[February 11, 2000] The 'DARPA Agent Mark-Up Language (DAML)' is being designed as an XML-based "semantic language that ties the information on a page to machine-readable semantics (ontology)." According to one report, DAML designer Jim Hendler "has begun working with Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium to make sure that DAML fits with the W3C's plans for a semantic Web, which would be based primarily on RDF (Resource Description Framework), the W3C's metadata technology for adding machine-readable data to the Web." The goal of the DAML program "is to develop a language aimed at representing semantic relations in machine readable ways compatible with current and future Internet technologies. Further, prototype tools will be developed to show the potential of such markups to provide revolutionary capabilities that will change the way humans interact with information. Deployment of such tools to military and intelligence users, and showing the incredible dual use potential of such a technology, caps off the programs goals. To realize this solution, Internet markup languages must move beyond the implicit semantic agreements inherent in XML and community-specific controlled languages, and move towards making semantic entities and markup a primary goal DARPA will lead the way with the development of DARPA Agent markup Language (DAML). DAML will be a semantic language that ties the information on a page to machine-readable semantics (ontology). The language must allow for communities to extend simple ontologies for their own use, allowing the bottom-up design of meaning while allowing sharing of higher level concepts. In addition, the language will provide mechanisms for the explicit representation of services, processes and business models, so as to allow non-explicit information (such as that encapsulated in programs or sensors) to be recognized. DAML will provide a number of advantages over current markup approaches. It will allow semantic interoperability at the level we currently have syntactic interoperability in XML. [...] The goal of the DAML program is to create technologies that will enable software agents to dynamically identify and understand information sources, and to provide interoperability between agents in a semantic manner. This goal will be pursued by a research plan that includes the following six tasks: (1) Create an Agent Mark-Up Language (DAML) built upon XML that allows users to provide machine-readable semantic annotations for specific communities of interest. (2) Create tools that embed DAML markup on to web pages and other information sources in a manner that is transparent and beneficial to the users. (3) Use these tools to build up, instantiate, operate, and test sets of agent-based programs that markup and use DAML. (4) Measure, via empirical experimentation, the productivity improvements provided by these tools. (5) Apply these tools to third party agent development, military-specific problems, and support for the intelligence community so as to evolve DAML technologies towards large-scale use. (6) Transition DAML to the commercial and military markets via partnerships with industrial and defense-related (C2 and intelligence) organizations."
"Objects in the web can be marked (manually or automatically) to include descriptions of information they encode, descriptions of functions they provide, and/or descriptions of data they can produce. This will allow web pages, databases, programs, models, and sensors all to be linked together by agents that use DAML to recognize the concepts they are looking for. If successful, dynamic, run-time information fusion from diverse sources will become a reality. . . While the DAML program focuses on access to machine-readable information, the automatic extraction of that information by use of language analysis or other NLP tools is not a key DAML focus. Tool developers should focus on what their tools will do and how they will be evaluated, as well as on key technical innovations that will make them possible. However, the focus of the DAML project is on the development and use of the markup language, and on the agent-based approaches they enable, and not on the development of specific computational techniques or interfaces. Finally, research on human-computer interaction that is specifically enabled by DAML, or for working with DAML markup, is an interest of the program, but the application of generic technologies for HCI are not considered a programmatic goal. . . DAML builds on a large number of current industrial, DARPA, and academic approaches. These include emerging web standards such as XML, SMIL and/or RDF (W3C), current and former DARPA Information Systems Office programs (HPKB, I3, CoABS - see http://dtsn.darpa.mil/iso/), and university efforts in the development of ontological markups including SHOE (http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE/), OML (http://wave.eecs.wsu.edu/CKRMI/OML.html), and On2broker (http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/www-broker/)...[From the PIP [Proposer Information Pamphlet] for BAA 00-07"]
[February 09, 2001] From "About the DAML Language." - "While HTML allows us to visualize the information on the web, it doesn't provide much capability to describe the information in ways that facilitate the use of software programs to find or interpret it. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed the Extensible Markup Language (XML) which allows information to be more accurately described using tags. As an example, the word Algol on a web site might represent a computer language, a star or an oceanographic research ship. The use of XML to provide metadata markup, such as Algol, makes the meaning of the work unambiguous. However, XML has a limited capability to describe the relationships (schemas or ontologies) with respect to objects. The use of ontologies provides a very powerful way to describe objects and their relationships to other objects. The DAML language is being developed as an extension to XML and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The latest release of the language (DAML+OIL) provides a rich set of constructs with which to create ontologies and to markup information so that it is machine readable and understandable..."
