds other DAML tags and words that characterize it, then finds other ontology nodes that have similar characterizations.

•Provides a simple ontology mapping capability.

CHALLENGES!

DAML quantity•There is still not very much DAML on the Web

DAML quality•Monolithic files: many DAML statements are concentrated in a few large files

•Structured database nature: many DAML tags always co-occur with exactly the same set of tags, making it difficult to distinguish the tags statistically

•Is DAML markup?: much DAML has very few accompanying words

MIT SloanWHAT'S HOT?

Webizing and extending logic programs• Web-powerful: URI's for: relations, functions,

rulesets, reasoning• Web-friendly syntax: exploit/support both

XML and RDF, use namespaces• Ontologies: basic connection: link ontologies

for rules, and vice versa• Object-oriented: basic features: subclass ...

with exceptions; member roles • Infrastructure for inter-site communication of

premises and conclusions (+justifications)– inferencing as a web service, with ...– translation among rule languages– merging web-named/accessible rulesets

with prioritized conflict handling– hybrid reasoning algorithms & semantics

• Applications: describe contracts and web services as rulesets and decide to buy/choose or sell via inferencing about the deal

CHALLENGES!

• Heterogeneity of commercial rule languages, yet need deep common semantics

– potential de facto standards jockeying by vendors

• Multiplicity of protocols for procedural invocation:

– CGI, SOAP, RMI, CORBA, ...

• Unordered (RDF) vs. ordered (XML) graph semantics for Webized syntax

• Little theory available for tight composition of Rules plus Description Logic -- yet want deep combined knowledge representation semantics

• Current gulf to databases/XMLQuery; sociologically + technically unconnected

Papers1. X. Luan, Y. Peng, and T. Finin, Agent Consumer Reports: of the Agents, by the Agents, and for

the Agents, 2nd Asia-Pacific Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, Maebashi City, Japan, Oct, 2001.

2. T. Finin, A. Joshi, L. Kagal, O. Ratsimore, V. Korolev, and H. Chen, Information Agents for Mobile and Embedded Devices, 5th Int. Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, Sept. 6-8, 2001 Modena, Italy.

3. L. Kagal, T. Finin, and Y. Peng, A Framework for Distributed Trust, Workshop on Autonomy, Delegation, and Control: Interacting with Autonomous Agents, IJCAI-2001, Seattle, Aug. 2001.

4. R. S. Cost, T. Finin, A. Joshi, Y. Peng, F. Perich, C. Nicholas, H. Chen, L. Kagal, Y. Zou, and S. Tolia, ITTALKS: A Case Student in how the Semantic Web Helps, Semantic Web Workshop, July 2001, Stanford.

5. F. Perich, R.S. Cost, T. Finin, A. Joshi, Y. Peng, C. Nicholas, H. Chen, L. Kagal, Y. Zou, and S. Tolia, ITTALKS: An Application of Agents in the Semantic Web, Workshop on Engineering Societies in the Agents' World, 7 July 2001, Prague.

6. S. Avancha, A. Joshi and T. Finin, Enhancing Bluetooth Service Discovery Protocol, Report TR-CS-01-08, CSEE, UMBC, June 2001.

7. L. Kagal, Scott Cost, H. Chen, T. Finin, Yun Peng, An Infrastructure for Distributed Trust Management, Workshop on Norms and Institutions in Multiagent Systems, Autonomous Agents 2001, Montreal, May 2001.