Enabling Technologies for

Knowledge-Based E-Business
Presented by: Thomas L. Adams, PhD
Mathematics & Computing Technology
Phantom Works
The Boeing Company
May 21, 2001

Briefing Outline
Trends in Cyberspace and Electronic Business
Technical Advances Impacting E-Business
Knowledge Representation in E-Business (Ontologies)

What is an Ontology?
Why Do We Need Ontologies?
Technical Issues in Using Ontologies
Ontologies for the Web (Semantic Web)
Ontology Standards
Ontology Projects at Boeing

Multi-Agent Systems in E-Business (Autonomy, Interactivity)

Overview of the Multi-Agent Systems Paradigm

The Role of Agents in Electronic Business
Agent Standards
Agent Projects at Boeing

Evolution of Cyberspace
HTML
Revolution
Shared Information
Space
Document Retrieval
Human Information
Processing

XML
Revolution
Culture of Open
Exchange
Dynamic Content Management
Business Service
Registries

Semantic
Web
Information and
Process Integration
Heterogeneous Information
Sources
Ad Hoc Query Answering
Integrated Knowledge
Management
and
Business Problem Solving

Relationships in the Digital Economy

Customers
Assemblers

Distributors
Enterprise

Strategic
Partners

Service
Providers
Suppliers

Adapted from: Ontologies and Taxonomies: A Managers View, Joseph Williamson

Trends in Electronic Business

Ever Changing Relationships With Business Partners and Suppliers
Integration of Disparate Information Into a Meaningful Whole
Alliances and Shared Technology Investments
Virtual Enterprises

Ever Changing Market

Adapt to Changes in Available Resources
Adapt to Changes in Consumer Requirements

Incompleteness and Ambiguity of Real Business Processes

Intelligent Process Automation
Cross-Cultural Interoperability

New Kinds of Services and Interactions

Between Suppliers and Vendors

Dynamic Generation of Supply Chain Links

Automatic Negotiations
Coalition Forming
Online Configuration of Products

Technical Advances Impacting

Electronic Commerce
High Performance Knowledge Bases
Intelligent Nodes
Local Inferencing and Knowledge Processing

Knowledge Representation
Highly Expressive Ontologies
Declarative Semantics

Multi-Agent Systems
Distributed Problem-Solving
Business Process Integration

Semantic Web
XML, XML Schema
RDF, RDF Schema
Topic Maps

Ontologies and Agents for Web-Based

Electronic Commerce
Ontologies Provide Knowledge Schema
Enable machine-understandable/processable semantics of data
Empowers completely new kinds of automated services

Software Agents Provide Problem-Solving Methods

(Specialized Reasoning Services)

Search for Products

Form Buyer and Seller Coalitions
Negotiate about Products
Automatically Configure Products and Services According to
Specified User Requirements

Kinds of Ontologies
ad hoc
Hierarchies
(Yahoo!)
Terms

XML
Schema

structured
Glossaries
Thesauri

ordinary
Glossaries
Data
Dictionaries
(EDI)

DB
Schema

Principled,
informal
hierarchies
XML DTDs

formal
Taxonomies

Description
Logics
(OIL)

Data Models
(UML, STEP)
Frames
(OKBC)

General
Logic

Multi-dimensional continuum:
Increasing formality, amount of meaning specified, support for reasoning
Decreasing potential for amgibuity

Evaluation Framework for Comparing Ontologies

Evaluation framew ork
Knowledge
Representation

Inference
M echanism s

Classes

M etaclasses
Slots/Attributes
Facets

Exceptions
Automatic classifications

Taxonomies

Inheritance
M onotonic, Non monotonic
Simple, M ultiple

Procedures

Execution of Procedures

Relations/Functions
Instances / Individuals / Facts
Axioms

Production Rules

Constraint Checking

Reasoning with rules

Backward chaining
Forward Chaining

Source: Evaluating Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Capabilities of Ontology Specification Languages,
Oscar Corho and Asuncion Gomez-Perez

Why Do We Need Ontologies?