References:
DAML.ORG "This is the public portal for the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) Program. The DAML Program officially began on 14 August, 2000. The goal of the DAML effort is to develop a language and tools to facilitate the concept of the semantic web. Dr. James Hendler is the DARPA Program Manager for the DAML initiative."
DAML Semantic Search Service - A query interface to public DAML content
Comments for DAML+OIL to www-rdf-logic@w3.org, and see the public archives.
Reference description for the DAML+OIL (March 2001) ontology markup language
[May 03, 2002] "DAML Reference." By Uche Ogbuji and Roxane Ouellet. From XML.com. May 01, 2002. ['The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) is an important part of developing Semantic Web technology. This third installment of our series looking at the DARPA Agent Markup Language provides a quick reference for concepts from RDF, RDF Schema and DAML.'] The reference covers: (1) RDF Syntax Elements; (2) DAML+OIL Syntax Elements; (3) RDF Classes and Properties; (4) RDFS Classes and Properties; (5) DAML Classes and Properties. See also Part I and Part II in the DAML series.
[May 20, 2003] "DARPA Pads Semantic Web Contract." By Michael Singer. From Internet.com News (May 20, 2003). "Web software developer Teknowledge Tuesday said it has won an extended government contract to help build an evolving version of the World Wide Web that centers on the meaning of words. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm said the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has added $634,057 to its now $1.7 million budget to help build the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML). The contract is centered on developing an Agent Semantic Communication Service, which lets users access relevant data through an XML framework. DARPA calls it the 'Semantic Web'. For example, when you tell a person something, he can combine the new fact with an old one and tell you something new. When you tell a computer something in XML, it may be able to tell you something new in response, but only because of some other software it has that's not part of the XML spec. DARPA is using the new language to create a program that assigns similar semantics to a 'subProperty' tag. DARPA, which was responsible for funding much of the development of the Internet we know today, has been working on the DAML spec since August 2000 as a way to augment the Web and improve data mining. Currently, the agency is working with the W3C through a various working groups to implement it. Teknowledge says the open source framework will be one of the tools that drives the Semantic Web from research vision to practical reality... The technology is steeped in Teknoledge's Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) and the company says it has mapped it to over 100,000 word senses in the WordNet natural language lexicon. The company says its research helps give technical users a comprehensive language for asking precise questions. 'Our software allows users to get answers to questions that have been precisely defined, rather than just a sampling of documents that contain relevant keywords, as in most current Web searches,' said Teknowledge Director of Knowledge Systems Adam Pease. 'We can also perform inference during search that allows users to get answers that are not literally on the Web, but must be inferred by the computer software.' Pease said the next step in this process is to provide a simplified language to support non-technical end users..."
[September 23, 2002] "DAML-S: Web Service Description for the Semantic Web." Presented at The First International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), June, 2002. 15 pages (with 26 references). By 'The DAML Services Coalition' (alphabetically: Anupriya Ankolenkar, Mark Burstein, Jerry R. Hobbs, Ora Lassila, David L. Martin, Drew McDermott, Sheila A. McIlraith, Srini Narayanan, Massimo Paolucci, Terry R. Payne and Katia Sycara). "In this paper we present DAML-S, a DAML+OIL ontology for describing the properties and capabilities of Web Services. Web Services -- Web-accessible programs and devices -- are garnering a great deal of interest from industry, and standards are emerging for low-level descriptions of Web Services. DAML-S complements this effort by providing Web Service descriptions at the application layer, describing what a service can do, and not just how it does it. In this paper we describe three aspects of our ontology: the service profile, the process model, and the service grounding. The paper focuses on the grounding, which connects our ontology with low-level XML-based descriptions of Web Services. We are developing a DAML+OIL ontology for Web Services, called DAML-S, with the objective of making Web Services computer-interpretable and hence enabling the following tasks: discovery, i.e., locating Web Services (typically through a registry service) that provide a particular service and that adhere to specified constraints; invocation or activation and execution of an identified service by an agent or other service; interoperation, i.e., breaking down interoperability barriers through semantics, and the automatic insertion of message parameter translations between clients and services; composition of new services through automatic selection, composition and interoperation of existing services; verification of service properties; and execution monitoring, i.e., tracking the execution of complex or composite tasks performed by a service or a set of services, thus identifying failure cases, or providing explanations of different execution traces. To make use of a Web Service, a software agent needs a computer-interpretable description of the service, and the means by which it is accessed. This paper describes a collaborative effort by BBN Technologies, Carnegie Mellon University, Nokia, Stanford University, SRI International, and Yale University, to define the DAML-S Web Services ontology. We [...] discuss the important problem of the grounding, i.e., how to translate what is being sent in a message to or from a service into how it is to be sent. In particular, we present the linking of DAML-S to the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). DAML-S complements WSDL, by providing an abstract or application level description lacking in WSDL..." [cache]
