XML Semantics DARPA Agent Markup Language DAML

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XML Semantics DARPA Agent Markup Language
(DAML)

• William Holmes, Dr. Paul Kogut
• Management Data Systems
• Valley Forge, PA
• June 4, 2001

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Roadmap

• The Semantic Web
• Agents Ontologies
• Object Management Group (OMG) Initiatives
• The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML)
• What is it?
• How does it fit in? / What is its role?
• LM MDS UML-based Ontology Toolset (UBOT)
• Ontology Design Consistency Checking
• Automated Annotation via AeroTextTM

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Semantic Web The Vision
Hi Pete, its Lucy. Im at the doctors office.
Mom needs to see a specialist and then has to
have a series of physical therapy
sessions. Biweekly or something. Can you split
the chauffeuring with me?
Great! Ill have my agent set up the
appointments.
Hello?
Sure Lucy.
RING RING ...
Berners-Lee, Hendler, Lassila The Semantic
Web Scientific American, May 2001
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The Vision
Lucys agent looks up several lists of providers
and checks for ones in-plan for Moms insurance,
within a 20-mile radius of her home, and with a
rating of excellent or very good.
Schedule a treatment plan for Mom using Pete and
my schedules. Only use providers that are
in-plan for Moms insurance, are within a 20-mile
radius, and have a rating of excellent or very
good.
Lucys agent formulates a schedule of
appointments for therapists with appointments
available that fit into Pete and Lucys
schedule.
Lucys agent retrieves information about Moms
prescribed treatment from the doctors agent.
Semantic Web
Berners-Lee, Hendler, Lassila The Semantic
Web Scientific American, May 2001
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Thats Great but How?

• Need Agents
• Definition (Merriam-Webster)
• one who is authorized to act for or in the place
  of another as a business representative
• Provide a means of processing the volumes of
  information found on the web.
• Need Ontologies
• Definition
• Philosophy - A theory about the nature of
  existence.
• A.I. - A formal definition of relations among
  terms.
• Provide a semantic grounding for the web.

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What are Agents?

• In software, Agent is used in many different
  ways
• persistent process/daemon
• mobile code
• autonomous robots
• intelligent agent - what makes it intelligent?
• simple definitions that capture the essence of
  agents
• an Object that decides when to say go and when to
  say no - OMG
• programs that operate at a high enough semantic
  level that they can form new connections to other
  programs in order to get a job done Burstein,
  McDermott

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Why Agents?

• Agents are the next generation of middleware
• built on top of existing middleware (e.g., CORBA,
  EJB, Jini)
• run-time integration via dynamic discovery and
  resource negotiation
• emphasis on broker and facilitator agents (e.g.
  yellow pages)
• Agents are the next generation user interface
• more complex applications require personal
  assistant agents
• multi-modal interfaces e.g. speech, handwriting,
  gestures
• user specifies goals and agent handles details
  according to user preferences

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Why Agents? (Cont.)

• Agents are the next level of component
  abstraction
• agents are components with attitudes
• beliefs, desires, goals
• agents interact like humans via speech acts
• request, inform, promise
• agents share a context for efficient
  communication
• domain model ontologies are used at run-time
• ontology agent/services - query, retrieve and
  translate ontologies

Labrou, Finin, Peng Agent Communication
LanguagesThe Current Landscape IEEE Intelligent
Systems March/April 1999
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Examples of Agent Applications

• personal assistant - digital secretary
• travel arrangements
• meeting schedule coordination
• personalized information filtering
• mobile computing
• internet/intranet information retrieval/summarizat
  ion
• electronic commerce
• enterprise workflow - e.g., sales, order
  processing, shipping
• military command and control
• synthetic characters (e.g., Extempo Systems,
  Virtual Personalities)
• robots - manufacturing, office, domestic
• design and engineering

see Hendler Is There An Intelligent Agent in
Your Future? http//helix.nature.com/webmatters/
agents/agents.html
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Ontologies

• Machine readable semantic specifications.
• Include terms, relations, and inference rules
• What does capital mean?
• Seat of government (Tallahassee, Harrisburg,
  Austin)
• An upper-case letter
• monies, securities, investments, etc
• the top of a column or pillar.
• XML is Not Enough!!!
• Allows definition of syntax, but not semantics
  (meaning)
• Can be considered the Assembly Language of the
  Web.