Shared Domain Conceptualization
Objects in the Domain
Behaviors and Plans

Basis for Planning Activities

Representation of Goals and Plans
Characterization of Resources and Services

Basis for Information Sharing

Modes of Interaction (Query, Publish, etc)
Message Content

Basis for Business Interactions

Protocols for Joint Activities
Negotiation Strategies

Technical Issues in Using Ontologies

Expressivity versus Computational Complexity
Rich Vocabulary of Epistemological Primitives => Higher Levels of
Interoperability
Concept Hierarchies Sufficient for Concept-Based Information Search
Business Rules and Axioms Required for Process Integration

Translation Among Independently Developed Ontologies

Merging of Ontologies
Partial Understanding

Translation Between Human Mental Models and Formal

Ontologies
Lack of Precision of Natural Language
Support for Personalized Views of Concepts and Information

Challenges for Users in Using Available

Ontological Information
Standards are still forming
Most vocabulary information needs to be
augmented
Extend UN/SPSC to have more depth in certain areas

Complete tool suites are still in development

Ontology Building
Maintenance
Validation and Verification
Merging
Evolution

Semantic Web Activity at the W3C

Source: http://www.w3c.org

Languages of the Semantic Web

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Topic Maps (XTM)
Ontology Interface Layer (OIL)
DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML)

Ontology Languages
Enriched First-Order Predicate Calculus
CyC
KIF

Frame-Based Languages
Ontolingua
Frame Logic

Description Logics
Classic
OIL

What is Cyc?
Highly Expressive Knowledge Representation Language (CycL)
High Performance Inference Engine
Multiple Inference Strategies (about 30 currently)
Specification at Epistemological Level (EL)
Execution at the Heuristic Level (HL) based on syntactic
categories
Supports Default Reasoning (Arguments for and Against)
Knowledge is partitioned into microtheories
Very Large Repository of Common Sense Knowledge
Developers Toolkit
Ask, Assert, Create, Explanation
Concept Descripitons/Hierarchies
Java API (interaction with non-Cyc system elements
KE Text (batch processing of knowledge; testing)

Sources of Ontology Standards

Standardizing Knowledge Representation/Agents on the Web
World Wide Web Consortium
Resource Description Framework (RDF)
Semantic Web Initiative

DARPA Agent Mark-Up Language (DAML) Program

DAML-ONT
DAML-Logic

Draft ANSI standard Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF)

Mapping terms between domain specific models

IEEE Standard Upper Ontology (SUP)

Defining Ontology Related Services

FIPA Ontology Special Interest Group
Open Knowledge Base Connectivity (OKBC)

European-Funded Semantic Web Projects

On-To-Knowledge (Access to Static Information Sources)
IBROW (Dynamic Reasoning Services)

Types of Ontology Standards

Large Horizontal Cover
Cover all possible product areas
Examples
Universal Standard Products and Services code (UN/SPC)
Defines a concept hierarchy to classify all products

UCEC
Defines attributes to describe products

Large Vertical Cover

Focus on a certain domain
Provide much more detailed descriptions
Examples
RosettaNet
describes the products of the hardware and software industries in
detail

Ontology Research at Boeing

Boeing Thesaurus
Noun-Compound Analysis System (NCAS) Concept
Analyzer
Information Integration and Access
Semantic Integration of Heterogeneous Information Sources

Collaborative Information Retrieval

with U of Wash, Microsoft, Center for Human-Machine Interaction
(Denmark)

Extended Enterprise Consortium for Integrated Collaborative

Manufacturing Systems Supply Chain Project
Business Rules for E-Commerce
IBM-Led Consortium
Boeing as Customer

The Boeing Thesaurus/Ontology

From Boeing Technical Libraries
Used for classifying library documents
Rich in aerospace & Boeing-specific concepts
Massive knowledge repository!
35,061 concepts
17,832 synonyms
157,407 relationships (3 types)