[October 31, 2002] "DAML+OIL: An Ontology Language for the Semantic Web." By Deborah L. McGuinness (Stanford University), Richard Fikes (Stanford University), James Hendler (University of Maryland), and Lynn Andrea Stein (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering). In IEEE Intelligent Systems [ISSN: 1094-7167] Volume 17, Number 5 (September/October 2002), pages 72-80. "By all measures, the Web is enormous and growing at a staggering rate. This growth has made it both increasingly difficult and increasingly important for humans and programs to quickly and accurately access Web information and services. A semantic Web-in which meanings of terms are captured and exploited-can provide the foundation for convenient Web content access. The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program aims to provide a language and toolset that enables the Web to transform from a platform that focuses on presenting information to a platform that focuses on understanding and reasoning with information. In this article, we describe the DAML language; its goal is to capture term meanings, and thereby providing a Web ontology language. In addition to a brief history of the language's evolution, we introduce the ontology language DAML+OIL by way of examples and include an axiomatization of the language... We're developing DAML+OIL in stages. Our initial aim was to capture term descriptions, as we've described here. The DAML program is now working on a query language and the integration of a rule-encoding option. The next major language enhancement, DAML-Logic (DAMLL) will address encoding inference and general implications. The DAML Services group also built a Web service ontology, DAML-S, which uses DAML+OIL to provide a foundation for Web agents. DAML+OIL was submitted as the starting point for the W3C Semantic Web Activity's OWL. The W3C's Web Ontology Working Group has produced a set of requirements for OWL, as motivated by a collection of use cases. DAML+OIL meets the current requirements draft reasonably well, and the initial OWL language description is quite similar to DAML+OIL. We believe that DAML+OIL is a useful starting point for describing Web content, building on decades of research in framebased systems, description logics, and Web languages. Given this foundation, and the research benefits into languages, complexity, and usability it provides, DAML+OIL could serve as a sound foundation for the next evolution of Web access. Researchers have already accepted DAML+OIL as a starting point for Web semantics representation and used it for applications ranging from military intelligence to medical and genetic database integration. Among the current development efforts are those focusing on using DAML+OIL for managing large Web sites and document and image collections, integrating disparate databases, and providing Web services' interoperability..."
[July 19, 2002] "The True Meaning of Service." By Kendall Grant Clark. From XML.com. July 17, 2002. ['One oft-discussed topic is whether the future of the Web belongs to Web services or to the Semantic Web. Kendall Clark discovers that a new project, DAML-S, sets out to unify the two, and indeed could reach further into distributed computing in general.'] "At some point over the past 18 months the future direction of the Web began to be seen widely as a struggle between 'Web Services' and the 'Semantic Web'. The former was thought to be rooted in the W3C and academia, the latter in IBM-Microsoft-Sun and industry... Part of the debate between services and semantics is a replay of the debate about what makes the Web an interesting place: commerce or content? In the conventional wisdom, services represent the commerce part of the Web, while semantics represent its content... DAML-S is much more than a thought experiment... DAML-S, presently at version 0.6, is an upper ontology of web services being built on top of DAML+OIL (which is morphing into WebOnt, a W3C project). The idea is that high-level ontologies of web resources can be very useful things and, here's the kicker, web services are just a kind of web resource. Web services are resources that, as The DAML Services Coalition puts it, 'allow one to effect some action or change in the world, such as the sale of a product or the control of a physical device'... The first bit about DAML-S to grasp is that it's a high-level ontology, one that sits at the application level and is meant to answer the what- and why-questions about a web service, as opposed to the how-questions, which are the domain of WSDL... The motivations for creating DAML-S include discovery, invocation, interoperation, composition, verification, and monitoring. A part of the practical cash value of any web technology labeled 'semantic' is that the Web ought to provide something relatively useful in response to vague or even cryptic input from the end-user. If the end-user inputs "airline reservation" to her autonomous web agent, among the outputs ought to be, for example, the starting point of a web service which will guide her into making a flight reservation..." [DAML-S from the website description: "DAML-S supplies Web service providers with a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of their Web services in unambiguous, computer-intepretable form. DAML-S markup of Web services will facilitate the automation of Web service tasks including automated Web service discovery, execution, interoperation, composition and execution monitoring. Following the layered approach to markup language development, the current version of DAML-S builds on top of DAML+OIL."]
