CKBS '90 : proceedings of the International Working Conference on Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems, 3-5 October 1990, University of Keele, UK

This is the first international conference aimed at bringing the distributed database and distributed AI (DAD experts together, from both academia and industry, in order to discuss the issues of the next generation of knowledge based systems, namely Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems or CKBS for short. As the area of CKBS is new, we intended it to be an ideas conference - a conference where interesting new ideas, rather than results from completed projects, are explored, discussed, and debated. The conference was organised by the DAKE Centre. This is an interdisciplinary centre at the University of Keele for research and development in Data and Knowledge Engineering (DAKE). The Centre draws most of its strength from the Department of Computer Science which also provides administrative support for the activities of the Centre, although its membership is spread over several departments. The Centre has three main streams of research activities, namely: Large Knowledge Bases Software Engineering Neural Networks The Large Knowledge Base group, which provided the focus for this conference, is active in a number of research areas relating to data and knowledge bases, spanning from distributed databases to cooperations among data and knowledge bases. The current research topics include integration of data and knowledge bases and coopera­ ting knowledge based systems, with several major projects in the latter (see the entries under the Poster Session given below). This volume contains the 17 research papers presented at the first International Working Conference on Co- operating Knowledge Based Systems, held at the University of Keele, from 3-5 October 1990. This was the first international conference aimed at bringing together the distributed database (DDB) and distributed AI (DAI) experts, from both academia and industry, to discuss the issues of the next generation of knowledge based systems, namely Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems (CKBS). The organisers hoped that the presence of both database and AI researchers would help to bring about a synthesis of ideas for fruitful industrial applications. As the area of CKBS is new, the conference was planned as an 'ideas conference', where interesting new ideas, rather than results from completed projects, were explored, discussed, and debated. In order to provide a conductive atmosphere for in-depth discussions, attendance at the conference was restricted to those who have a genuine interest in this new area - even then, there were over 80 participants from 15 countries. To facilitate discussion, the conference was residential, and plenty of time was allowed after each presentation for discussion, in which both DDB and DAI researchers participated. These discussions were taped and selected transcripts are included in this book, following each paper. There were over 80 extended abstracts submitted, of which less than half were selected by the Programme Committee for presentation. Following the conference, a second review was carried out, this time on full papers, from which the 17 papers were selected for publication in this book. It is hoped that each paper will be of interest to both of the research communities. The papers are grouped under six headings: Cooperation Framework - DB Perspectives; Cooperation Framework - AI Perspectives; Conflict Resolution Strategy; Knowledge Revision; Multi-agent Development Models; Interaction in Data/Knowledge Bases. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Cooperating Agents — A Database Perspective....Pages 3-29 Meeting the Cooperative Problem Solving Challenge: A Database-Centered Approach....Pages 30-52 Intelligent Agents in Federative Expert Systems — Concepts and Implementation....Pages 53-76 Front Matter....Pages 77-77 Diffusing Inference: An Inference Method for Distributed Problem Solving....Pages 79-94 Archon: A Cooperation Framework for Industrial Process Control....Pages 95-112 Collaboration of Knowledge Bases via Knowledge Based Coordination....Pages 113-129 Front Matter....Pages 131-131 Distributed Truth Maintenance....Pages 133-147 Cooperative interaction as strategic belief revision....Pages 148-163 The Role Of Cooperation in Multi-Agent Learning....Pages 164-180 Front Matter....Pages 181-181 Conflict Resolution Strategies for Cooperating Expert Agents....Pages 183-200 A Computational Model for Conflict Resolution in Cooperative Design Systems....Pages 201-219 Front Matter....Pages 221-221 Modeling Concurrency in Rule-Based Development Environments....Pages 223-239 The MCS multi-agent testbed: developments and experiments....Pages 240-251 Front Matter....Pages 253-253 Epistemic Logic as a Framework for Federated Information Systems....Pages 255-270 Cooperative Query Answering via Type Abstraction Hierarchy....Pages 271-292 Contracts in Database Federations....Pages 293-310 Object Recognition and Retrieval in the BACK System....Pages 311-325 Back Matter....Pages 327-327