Many person-years investment of effort

A (tiny) fragment of the

ontology...
ignition
Pneumatic
equipment

Turbojet
engines

lift

thrust

starting

Propulsion
systems

engines
Engine
starters
Flame
propagation

Jet
engines
flameout

Flame
stability
Combustion
stability

Ramjet
engines

Hydrogen
fuels

combustion
afterburning
Burning
rate

Jet spray

spray

Uses of NCAS
Allow users to construct rather than select
concepts
Handle concepts not in the original Thesaurus

Process the Thesaurus itself, refining related

related to
to links
Space
Current:
Space Station
With NCAS: Space Station

located in

Space

- creation of a knowledge-base from the Thesaurus

Processing of noun phrases in text documents

automatic concept-based indexing of text resources

Information Access
tube placement
User
Agent

Metadata/
Ontology
Agent

User
Agent

Information
Broker
Agent

Information
Broker
Agent

Information
Service
Agent

Information
Service
Agent

Information
Service
Agent

Web pages

Databases

Experts

Metadata/
Ontology
Agent

Information
Service
Agent

Documents

...

Business Rules for E-Commerce

Goals
High Level of Conceptual Abstraction; easier
understanding and specification by non-programmers
Automatic Execution; Matchmaking of Buyers with
Sellers
Rule-Based Business Processes for Both B2B and B2C
Represent Business Processes (sales help; customer help;
procurement; authorization; brokering; workflow)
Represent Buyers Requests, Interests, Bids
Represent Sellers Offerings (products and services,
capabilities, bids; map offerings from multiple sellers to
common catalog

Source: EECOMS Project Briefing, Benjamin Grosof

Collaborative Information Retrieval

NSF Sponsored Collaboration (Boeing, Microsoft,
University off Washington, Center for HumanMachine Interaction)
Social Aspects of Information Retrieval in a
Variety of Workplace Settings
Collectively Resolve Information Problem
Undertaken by a Work Team
2 or more members follow a path together
Team members use different paths, in parallel or
sequentially
Team members guided by other team members

Ontologies for eBusiness

Conclusions
Knowledge Sharing is a Prerequisite for Business Process
Interoperability
Common Domain Conceptualization
Intelligent Access and Execution of Business Services

Ontologies Describe the Core Concepts and Their

Interrelationships
Specialized Knowledge Representations May be Used
Internally (e.g., for efficiency)
Ontologies Permit Translation Between Internal and External
Knowledge Representations
Ontologies May Be Built Incrementally
Start with Taxonomies; Concept-Based Search
Add Expressiveness and Knowledge Processing Capability

Multi-Agent Systems Technology in

Electronic Business
Overview of the Multi-Agent System
Paradigm
The Role of Agents in Electronic Business
Standards for Agent-Based Systems
Agent Applications and Research at Boeing

Evolving Computing Environment

PAST

FUTURE (?)

PRESENT
Clients

MAINFRAME
SOFTWARE
DATA
PROCEDURES

C
C
C

MAINFRAME
SOFTWARE
DATA
PROCEDURES

C
C
C

Server
Software
Object
Software
Object

Server
Software
Object
Software
Object

Server
Data
Object
Server
Data
Object
Server
Data
Object
Server
Data
Object

- Dumb Terminals
- Rigid Mainframe Applications
- Hard-Wired Connections

Procedural Software

Client-Server Architecture
- User Workstations (Clients)
- Application & Data Servers
- Programmed Connectivity

Object-Oriented Software

- Modular Software Objects

- Single Monolithic Program
- Open Interfaces & Protocols
- Closed System
- Unmaintainable Spaghetti Code - Adaptable by Programmer
(adapted from Gunning, DARPA)

A
A
A

A
A

Centralized Architecture

A A
A

Server
Data
Service

A
A

Server
Data
Service
Server
Data
Service
Server
Data
Service

Agent Services
- Taskable User Agents
- Composable Network Services
- Dynamically Brokered Interaction

Agent-Based Software
- Autonomous Software Agents
- Dynamic Coordination Protocols
- Self-Organizing & Adapting

Key Agent Characteristics

Agents act autonomously to
accomplish objectives.
Goal-Directed
Knowledgeable
Persistent
Proactive & Reactive

