CABS-colloquium 2002


Spreker:
Chris van Aart
Acklin, Breda/ SWI, Amsterdam


Datum/Tijd
vrijdag  8 maart 2002,  15.30 uur

Plaats:
TU-Delft
zaal 09090 ITS gebouw,
Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft

ABSTRACT

A lot of effort is put into creating web services in various domains.
However, al lot of these services tend to be "static". They are available,
but it is not possible to modify the underlying system,
nor to configure it for other domains, nor to integrate different 
services to produce new functionalities.
In the IBROW project (Intelligent Brokering On the Web,
http://www.swi.psy.uva.nl/projects/ibrow) we look at
offering a brokering service for knowledge intensive components,
instead of information transforming services.
A type of knowledge intensive components is problem-solving methods.
Problem-solving methods (PSMs) for knowledge-based systems (KBSs)
decompose the reasoning task for a KBS in a number of subtasks and inference
actions that are connected to knowledge roles .
PSMs are used to describe the reasoning part of KBSs, which makes PSMs a
special type of software architectures.
Several PSM libraries are now available. This gives the possibility 
for the Web to change the nature of using software from a 
centralistic compositional approach to a distributed plug and play 
process.
This requires a new way of managing available software components by
intelligent software brokers.

The goal of the IBROW project is to develop such a range of services, which
enables automatic and semiautomatic reuse of PSMs through the web.
For this a brokering service has been set up that can configure dedicated
applications based on a goal given by a user,
by selecting, combining and adapting PSMs from different online libraries.
A configuration and execution environment has been developed that executes
the configuration
and that takes care of dataflow from and to users.
These two environments are integrated into an architecture based on agent
technology, which enables collaboration between the various actors and services
involved.

The idea is that agents represent repositories of PSMs, brokering services
and services for end-users.
Using the technology stack provided by the agent community for handling agent
communication, management and discovery.
These agents collaborate by means of content ontologies that can be developed
using an ontology language and tools.
Here an (content) ontology is seen as a shared and common understanding of
some domain that can be communicated across software agents.

In this presentation we outline the main features of the approach we have
taken to enable brokering of intelligent components.
In particular we discuss an agent architecture that represents the services
that work with PSMs.
Furthermore, one agent message content ontology is discussed that enables
collaboration between PSMs represented by agents.