[May 07, 2002] "The Languages of the Semantic Web." By Uche Ogbuji. In New Architect Volume 7, Issue 6 (June 2002), pages 30-33. ['If you believe Tim Berners-Lee, the Web has more potential than is realized today. Part of that potential is held in specifications like RDF and DAML+OIL. A new Web where agents do our bidding may not be far off.'] "RDF itself is a handy way to describe resources. Widespread use of such a facility could alleviate many of the current problems with the Web. But RDF by itself only gets us part way toward realizing the Semantic Web, in which agents can infer relationships and act on them. Classification is extremely important on the Semantic Web. Each community of related interests defines categories for the matters that it discusses. For instance, the snowboarding community defines items such as snowboards, parks, tricks, and manufacturers. The definition of a manufacturer in snowboarding terms is related to the definition of a manufacturer in the general business sense. The snowboarding community can enshrine these definitions by creating a schema for its RDF models... The leading ontology system for RDF is the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML). DARPA, for those who may have forgotten, is the group that brought us the Internet itself. DAML incorporated useful concepts from the Ontology Inference Layer (OIL), a European project to provide some AI primitives in RDF form. The resulting language is DAML+OIL. DAML+OIL lets us formally express ontologies. W3C RDFS provides primitive classification and simple rules for this, but DAML+OIL goes much further. For instance, DAML+OIL can express that 'any snowboard with plate bindings is a race board,' which makes it unnecessary to then explicitly flag every race board. You might see in this some of the flavor of business rules, which are known in software development circles as the programmatic expression of mandates for the way data must be processed. In fact, one way to look at DAML+OIL is as the business rules for the Semantic Web, yet it's much more flexible than most business-rules-languages in common use. Most of DAML+OIL's power comes from primitives for expressing classifications, as the race boards example illustrates. DAML+OIL provides a toolbox of class expressions, which bring the power of mathematical logic and set theory to the tricky and important task of mapping ontologies through classifications... The Semantic Web is still a way off, if it's attainable at all. To date, RDF and DAML+OIL are our best efforts at reaching it. They address a good number of the problems with the present state of the Web, and further enhancements are on the way. For example, a system of statements that's managed at a certification authority could help establish the validity of RDF statements to minimize metadata spam and other security problems..." [alt URL]
[March 15, 2002] "Introduction to DAML: Part II." By Roxane Ouellet and Uche Ogbuji. From XML.com. March 13, 2002. "RDF was developed by the W3C at about the same time as XML, and it turns out to be an excellent complement to XML, providing a language for modeling semistructured metadata and enabling knowledge-management applications. The RDF core model is successful because of its simplicity. The W3C also developed a purposefully lightweight schema language, RDF Schema (RDFS), to provide basic structures such as classes and properties. As the ambitions of RDF and XML have expanded to include things like the Semantic Web, the limitations of this lightweight schema language have become evident. Accordingly, a group set out to develop a more expressive schema language, DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML). Although DAML is not a W3C initiative, several familiar faces from the W3C, including Tim Berners-Lee, participated in its development. The preceeding article in this series presented basic DAML concepts and constructs, explaining the most useful modeling tools DAML puts into the designer's hands. The present article demonstrates more advanced DAML concepts and constructs, expanding on the Super Sports example... So far we have looked at how DAML+OIL gives us richer means for expressing constraints in schemas. If this were all it did, it would still be a welcome advance over RDFS. But it happens to go well beyond that. DAML+OIL gives modelers a rich expressiveness. It is not just a schema language but also an ontology language, providing primitives that support the general representation of knowledge. For one thing, it allows one to express classifications by inference rather than by explicitly listing which resources go into which buckets. Behind this simply-stated idea lies a surprising range of nuance for accommodating the classic difficulty of translating the models we hold in our minds to the models we mold in our code... In the first two articles of this series, we have presented the basics of DAML+OIL by example. There are additional property restrictions based on the cardinality (number of occurrences) of a property for each instance, and there are many nuances we have not covered. DAML+OIL introduces many constructs, and at first it can be a bit vexing to try to remember all the different constructs from RDF, RDFS, and DAML+OIL. The final article will provide some assistance by tabulating all these constructs, noting which specification defines them, and briefly describing their usage."