Autonomous

Agents cooperate to
achieve common goals.
Communication Protocols
Knowledge-Sharing
Coordination Strategies
Negotiation Protocols

Agents adapt to their

environment.
Dynamic Interaction
Alternate Methods
Machine Learning

Adaptive

Cooperative

Mobile:
Agents can either be static or mobile, depending on
bandwidth requirements, data vs. program size,
communication latency, and network stability

Spectrum of Object and Agent Properties

Social Agents
Capable of sophisticated coordination
Joint intentions, runtime team formation
Reasoning about other agents
Intentional Agents
Speech-act-based messaging
Formulate plans in pursuit of own agenda
Reflective reasoning
Learning Agents
Persistent state across invocations
Malleable, adaptive behavior based on pattern recognition
and reinforcement learning
Reactive Agents/Actors
Each agent has its own thread of control
Asynchronous messaging, not direct invocation
Responds reactively to events and messages
Distributed Objects
Invocation across process boundaries
Separation between interface and implementation typical
Objects
Components that can be specialized incrementally
Encapsulation and inheritance
Selective reuse of structure and behavior
Components
Pluggable entities with self-contained data and behavior
Encapsulation but no inheritance
Reuse of structure and behavior

Note: The upper

layers are not
necessarily
ordered
hierarchically as
shown

Cooperativity: Alternative Approaches

Knowledge-Sharing
Agents share knowledge about
capabilities and requests.
Agent matchmakers and brokers
dynamically match requests to
capabilities.
System dynamically adjusts as
capabilities are added to and
removed from the environment.

Market-Driven Economy

Self-interested agents pursue

personal profit.
Behavior is driven by the cost of
resources.
Agents are controlled by
specifying market rules, rewards
and penalties.

(adapted from Gunning, DARPA)

Team Coordination
Agents share knowledge about
goals, plans, tasks & subtasks,
commitments and performance.
Teams cooperative through
partially synchronized actions to
accomplish individual subtasks and
common goals (joint intentions).

Evolutionary Systems

Agents populations evolve over

time through reproduction,
mutation and natural selection.
Agents are controlled by
specifying selection criteria and
reproduction process.

KAoS Extension and Generic Agent

Agent Extension
Specific to
Particular
Agents
Common to
All Agents

Optional
Planner

Various
Capabilities

Conversation
Transport-Level
Support
Security Communication
Generic Agent

Agent-to-Agent Communication Within

an Agent Domain
Agent Domain

Generic
Agent
Instance
Agent A

Agent B
Agent-toAgent
Protocol

Generic
Agent
Instance

Why Agents Are Useful in eBusiness

Autonomy
Business Units Have Different Goals, Preferences, and Resources
Goal-Directed Planning
Situation Monitoring/Rapid Response to Changing Conditions and Markets

Heterogeneity
Size (SME/Fortune 500)
Role (Buyer, Partner, Supplier)
National Differences (Culture, Legal Restrictions)

Dynamic Relationships
Rapid Formation/Dissolution of Business Relationships
Real-Time Negotiation of Contracts/Changes
Accommodate Cultural Differences in Styles of Interaction

Integration of Knowledge Management and Business Process Execution

Nonlinear Information Flows

Business Processes Adapt to Perceptions of Environment
Design for Manufacturability
Quality Management/Improvement

The Role of Intelligent Business

Agents in Electronic Commerce
Natural Merging of Object Orientation and KnowledgeBased Technologies
Rich and Expressive Models of an Enterprise
Incorporate Reasoning Capabilities Within the Business
Application Logic
Inclusion of Learning and Self-Improvement Capabilities
Use Interaction Protocols and Organizational Knowledge
to Engage in Task-Oriented Business Dialogues

Structure of a Typical Business Agent

PROCUREMENT AGENT
Ontology

Information
Brokering Agent

Resource
Descriptions

Local
Knowledge
Base

Negotiation
Agent

Planning
Agent

Scheduling
Agent

Integration
Agent

Translation
Agent

Adapted From: The Role of Agent Technology in Business to Business Electronic Commerce, Mike P. Papazoglou