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OMG Initiatives

• OMG Agent Platform Special Interest Group (SIG)
• extend the OMG Object Management Architecture
  (OMA) to better support agent technology
• identify and recommend new OMG specifications in
  the agent area
• recommend agent-related extensions to existing
  and emerging OMG specifications
• promote standard agent modeling techniques
• see http//www.objs.com/agent/index.html
• OMG Ontology Working Group
• Align the domain modeling activities of OMG with
  the Semantic Web initiative of the World Wide Web
  Consortium and with related ontology development
  projects such as DARPA DAML and IEEE SUO
  (Standard Upper Ontology).

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DARPA Agent Markup Language

• Machine-Readable Ontologies Annotation (markup)
• Aimed at Resources, Not just web-pages
• Sensors
• Services
• Appliances
• Lots of industry Buzz
• Scientific American
• IEEE Distributed Systems
• New York Times
• ZDNet

See http//www.daml.org/inthenews.html
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DAML Basic Idea
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DAML Annotation Extreme Metadata
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DAML Program

• Main DAML website www.daml.org
• Duration August 2000 to Fall 2002
• Approach
• MIT W3C semantic web activity
• http//www.w3c.org/2001/sw/
• The semantic Web and its languages in IEEE
  Intelligent Systems, November/December 2000,
  pages 67-73 available at http//www.ksl.Stanford.E
  DU/projects/DAML/
• Extend XML/RDF
• represent ontologies
• annotate web pages and other information with
  links to ontologies

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DAML Program (Cont.)

• 17 research teams and 1 integration team
• industry, academia and World Wide Web Consortium
• expertise in AI knowledge representation, logic
  and web technologies
• cooperation with European Union IST Program
• www.daml.org/committee/
• DAML language definition
• Ontology Definition
• Rules Definition

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DAML Program (Cont.)

• DAML tools
• ontology development and verification
• web page annotation
• dynamic composition of agent services
• distributed query processing and inference
• ontology translation
• DAML trial applications
• Government Intelink, Center for Army Lessons
  Learned
• Commercial e-commerce, information retrieval

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The Origins of DAML

• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• provides syntactic interoperability
• depends on implicit semantic agreements
• Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• designed to represent metadata for web resources
  in an XML syntax
• triples
• RDF Schema (RDFS)
• adds OO concepts class and subclass

ltshoeGenGovermentOrganization rdfID"DARPA/gt lts
hoeGenOrganizationHomePage rdfabout"http//www.
darpa.mil/"gt ltshoeProjauthorOrg
rdfresource"DARPA" /gt lt/shoeGenOrganizationHom
ePagegt
For more information see www.w3.org
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Status of DAML

• DAMLOil (ontology)
• released January 2001 - latest revision March
  2001
• language specifications and documentation
• http//www.daml.org/2001/03/damloil-index.html
• design rationale
• http//www.cs.man.ac.uk/horrocks/Slides/index.htm
  l
• DAML-L (logic)
• rule representation and reasoning
• development in progress

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UML-Based Ontology Toolset (UBOT)

• We are applying
• graphical modeling and formal verification
  techniques from software engineering
• text extraction from natural language processing
• lexical semantic resources from cognitive science
• to build a tool-set that supports
• creation, extension and consistency checking of
  DAML ontologies
• DAML annotation of information resources for
  agents
• intended for users who have minimal training in
  knowledge representation and agent theory
• see http//ubot.lockheedmartin.com/

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UBOT Team

• Lockheed Martin Management Data Systems
• architecture, development and integration
• Versatile Information Systems (Northeastern
  University)
• formal verification of UML
• Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center
• field test of DAML and UBOT
• Kestrel Institute
• automated formal methods

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UBOT Architecture Ontology Engineering
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UBOT Architecture Annotation
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UBOT Architecture COTS Components

• UML GUI
• Tau UML Suite (Telelogic)
• Specware (Kestrel Institute)
• supports ontology consistency checking via formal
  methods
• SNARK theorem prover (SRI)
• Text Extraction
• AeroText (LM MDS)
• extracts entities (e.g. people, organizations,
  etc.) from natural language
• recognizes relationships between entities (e.g.
  organization hired person )
• developed for the U.S. Intelligence Community
• 12 years experience with sophisticated linguistic
  processing
• many fielded applications

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UML GUI Tau UML Suite
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Text Extraction AeroText
Document Window
Extraction Display
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Automatic Annotation AeroDAML
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Questions?