[February 02, 2002] "Introduction to DAML: Part I." By Roxane Ouellet and Uche Ogbuji. From XML.com. January 30, 2002. ['Learn about the DAML language for modeling data on the Semantic Web.'] "RDF was developed by the W3C at about the same time as XML, and it turns out to be an excellent complement to XML, providing a language for modeling semi-structured metadata and enabling knowledge-management applications. The RDF core model is successful because of its simplicity. The W3C also developed a purposefully lightweight schema language, RDF Schema (RDFS), to provide basic structures such as classes and properties. As the ambitions of RDF and XML have expanded to include things like the Semantic Web, the limitations of this lightweight schema language have become evident. Accordingly, a group set out to develop a more expressive schema language, DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML). Although DAML is not a W3C initiative, several familiar faces from the W3C, including Tim Berners-Lee, participated in its development. This article series introduces DAML, including practical examples and basic design principles. This first article presents basic DAML concepts and constructs, explaining the most useful modeling tools DAML puts into the designer's hands. In the next article we shall take a more in-depth look, introducing more advanced features and outlining a few useful rules of thumb for designers. Keeping the concepts straight between RDF, RDFS and DAML+OIL can be difficult, so the third article will serve as a reference of constructs, describing each, and pointing to the relevant spec where each is defined..."
[September 07, 2001] "Markup Languages: Comparison and Examples." By Yolanda Gil and Varun Ratnakar (USC/Information Sciences Institute, TRELLIS project). 2001-09-07 or later. ['We are making available a comparison table that we created to understand the tradeoffs and differences among markup languages along common knowledge representation requirements. It compares XML Schema, RDF Schema, and DAML+OIL. For each dimension of comparison, the table includes a description of how each language handles that issue and hyperlinks to examples.'] "Below is a comparison table that we created to understand the tradeoffs and differences among markup languages. It compares XML (Extensible Markup Language), RDF (Resource Description Framework), and DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language) by showing a description and examples of how each language addresses common knowledge representation requirements. We are preparing an article describing this comparison in detail. If you have any comments or suggestions, please email them to us.. Our interest in markup languages stems from: (1) Research on TRELLIS, a framework to help users create semantically annotated traces and rationale for their decisions. A prototype of TRELLIS has just been released and you can try it here. (2) Our research on PHOSPHORUS, an ontology-based agent matchmaker that the ISI Electric Elves framework uses to support human organizations..."
[December 12, 2001] "Trust-Based Security in Pervasive Computing Environments." By Lalana Kagal, Tim Finin, and Anupam Joshi (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County). In IEEE Computer Volume 24, Number 12 (December 2001), pages 154-157. "Mobile users expect to access locally hosted resources and services anytime and anywhere, leading to serious security risks and access control problems. We propose a solution based on trust management that involves developing a security policy, assigning credentials to entities, verifying that the credentials fulfill the policy, delegating trust to third parties, and reasoning about users' access rights. This architecture is generally applicable to distributed systems but geared toward pervasive computing environments... Pervasive computing strives to simplify day-to-day life by providing mobile users with the means to carry out personal and business tasks via portable and embedded devices... The eBiquity Research Group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is designing pervasive computing systems composed of autonomous, intelligent, self-describing, and interacting components. SmartSpaces are instances of pervasive systems in which the domain is divided into a hierarchy of spaces with a controller managing the services in each space... Our work is similar to role-based access control (RBAC) -- an approach in which access decisions are based on the roles that a certain action can actually delegate that action, and the ability to delegate itself can be delegated. Users can constrain delegations by specifying whether delegated users can redelegate the right and to whom they can delegate. Once users are given certain rights, they are responsible for the actions of the users to whom they subsequently delegate those rights and privileges. This forms a delegation chain in which users only delegate to other users that they trust. If any user along this delegation chain fails to meet the requirements associated with a delegated right, the chain is broken. Following the failure, no user can perform the action associated with the right... Our approach, however, uses ontologies that include not just role hierarchies but any properties and constraints expressed in an XML-based language, including elements of both description logics and declarative rules. For example, a rule could specify that any user in a meeting room who is operating the projector during a presentation is probably the presenter and should thus be allowed to use the computer as well. In this way, rights can be assigned dynamically to users without creating a new role. Similarly, access rights can be revoked from users without changing their role. Using an ontology-based approach is thus more flexible and main-tainable than RBAC... To protect the privacy of users who do not want the system to log their names and actions, we are replacing X.509 certificates with trusted XML signatures that do not include the bearer's identity, but only a role or designation. In our past work on distributed trust, we encoded actions, privileges, delegations, and security as horn clauses in Prolog. To develop an approach better suited to sharing information in an open environment, we are recasting this work in the DARPA Agent Markup Language. Built on XML and the Resource Description Framework, DAML provides a description logic language for defining and using ontologies on the Web in machine-readable form. In applying our framework, we are extending the initial DAML ontology by defining domain-specific classes for actions, roles, and privileges and creating appropriate instances..." See also "DAML Tools for supporting Intelligent Information Annotation, Sharing and Retrieval."