Example of Negotiation in a Multi-Agent Business Web

A

5,7,10

1
B
3

1,12,14

1,6,9
8,11,13

D
2

1. REQUEST: 50 Widgets at Catalog Price by Next Thursday

2. QUESTION: Are You Bidding on As RFQ
3. INFORM: Yes, I Am.
4. REFUSE
5. PROPOSE (INFORM & REQUEST): How About 40 Widgets at Catalog Price by Next Friday?
6. REQUEST :Please Send Me 40 Widgets at Catalog Price by Next Friday.
7. COMMIT: I Plan to Send You 40 Widgets at Catalog Price by Next Friday.
8. COMMIT: I Plan to Send You 50 Widgets at Catalog Price by Next Thursday.
9. ASSERT: I Found a Better Supplier, and Am Not Relying on Your Commit.
10. REFUSE: I Am Abandoning My Commit.
11. SHIP: Here Are Your Widgets. Please Pay Me.
12. ASSERT & REQUEST: You Are 5 Widgets Short. Please Send the Difference.
13. SHIP: Her are 5 More Widget. Please Pay Me.
14. Pay.
Adapted from Specifying Agent Interactions Using UML, James Odell

Agent Standards
Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA)
Non-profit organization aimed at producing standards for the
interoperation of heterogeneous software agents
Main industry locus of action since 1996 for intelligent agents
knowledge-interchange standards work

Object Management Group (OMG)

Formed in 1989 to create a component-based software
marketplace by hastening introduction of standardized object
software
Standard interfaces for distributed object computing
Common Object Request Broker (CORBA)/ Internet Inter-ORB
Protocol (IIOP)
Unified Modeling Language (UML) and other specifications
supporting analysis and design
Agent-Based UML (AUML)
extend UML to express agent-based concepts

What Needs to be Standardized?

Domain Conceptualizations
Product Descriptions
Process Descriptions
Transaction Content

Communication Primitives
Modes of Interaction (Query, Publish)

Interaction Protocols
Negotiation

FIPA Specifications
Guiding Principles
Openness (Dynamic Participation)
Agents can join or leave at run time without recompiling or
reconfiguring
FIPA naming conventions and registration process used to find the
location of another agent

Interoperability (Abstract Specification)

Minimum set of requirements
Avoid commitment to particular hardware

Explicitness (Declarative Specification)

Information and assumptions about the agent system are explicit
Roles and capabilities of the agents
Modes of interaction
Meaning of message content

Structure of FIPA Specifications

Abstract Architecture
Abstract designs that can be formally related to every valid implementation

Agent Message Transport

Delivery and representation of messages across different network
environments

Agent Management
Logical model for the creation, registration, location, communication,
migration and retirement of agents

Agent Communication
Communicative acts based on speech theory that are independent of the
content of the message
Interaction protocols describe entire conversations between agents for the
purpose of achieving some interaction of effect

Agent Applications
Service and ontology descriptions
Case scenarios
Integrating legacy software not communicating via FIPA ACL

Software Agent Research and

Technology at Boeing
NASA/FAA Aviation Extranet Collaboration
DARPA Control of Agent-Based Systems
Jumpstart
Coalition Technology Integration Experiment

Intelligent Agent Technology Investment

Project

Aviation Extranet Goals

By the turn of the century, airlines will be able to dynamically
reconfigure their flight operations for improved safety and more
efficient transportation for the traveling public
Develop middleware components to integrate and extend the capabilities of
aviation legacy systems on a secure extranet to support:
Real-time aircraft and airport situational awareness and scheduling and
planning functions
Maintenance and operations procedures enhancements
Feedback data mechanisms to design/manufacturing models and simulators

Develop Extranet Global Information Services

Extranet = virtual private network
Software agents provide security and intelligent coordination of resources
Foundation of meta-databases, data warehouses, CORBA & Web technologies

Conduct advanced research in decision support tools for the Aviation

Community

The CoABS Agent Grid

Grid is Dynamic
Matrix supporting:

