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Ontology Constructor 

In order to work with ontology, a user is provided a number of applications for constructing ontology that allow:

    Generation of new notions and relations within a specified domain;

    Description of rules of behaviour and agent communication policy;

    Construction of the architecture of a multi-agent community as a whole.

Different versions and modules of ontology constructors are oriented towards different aspects and levels of descriptions of ontology.

Every concept and relation is also assigned its own agents. These agents are capable of detecting contradictions in the concepts created, automatically generating new notions and establishing new relations between them based on generalisation, aggregation and association.

This feature is especially important for supporting synchronous work amongst many users, located at different sites but with one ontology. In this case, a continuous integration of knowledge and data is necessary to provide verification, systematisation and co-ordination. The information and data entering the system can be heterogeneous, complementary or contradicting each other, is being updated, is outdated, or in different formats. These functions are implemented by a specialised version of the ontology constructor: an integrator of knowledge and data.

Knowledge acquired is of great value to the enterprises, which is why in the near future agents will be able to use their experience, gained from the knowledge management system, to update ontology and new business rules.

Example of the ontology semantic network	Example of ontology scripts

Debugging of ontology and Agent Negotiations top

Facilities are available for step-by-step debugging of the developed ontology or libraries of extensions.

Changes that take place in the developed system (for example, clusters formed and incoming messages in the knowledge management system), are shown in the central window of the system screen.

A current state of the scene is available for interactive access; by initiating an object on the screen it is possible to obtain all the parameters of its state. A visual system of message exchange of the 'radar' type is used to describe the processes of negotiating. As one agent sends another agent, or a group of agents, special signals (with divergent sectors of circles), these signals are represented by different colours: to signify agreement or disagreement, acceptance of proposals or a new proposal. At the same time, contents of all the messages sent are shown in the top right corner of the screen, including the meanings of all the attributes, all variants of the decisions that agents consider and finally select. This allows debugging not only through the system log, but also by a convenient, visual interaction with the system.

Knowledge Integrator top

This system is used when ontology of an enterprise is updated by different specialists located at different sites. Each is able to add to the ontology new notions and relations, while the system carries out work to 'trace' and co-ordinate the difference between the new and already existing notions and relations, seeking out variants, systemising and unifying the ontology. For this purpose, every notion of the ontology is assigned its own agent, capable of communicating with the agents of other notions and of establishing new relations by association and generalisation.

This system allows the exchange not only of formalised concepts of the ontology, but also of poorly formalised and heterogeneous data (texts, videocassettes, databases). For this purpose, each item of data is provided with a semantic descriptor on the basis of the ontology (a description of a scene), enabling agents to establish relations and inform potentially interested users, constantly updating the user preferences, as is done in the News Agency (to learn more about News Agency press here).