2. 1 Interoperability in Agentspace: a contribution to Semantic Web Stanisław Ambroszkiewicz Krzysztof Cetnarowicz IPI PAN, Warsaw, AGH, Krakow, UTBM Belfort-Montbéliard POLAND & FRANCE www.ipipan.waw.pl/mas/ Work supported by ESPRIT project CRIT2 November 2000 &

3. 2 FOCUS OF OUR RESEARCH: Agent virtual organizations in Agentspace What is Agentspace? Autonomous, heterogeneous software agents are supposed to form, maintain, reconfigure virtual organizations in the Web for e-commerce, B2B and … ! Interoperability for agents The key issue: Interoperability for agents Interaction interoperability Infrastructure for: mobility, communication, services,... Semantic interoperability Understanding for: negotiation, cooperation, forming virtual organizations …

4. 3 The Idea and Goal zThe idea behind: zThe idea behind: nothing in common = no interaction and no understanding = no interoperability yagents can not interact meaningfully and understand each other if they have nothing in common  Conclusion: interaction interoperability semantic interoperability  Conclusion: interaction interoperability is the necessary basis for semantic interoperability in Agentspace: yto understand each other the agents must interact meaningfully zOur goal: (something in common) zOur goal: the absolute minimum (something in common) necessary and sufficient for achieving interoperability in Agentspace: yrealization: agent interface to environment

5. 4 Approaches to interaction interoperability zOMG CORBA zOMG MASIF and FIPA : interfaces for agent/platform interoperability zJava Agent Services - java.sun.com, Java interfaces to support deployment and operation of agents, based on FIPA specifications zOur proposal: Pegaz zOur proposal: Generic architecture of MAP (Mobile Agent Platform) as the first step, based on Pegaz our MAP zmore: ? Java Enterprise ? in the future

6. 5 Generic MAP architecture as Interaction Infrastructure z Java Virtual Machine Win 95/98 Internet/Intranet/WAN/LAN (TCP,UDP) LINUXSunOSMS Win NT Mobile Agent Platform - a uniform view of Cyberspace place service PEGAZ - our MAP for agents, services, and agent organizations development

7. 6 Approaches to semantic interoperability zTarskian semantics: semantics of a theory is given by interpretation in a model. The model is another theory !!! zOntolingua: Gruber, Guarino et al.: meaning of concept is constrained by logical axioms. zOKBC - Open Knowledge Base Connectivity, exchange standard for ontologies chosen by FIPA zXML and RDF(S) web standards for information exchange zOIL - Ontology Interchange Language, a European project zSemantic Web - Tim Bernes-Lee and W3C zDAML project - DARPA Agent Markup Language: a language that ties information on page to machine-readable semantics zSUO - Standard Upper Ontology - project of IEEE zWeb Service Description Language, UDDI- IBM & Microsoft Entish:semantic interoperability in Agentspace Entish: our specific approach to semantic interoperability in Agentspace

8. 7 Layered approach to interoperability: an analogy Internet/TCP/IP Application 1: server www, e.g., Apache/1.3.0 Application 2: client www, e.g., Mozilla/4.0 request response Interoperability achieved by common HTTP protocol = (simple language) HTTP protocol:... HTTP/1.1 200 OK. Connection: close Date: Thu, 23 Nov Server: Apache/1.3 Last-Modified:... Content-Length:... Content-Type: text/................... HTTP protocol:... GET.../page.html HTTP/1.1 Connection: close User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 Accept: text/html,... Accept-language: fr

9. 8 Layered approach to interoperability: our approach Internet/TCP/IP request response Application 1: agent of user A Application 2: agent of user B Interface: Interoperability to be achieved by agent programing language Entish implemented in the interface

10. 9 Proposal of agent interface to environment Proposal of agent interface to environment Responsible for interactions. Based on Pegaz (first step), and Java … (the final) Assures interaction interoperability: migration, communication, using services, basic functionality, etc. means to achieve interaction and semantic interoperability Representation of the world (Agentspace) structure. Local events are the basis for the representation. Agents perceive the environment in the same way Entish agent programming language. Built- in Communication Language. Agents can cooperate, form, maintain and reconfigure virtual organizations Representation layer interface: Interaction layer Language layer

11. 10 Our ongoing project zFirst step: yinteraction interoperability based on Pegaz our MAP yrepresentation layer is already done yEntish: work in progress - specification and implementation zSecond step: ybeyond OMG MASIF and FIPA: interaction interoperability based on Java (Enterprise)