Grid Forum Activities

Control Agents

Dynamic teaming
Brokering services
Variable semantics
Problem
User-Centric

Solving

Agents

(adapted from Kettler, 1999)

Agents

Translation Agents

Agent Development for the Grid

The Future of Agent Ensembles
Dynamically created teams of agents written by independent
groups, using different frameworks and different assumptions
about agent context and approach
Greatly increased diversity of reasoning/planning capability
Greatly increased scope and difficulty of agent tasks

The Future of Agent Developers

More agents written by domain experts with minimal training;
fewer agents written by agent-technology experts
Decreased ability to apply formal agent theory
Decreased ability to understand/predict agent environment

Jumpstart Agent Toolkit

Conversation Design Tool
Policy-based graphical communications design
Help developers select, specialize or generate conversation
policies consistent with communicative intent

Agent Management Tool

Incorporate policies for Javas extended resource management
and mobility mechanisms
Allow agent developers to easily select, specialize or generate
appropriate resource management and security policies
Includes visualization and dynamic control tools to monitor and
manage optimal resource utilization and to stop errant agents

DARPA

CoAX: The Coalition Agents Experiment

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC)
AFRL Briefing
12 December 2000
AFRL Rome, AIAI, Boeing, Dartmouth, DERA Malvern, Lockheed
Martin ATL, Michigan, MIT Sloan, OBJS, USC/ISI, UWF/IHMC
Support from BBN, GITI, ISX, MITRE, Schafer, Stanford

http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/coax/

Key Technical Drivers

Cannot assume interoperability, reliability or
availability of different nations systems
Need for partial (secure) sharing and visualization
of processes, data and facilities
Need to work with agents in multiple
dynamically-determined domains
Need for flexible inter-agent task and process
management
Need for rapid formation, management and
change of agent relationships

Policy-Mediated
Agent Interaction
What is a policy?
Formal specification to describe or govern interaction with other agents,
groups of agents, or grid resources
Provides a way to anticipate problems, facilitate and enforce desired
behavior, assist problem resolution, and justify sanctions for noncompliance
Examples
Security policies: e.g, all messages must be encrypted
Resource policies: e.g., ceilings on system resource consumption
Conversation policies: e.g., timing and message sequencing
Domain membership policies: e.g, agents cannot simultaneously be
members of domain X and domain Y
Benefits of explicit policy: reuse, operational efficiency, responsiveness to changed
conditions, possibility of off-line policy verification, tunable social control

Intelligent Agent Technology

Project Description
Safe and Secure Execution for KAoS
Dynamic policies for security and resource allocation

Scalable Distributed Information Access

Prototype for smart information access
Multiple concurrent users
Across multiple data services

Agent Architecture Investigation

Import and demonstrate the best features of other agent
architectures with respect to security and scalability

Conclusions -- Multi-Agent Systems in

eBusiness
The Capabilities of the Multi-Agent System Paradigm Match the
Requirements of the Global eBusiness Environment
Autonomous, heterogeneous business units
Flexible, adaptive business structures
Supports a wide range of styles of interaction (coalition, competition,
teams)

Multi-Agent Systems Paradigm Builds on the Object-Oriented

Paradigm and Extends its Capabilities (Evolution vs. Revolution)
Multi-Agent Systems Standards are Under Development at FIPA and
OMG.
Practical Experiments in MAS are Underway to Evaluate Standards
and Prototype New Capabilities

Conclusions
Enrichment of Web-based Business Interactions with KnowledgeBased Technology Will Enable New eBusiness Capabilities
Shared Domain Conceptualizations (Ontologies) Provide the
Capability to Seamlessly Share Knowledge and to Identify Business
Partners and Opportunities
Rapid Advances in Expressivity and Inference Competency Can Be
Expected
Multi-Agent Systems Technology Provides the Capability for
Intelligent Interaction Among Diverse and Distributed Business
Entities
Interoperability of Heterogeneous Agent Frameworks and New Modes
of Interaction Are Under Intensive Development