[June 21, 2001] "DAML-S: Semantic Markup For Web Services." By David Martin. 2001-05-23 or later. "The Semantic Web should enable greater access not only to content but also to services on the Web. Users and software agents should be able to discover, invoke, compose, and monitor Web resources offering particular services and having particular properties. As part of the DARPA Agent Markup Language program, we have begun to develop an ontology of services, called DAML-S, that will make these functionalities possible. This white paper describes the overall structure of the ontology, the service profile for advertising services, and the process model for the detailed description of the operation of services. We also compare DAML-S with several industry efforts to define standards for characterizing services on the Web... DAML-S is an attempt to provide an ontology, within the framework of the DARPA Agent Markup Language, for describing Web services. It will enable users and software agents to automatically discover, invoke, compose, and monitor Web resources offering services, under specified constraints. We have released an initial version of DAML-S. It can be found at the URL: http://www.daml.org/services/daml-s. We expect to enhance it in the future in ways that we have indicated in the paper, and in response to users' experience with it. We believe it will help make the Semantic Web a place where people can not only find out information but also get things done." See the document DAML-S 0.5 Draft Release (May 2001): "This directory contains a draft version of the DAML-S language under development by a group of DAML researchers. We encourage feedback from interested parties. DAML-S is a DAML-based Web service ontology, which supplies Web service providers with a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of their Web services in unambiguous, computer-intepretable form. DAML-S markup of Web services will facilitate the automation of Web service tasks including automated Web service discovery, execution, composition and interoperation. Following the layered approach to markup language development, the current version of DAML-S builds on top of DAML+OIL (March 2001), and subsequent versions will likely build on top of DAML-L."
[June 26, 2001] "DAML Processing in Jess (DAMLJessKB)." From Joe Kopena. 2001-06-26. "This software is intended to facilitate reading DAML files, interpreting the information as per the DAML language, and allowing the user to query on that information. In this software we leverage the existing RDF API (SiRPAC) to read in the DAML file as a collection of RDF triples. We use Jess (Java Expert System Shell) as a forward chaining production system which carries out the rules of the DAML language. The core Jess language is compatible with CLIPS and this work might be portable to that system. A similar approach is taken by DAML API, they also hook RDF API into Jess. However the bridge they use between the two is a little different and at the moment less complete in at least the publicly available version. The basic flow of this library is as follows: (1) Read in Jess rules and facts representing the DAML language; (2) Have RDF API read in the DAML file and create SVO triples; (3) Take triples and assert into Jess' rete network in VSO form, with some slight escaping of literals and translation; (4) Have Jess apply the rules of the language to the data; (5) Apply the agent's rules, queries, etc. The bridge between RDF API and Jess is very simple: each triple is inserted more or less as-is into the knowledge base. A not insignificant help in this is Jess' relatively loose syntax constraints, very few characters need to be escaped to be valid. In Jess these are referred to as ordered slots. An alternative would be to build Jess' unordered (named) slots. This would require more preprocessing of the triples to determine relations. It might be more efficient but also might break down due to the cumulative nature of DAML/RDF -- facts about an object can be asserted at any time and don't neccesarily follow the template. In DAML/RDF it is ok to assert an arbitrary relation about an object at any time unless specifically stated otherwise. This might not mesh well with Jess' templating mechanism. We generally follow the methodology of the DAML/RDF/RDF-S KIF Axiomatization in building our rules. Each fact is asserted as the sentence (PropertyValue <predicate> <subject> <object>). This is sufficient to assert any RDF/DAML information, since all constructs boil down to an underlying set of triples..." Note from Joe Kopena on 'www-rdf-interest@w3.org', 2001-06-26: "At the moment I'm working on a project using DAML to exchange information between units (arguably agents). I'm using it to encode my data and for the ontologies which express what the data means. Recently I've been doing some work on taking in DAML through RDF API and feeding it into Jess (Java Expert System Shell) to be processed. The result is that the data gets treated as DAML as opposed to just RDF triples. . . I'm using DAML in very simple ways at the moment (not even comparable in a number of ways to RDF Schema), but the number of constructs processed is growing as I need them and the system seems fairly useful already. Comments, suggestions, questions, discussion are all welcome..."
