this paper we focus on the solutions we are providing for the outer layer of the architecture. They are embedded into a domain independent COOrdination Lan3 guage (COOL) that provides services for defining distributed agent configurations, managing communication, defining and managing structured interactions amongst agents, external software integration and in context acquisition and debugging of coordination knowledge. As these solutions impact on the way agents manage change by information distribution and conflict resolution, we also address these aspects showing how the coordination service supports these tasks. The paper is structured as follows. In section 2 we review the work in Distributed Artificial Intelligence from several perspectives and define our research goals. As the subsequent presentation of our tools is carried out in the context of our main application, the agent-based integration of the supply chain of manufacturing enterprises, we continue in section 3 with presenting this application domain. Section 4 deals with the main subject of the paper, the components of the coordination language. We illustrate the language throughout with examples from the supply chain. Section 5 then deals with the coordination knowledge acquisition service that allows users to extend and debug coordination knowledge on-line. To show how the coordination system is integrated with other reasoning tasks in the Agent Building Shell, in section 6 we review two other services of the architecture that make use of the coordination framework, cooperative information distribution and cooperative conflict management. In the end, we discuss some related approaches and provide concluding remarks.

Abstract. Collaborative knowledge base (KB) authoring environments are critical for the construction of high-performance KBs. Such environments must support rapid construction of KBs by a collaborative e ort of teams of knowledge engineers through reuse of existing knowledge and software components. They should support the manipulation of knowledge by diverse problem-solving engines even if that knowledge is encoded in di erent languages and by di erent researchers. They should support large KBs and provide a scalable and interoperable development infrastructure. In this paper, we present anenvironment that satis es many of these goals. We present an architecture for scalable frame representation systems (FRSs). The Generic Frame Protocol (GFP) provides infrastructure for reuse of software components. It is a procedural interface to frame representation systems that provides a common means of accessing and modifying frame KBs. The Generic KB Editor (Gkb-Editor) provides graphical KB browsing, editing, and comprehension services for large KBs. Scalability of loading and saving time is provided by a storage system (PERK) which submerges a database management system in an FRS. Multi-user access is controlled through a collaboration subsystem that uses a novel optimistic concurrency control algorithm. All the results have been implemented and tested in the development of several real KBs.

ions and assumptions that will enable the agent to retrieve information that is relevant to a query. . Methods for appropriately combining and summarizing retrieved information. Building such brokers as ad hoc, monolithic applications will not scale, and the resulting brokers will not be able to interoperate with the new protocols and services being developed for the Internet. Technical Approach Our approach in this project is to enable the construction and maintenance of domain-specific information brokers by developing . Detailed specifications of a broker system architecture. . A broker shell that implements the broker architecture and contains implementations of all the architecture's domain-independent brokering facilities. . A domain and source modeling tool kit for developing and maintaining a broker's domainspecific expertise. . Two example brokers: a broker in the Electronic Commerce testbed being built in the CommerceNet project, and a broker in the pharmaceutical domain for...

We describe an interlingua-based methodology for translating encoded knowledge and present a formalism for declaratively specifying vocabulary translations within a predicate logic interlingua. In this paper we (1) use the formalism to provide a semantics for translation, (2) show that the formalism enables translation to be done as deduction by a standard theorem prover, (3) describe a proof technique for determining whether a given set of rules for translating from one vocabulary to another is sufficient for performing that translation for any theory, and (4) describe techniques for precompiling translation rules that translate directly between two given vocabularies. Motivation Acquiring and representing knowledge is the key to building powerful intelligent systems. Unfortunately, knowledge base construction is difficult and time consuming. The development of most systems requires a new knowledge base to be constructed from scratch. As a result, most systems remain small to medium ...

. The diversity of research and development work on agent technology has led to a strong distinction between mobile and intelligent agents. This paper presents an architecture aiming at providing a step towards the integration of these two aspects, concretely by providing an approach of dynamically embedding negotiation capabilities into mobile agents. In particular, the requirements for enabling automated negotiations including negotiation protocols and strategies, a plug-in component architecture for realizing such requirements on mobile agents, and the design of negotiation support building blocks as components of this architecture are presented. 1 Introduction In recent years, the development of agent technology has drawn particularly great attention of people working in very different fields of computer science such as distributed systems, artificial intelligence, system management and electronic commerce. This at a first glance quite surprising fact is essentially based on the ...

Finding, retrieving, and integrating information from geographically disparate data resources is a difficult problem that large organizations have faced for decades. In recent years, the size and variety of data networks have increased dramatically, and a host of new issues have been raised by the need to mine information from dynamic sources such as the World Wide Web, where information ...

: The problem statement and scope of SISYPHUS III does not draw attention to one of the major problems faced in knowledge engineering (KE), which is building systems based on multiple sources of expertise. In this circumstance, the KE task becomes a requirements engineering (RE) task. A problem with many RE approaches is that the cost of use is prohibitive, and therefore such approaches are rarely applied. We present an RE strategy designed to handle conflicting perspectives that is an extension to current KE techniques. We implement this approach in the context of formal concept analysis (FCA) and ripple-down-rules (RDR) and describe an instantiation using the SISYPHUS III data. Our evaluation technique shows that the resolution operators have reduced the degree of conflict between viewpoints. 1. Introduction The SISYPHUS III experiment offers an excellent example of the similarity between the needs of knowledge engineering (KE) using multiple sources of expertise and those of require...

An important issue in the newborn discipline of ontological engineering is the construction of libraries of ontologies which are designed for maximum reusability. Van Heijst et. al. suggested that a central part of ontology libraries is the definition of what they called a core ontology, containing elements that are as generic and method-independent as possible. However, their specification of how these core ontologies should be constructed is highly pragmatical, and leaves many problems unresolved. In this article we propose and discuss a number of specific principles for the construction of core ontologies. We demonstrate the advantages of these principles using as an example a core ontology we have built for the domain of law. Several conclusions about the construction of ontology libraries based on core ontologies are drawn. 1 Introduction An important issue in the newborn discipline of ontological engineering is the construction of libraries of ontologies which are desig...

The massive increase in information available via electronic networks is placing severe burdens on traditional methods of information sharing and retrieval. Matchmaking proposes an intelligent facilitation agent that accepts machine-readable requests and advertisements from information consumers and providers, and determines potential information sharing paths. Matchmaking permits large numbers of dynamic consumers and providers, operating on rapidly-changing data, to locate and share information effectively. This paper introduces matchmaking, as enabled by knowledge sharing standards like KQML, and gives a brief description of the the SHADE and COINS matchmakers. In addition, several applications are described to illustrate the utility of matchmaking for information retrieval. Introduction There has been a phenomenal explosion of information on electronic bitways such as corporate networks, the Internet, personal computer networks, and even television cable networks. This has led not...

The ontology of law that we present here is one `in between' a completely general top ontology and ontologies of legal domains. It adopts a functional perspective --- that is, the Law is analysed and interpreted through a functional point of view. We propose a number of primitive functions of legal sources and corresponding categories of legal knowledge: normative knowledge, world knowledge, responsibility knowledge, reactive knowledge, creative knowledge and meta-legal knowledge. Together, these functions realize the main function of the legal system: to regulate social behaviour. The