We will build a generator that constructs a domain specific Content Importer from a DAML ontology. This Content Importer will enable DAML objects described by that ontology to be imported into a briefing. Once imported, these objects can be manipulated and modified through our DAML enhanced PowerPoint interface.

Currently these Content Importers are hand coded, thus limiting the Briefing Associate to the few domains for which we've manually constructed Content Importers. This Content Importer generator, together with the existing Ontology Importer and Publisher generator, will allow users to select their own domains for use within the Briefing Associate - by just importing the DAML ontology for that domain.

We will build a generator that constructs a domain specific Validator from a DAML ontology. This Validator will check DAML objects created, modified, or imported into the Briefing Associate to ensure they satisfy the well-formedness constraints specified in their DAML ontology. Ill-formed objects will be identified through our DAML enhanced PowerPoint interface for user repair.

We will index legacy briefings on the basis of the clipart images they contain. We will provide a facility for marking up such clipart images whether in briefings or in a clipart gallery. These markups will be performed in the Briefing Associate by creating a DAML object with properties that describe the desired annotation (using the ontology chosen for markups). This description will be associated with the clipart image through a Describes connector. This connector will allow multiple descriptions to describe a single clipart image, and multiple clipart images to be described by a single description.

Any such markups associated with the images in the clipart gallery will (logically) be retroactively propagated to all instances of those images in legacy briefings. This will allow those legacy briefings to be located on the basis of the most recent clipart markups.

We will develop the components for a web-based service for searching briefings. The first component will be an indexer that publishes the content of briefings in DAML for later semantic search by a DAML query engine. This indexer will publish all the DAML content in (the initially small set of) briefings developed by our Briefing Associate. It will also publish in DAML all of the non-DAML textual and image content in those briefings. It will thus automatically markup existing legacy briefings on the web.

The second component will enable users to state briefing search queries in a convenient syntax and translate this domain-specific syntax into a standard DAML query to be performed by a (community provided) DAML search engine.

This web-based search service will locate all indexed (i.e. previously crawled) briefings and display within a browser the individual slide(s) containing the requested material.

Rather than running this service ourselves, we will instead provide these components to the appropriate members of the DAML community so that these facilities become part of a larger DAML based web search service. The first component will be packaged to function within a web-crawler to provide the indexing service for briefings encountered by the web-crawler, and the second as a plug-in translator for domain-specific queries within the DAML query engine.

We will enhance the graphic rendering of DAML objects so that the appearance of the object will dynamically change to reflect the values of (some of) its properties. These enhanced graphic renderings will include depicting selected object property values (literals or other objects) via the color, border, size, or location of the shape, picture, or icon representing the object, as textual labels superimposed on the object, or as graphical relationships between objects such as containment, proximity, or explicit connections.

We will provide a facility for users to specify DAML-based queries and import the object(s) satisfying those queries. This facility will publish the query in DAML, send it to agents (produced by other DAML contractors) capable of handling the query, and import the results of the query (described in DAML) into the current briefing. These imported DAML objects will be automatically rendered in the briefing on the slide containing the query.

The query will be retained in the briefing together with the results of the query so that it can be reissued by the user at a later time to update the content of the briefing with the then current query results. These new results will be automatically rendered in the briefing on the slide containing the query and will retain any user-customization of the previously rendered query results.

We will work with the Intelink Community to instantiate and customize the generic Briefing Associate capabilities for their domain. With their help, we will construct or import one or more DAML intelligence analyst ontologies, generate the required Content Publishers, Importers, and Validators required for importing, creating, and modifying DAML objects in their briefings, construct useful analyses for these DAML objects, and provide a query facility for automating the importation and composition of briefing material for this domain.

This customized Briefing Associate will serve as a test of the completeness and utility of the generic capabilities being constructed within the Briefing Associate and as a demonstration of those capabilities.