[June 26, 2001] "An Axiomatic Semantics for RDF, RDF-S, and DAML+OIL." By Richard Fikesand Deborah L. McGuinness. (Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Stanford University). March 1, 2001. "This document provides an axiomatization for the Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDF-S), and DAML+OIL by specifying a mapping of a set of descriptions in any one of these languages into a logical theory expressed in first-order predicate calculus. The basic claim of this paper is that the logical theory produced by the mapping specified herein of a set of such descriptions is logically equivalent to the intended meaning of that set of descriptions. Providing a means of translating RDF, RDF-S, and DAML+OIL descriptions into a first-order predicate calculus logical theory not only specifies the intended meaning of the descriptions, but also produces a representation of the descriptions from which inferences can automatically be made using traditional automatic theorem provers and problem solvers. For example, the DAML+OIL axioms enable a reasoner to infer from the two statements 'Class Male and class Female are disjointWith.' and 'John is type Male.' that the statement 'John is type Female.' is false. The mapping into predicate calculus consists of a simple rule for translating RDF statements into first-order relational sentences and a set of first-order logic axioms that restrict the allowable interpretations of the non-logical symbols (i.e., relations, functions, and constants) in each language. Since RDF-S and DAML+OIL are both vocabularies of non-logical symbols added to RDF, the translation of RDF statements is sufficient for translating RDF-S and DAML+OIL as well. The axioms are written in ANSI Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF), which is a proposed ANSI standard. The axioms use standard first-order logic constructs plus KIF-specific relations and functions dealing with lists.[1] Lists as objects in the domain of discourse are needed in order to axiomatize RDF containers and the DAML+OIL properties dealing with cardinality..."
[November 25, 2000] "A Model Theoretic Semantics for DAML-ONT." By Richard Fikes and Deborah L McGuinness (Knowledge Systems Laboratory Computer Science Department Stanford University). November 7, 2000. "This document specifies a model-theoretic semantics for the DAML-ONT language by providing a set of first-order logic axioms that can be assumed to hold in any logical theory that is considered to be logically equivalent translation of a DAML-ONT ontology. Our intent is to provide a precise, succinct, and formal description of the relations and constants in DAML-ONT (e.g., complementOf, intersectionOf, Nothing). The axioms provide that description by placing a set of restrictions on the possible interpretations of those relations and constants. The axioms are written in ANSI Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) (http://logic.stanford.edu/kif/kif.html), which is a proposed ANSI standard. This document is organized as an augmentation of the DAML-ONT specification (http://www.daml.org/2000/10/daml-ont.daml). Each set of axioms and their associated comments have been added to the specification document immediately following the portion of the specification for which they provide semantics. For example, the axioms providing semantics for the property complementOf immediately follow the XML property element that defines complementOf. We have maintained the ordering of the definitions from the original DAML-ONT specification, although that ordering is not optimal for understanding the axioms. In particular, the following terms are used in axioms before they are defined in the document: Class, Property, domain, range, type, List. Comments are welcome posted to the www-rdf-logic@w3.org distribution list." [cache]
[October 10, 2000] DAML-ONT Initial Release - "the initial version of the DAML Ontology language specification, released in October 2000." From the announcement 10-October-2000: "This first release is a draft language for the 'ontology' core of the language (roughly corresponding to a frame-based or description logic starting place) - this allows the definition of classes and subclasses, their properties, and a set of restrictions thereon. The language does not yet include any specification of explicit inference rules, which we hope will follow. We believe this ontology core will be a useful starting place for extending the language, and for experiments in a web-based semantic language that is accessible to a wide audience. The language is based on RDF (actually RDF Schema) and extends it to include new concepts. A group of researchers from MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science had primary responsibility for developing this language core. This was then extended by a number of people including representives from the OIL effort, the SHOE project, the KIF work, and DAML contractors."
DAML Ontology Library. The library provides a summary submitted obtologies, sortable by URI, Submission Date, Keyword, Open Directory Category, Class, Property, Funding Source, and Submitting Organization. [cache 2000-11-25]
"Annotated DAML Ontology Markup - Walkthrough." This is an annotated walk through an example DAML Ontology. The example ontology demonstrates each of the features in DAML-ONT, an initial specification for DAML Ontologies. Superscripted text refers to notes at the end of this document. The original example ontology is available separately. DAML builds on existing Web technologies like Extensible Markup Language[XML] and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The references and suggested reading section cites introductory materials as well as official specifications for these technolgoies." [cache]
W3C discussion list for DAML-ONT: 'www-rdf-logic@w3.org'
DAML-ONT and OIL. "This page attempts to provide information concerning OIL- The Ontology Inference Layer - from the perspective of a reader interested in DAML and its evolution. There is an active discussion going on the www-rdf-logic mailing list concerning the evolution of the DAML ontology language and its relations to OIL, thus it may be useful to read some background information... OIL is a language built on a long history of research in description logics. Description Logic is a subfield of knowledge representation and as such aims to provide a vehicle for expressing structured information and for reasoning with the information in a principled manner. Description logics may be viewed as providing a formal foundation for frame-based systems, object-oriented representations, semantic data models, and type systems. OIL is an effort to produce a well defined language for integrating ontologies with web standards (in particular RDF/RDFS and XML/XMLS). It is a web-based representation and inference layer for ontologies using the constructs found in many frame languages and reasoning and formal semantics in description logics. " See "Ontology Interchange Language (OIL)."
