Knowledge Represention -- was: Re: [unrev-II] Is "bootstrapping" part of the problem?

From: Jack Park (jackpark@verticalnet.com)
Date: Tue Jan 09 2001 - 09:38:25 PST

  • Next message: Henry van Eyken: "Re: [unrev-II] Is "bootstrapping" part of the problem?"

    DAML (Darpa Agent Markup Language) really appears to speak to many of the
    issues I have raised here.
    "The goal of the DAML effort is to develop a language and tools to
    facilitate the concept of the semantic web. Dr. James Hendler is the DARPA
    Program Manager for the DAML initiative."

    James Hendler also lead a project called SHOE
    http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE/
    "SHOE is a small extension to HTML which allows web page authors to annotate
    their web documents with machine-readable knowledge. SHOE makes real
    intelligent agent software on the web possible."

    DAML appears to be moving in the direction of embracing OIL (Ontology
    Inference Layer) http://www.daml.org/2000/10/daml-oil
    "This page attempts to provide information concerning OIL- The Ontology
    Inference Layer - from the perspective of a reader interested in DAML and
    its evolution. There is an active discussion going on the www-rdf-logic
    mailing list concerning the evolution of the DAML ontology language and its
    relations to OIL, thus it may be useful to read some background information.

    OIL is a language built on a long history of research in description logics.
    Description Logic is a subfield of knowledge representation and as such aims
    to provide a vehicle for expressing structured information and for reasoning
    with the information in a principled manner. Description logics may be
    viewed as providing a formal foundation for frame-based systems,
    object-oriented representations, semantic data models, and type systems. OIL
    is an effort to produce a well defined language for integrating ontologies
    with web standards (in particular RDF/RDFS and XML/XMLS). It is a web-based
    representation and inference layer for ontologies using the constructs found
    in many frame languages and reasoning and formal semantics in description
    logics. "

    Description logics appear simply as so-called 'frame based systems', an
    outgrowth of Ronald Brachman's dissertation 'A Structural Paradigm for
    Representing Knowledge' and as actively pursued by Deborah McGuinness
    http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/

    And, OIL appears to be embracing RDF Schemas, which, themselves are now a
    topic of cooperative development between the the RDF folks and the XTM (XML
    Topic Maps) folks, as announced by Tim Berners-Lee at XML 2000, last
    December.

    I consider the entire DAML/OIL/RDF/XTM arena of great importance to the
    evolution of the OHS project. Add to that notions of Category Theory, C.S.
    Pierce, and perhaps thinking in the graph theoretic terms expressed by Cliff
    Joslyn, and you have the substrate of a knowledge representation system
    suitable for world-class projects, me thinks.

    This summer, Stanford University will host a pair of conferences, one on
    Description Logics, and one on Conceptual Graphs, a graph-theoretic approach
    to the implementation of C.S. Pierce's Existential Graphs, as originally
    implemented and documented by John F. Sowa. Interesting coincidence.

    Jack

    From: Joe D Willliams <altintdev@webtv.net>

    > Has anyone heard of this relatively new project?
    >
    > http://www.daml.org
    >
    > Best Regards,
    > Joe

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