From rdf-dev-request@mailbase.ac.uk Tue Oct 6 04:44:13 1998 Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 11:31:12 +0200 Subject: RDF vocabularies as content language within FIPA ACL From: Bart Bauwens <bauwensb@rc.bel.alcatel.be> To: RDF developers mailing list <rdf-dev@mailbase.ac.uk>
Hi all,
We are currently trying to use RDF based vocabularies as content language embedded in the FIPA ACL.
Maybe, first some introduction for those of you who are not aware of FIPA. FIPA, the Foundation for Intelligent and Physical Agents (http://www.cselt.stet.it/fipa/) is an organization which tries to standardize on a set of generic agent technologies. One of its most important (normative) specifications is the Agent Communication Language (ACL). The other normative parts deal with agent management and agent-software interaction. The FIPA ACL is speech-act based. A typical message starts with a performative (the 'act'), followed by a number of parameters such as sender, receiver, language, ontology, and the content itself. An example of a FIPA message is as follows:
(inform :sender i :receiver j :content "weather ( today, raining )" :language Prolog )
The FIPA specifications require that content languages are able to express statements, actions and objects (in the UoD). Traditional choices for content languages are KIF, SL, Prolog, etc... However, we wanted to leverage the potential of Web based languages such as XML (and RDF).
RDF allows to model 'statements', resources are similar to the 'objects', but it lacks a way to express 'actions'. So, have you folks any idea/experience how to tackle this ? Should we consider those actions as resources, or as property types? What about the arguments, transmitted together with the action ?
Thanks for your help.
Bart
Bart Bauwens
Alcatel Telecom DS9
bauwensb@rc.bel.alcatel.be
Advanced System Development Engineer