SHOE and DAML - "The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) is a recent program by DARPA to develop a language and toolset for the Semantic Web. It has grown out of projects such as SHOE, RDF, Ontobroker, and OIL. Here we provide resources for those who are interested in how DAML relates to SHOE, or wish to use the large set of SHOE ontologies and content pages with their own DAML projects." Includes discussions (1) SHOE/DAML Comparison; (2) SHOE Ontologies in DAML Format; (3) SHOE Content in DAML Format." See "Simple HTML Ontology Extensions (SHOE)."
SHOE/DAML Comparison. "The following table shows how to translate a set of SHOE tags into DAML. We have automated this process with a software tool that can be provided upon request. Note that this is only one possible translation; since DAML is based on RDF, and RDF allows multiple syntaxes for stating things, there are other equivalent translations. Please send any comments or questions about this table to Jeff Heflin."
Joint EU/US ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee - WWW site for the 'Joint Committee' Initial committee membeship: Chair: Mike Dean. Editors: Dan Connolly, Lynn Andrea Stein, Deb McGuiness. Members: Dan Brickley Stefan Decker Pat Hayes Jeff Heflin Ian Horrocks Ora Lassila Frank Van Harmelen. EU Advisor: Dieter Fenstel. US Advisor: Tim Berners-Lee. Govt Advisors: Jim Hendler, Hans-Georg Stork.
PIP [Proposer Information Pamphlet] for BAA 00-07 This document provides a technical overview of DAML and TASK. [cache]
DAML Research Teams and Members. As of 2000-10-06, there were sixteen selected DAML technology research teams.
See also (1) DARPA's program 'Taskable Agent Software Kit (TASK)' and (2) DARPA's 'Control of Agent-Based Systems (CoABS)' program.
"Los agentes inteligentes entenderán el contenido de la web." By Karma Peiró and [interviewed] James Hendler. Fecha de publicación: 27/6/2000
Benjamin Grosof's Home Page Research Project [2000-10]: XML Agent Communication and DARPA Agent Markup Language. I am Principal Investigator (PI) at MIT for a DARPA grant: on techniques for high-level communication between agents in XML. My research here is concerned largely with communication of rule-form beliefs (information), assimilation of such beliefs from multiple sources, reasoning about the scope and degree of trust of those sources, handling of conflicts between those sources, and inter-operable executability of inferencing with those beliefs via knowledge-based and database systems. The sources might be agents, applications, or databases, for example. My focus is especially on information about business rules or policies. This grant project is part of the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) research program. It is also closely related to several aspects of the Semantic Web, an overall concept for the next generation of the Web.
DAML Overview (PowerPoint presentation). [local archive copy]
[February 11, 2000] "DAML Could Take Search to a New Level." By Jim Rapoza. In PC Week Online Volume 17, Number 6 (February 07, 2000), page 33. It may seem that the last thing the world needs is another Web standard, but there is always room for an intelligent addition. A new language known as DAML addresses an important, unmet need -- making Web sites understandable to programs and nontraditional browsing devices. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Agent Markup Language is a step toward what Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, calls a "semantic Web" where agents, search engines and other programs can read DAML mark up to decipher meaning -- rather than just content -- on a Web site. A semantic Web also lets agents utilize all the data on all Web pages, allowing it to gain knowledge from one site and apply it to logical mappings on other sites. Enhanced searching of this type would require a lot of groundwork: Once DAML is available, authors at individual sites would have to add DAML to their pages to describe the content. Although DAML is still in an early stage, Hendler has begun working with Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium to make sure that DAML fits with the W3C's plans for a semantic Web, which would be based primarily on RDF (Resource Description Framework), the W3C's metadata technology for adding machine-readable data to the Web. Hendler said he expects to have a working draft of DAML available by the summer. Like RDF, DAML is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), which should help it integrate with other Web technologies. A site developer would use DAML in much the same way that HTML metatags are used, describing content on a page using markup that is generally invisible to site visitors. A critical difference is that DAML markup would be easily understandable to DAML-enabled user agents and programs, whereas most metatags are proprietary and have no contextual meaning for general search applications. [see the chart...]"
Contact: Program Manager: Professor James Hendler, DARPA Information Systems Office; Email: jhendler@darpa.mil.
