From: pat hayes (phayes@ai.uwf.edu)
Date: 08/20/02
>We're developing an environment in which agents that >communicate with the standard FIPA (http://fipa.org/) agent >communication language and protocols can use DAML+OIL as a >content language. Our immediate applications involve agents >which provide event and calendar management related services >as part of our ongoing ITTALKS (http://ittalks.org/) system. > >One of our current implementations uses the Jess rules >engine to reason about DAML+OIL content (using an enhanced >and extended version of the DAMLJessKB), draw additional >domain and application appropriate inferences, make >decisions and perform actions. > >The FIPA ACL has a very simple query model (query-if and >query-ref) so we are trying to fit DQL into this framework >by adding a few new communicative acts (CAs), reusing >existing FIPA CAs as much as possible, and developing >appropriate FIPA protocols, specifying them in agent UML >(http://www.auml.org/). Since have a working prototype, >we're anxious to use it to experiment with the DQL concepts. > >To this end, we've written an initial DAML Ontology for DQL queries >(http://userpages.umbc.edu/~anu1/DAML/DQLOntology.daml) >based on 01-DQL_spec_version2.html and are using this in our >prototype. Er..guys, I havnt looked at the details of this, and maybe I have misunderstood what you are doing; but there seems to me to be something fundamentally wrong with the very idea of having an ontology for queries. Ontologies express assertions; they describe things. Queries, in contrast, ask questions. A query is not an assertion. In logical terms, assertions (ontologies) and queries are on opposite ends of the sequent arrow. Querying is a different kind of speech act from asserting. So an ontology of queries seems like an oxymoron. To make the point in another way: suppose one does have an ontology of queries, and I then use it to describe a query. OK, Ive described a query. But I havnt thereby actually QUERIED anything: I havnt expressed a request for information, or asked for something to be proved, or requested that a knowledge-base server actually do anything about it. All I have done is make another assertion, one that says a query exists, in effect. But of course queries exist: that doesnt need to be asserted. So my comment is that I fail to see what you think the point is of doing this. Comments? Pat Hayes PS. There is another technical reason why any such attempt to describe what is essentially a piece of syntax in a language like DAML is bound to be incomplete, which is that DAML simply doesn't have the expressive resources to describe syntax adequately. Even full first-order logic doesn't have enough, so DAML certainly does not. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
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