Ontology Aware Software Service Agents: Meeting Ordinary User Needs on the Semantic Web

Ontology Aware Software Service Agents: Meeting Ordinary User Needs on the Semantic Web Muhammed Al-Muhammed Supported in part by NSF

The Challenge • Reduce information overload • Find and use services I want to see a dermatologist next week; any day would be ok for me, at 4:00 p.m. The dermatologist must be within 20 miles from my home and must accept my insurance.

Approach • Task ontology • Domain ontology • Process ontology • Characteristics • Task specification: Free-form text • Request recognition: find best task ontology • Task execution • Specialize task ontology processes • Execute generated code

Domain Ontology Time Textual representation: “[d][d]?\s*([:]\s* [d][d]?)?\s* ([A|a|P|p]\s* [.]?\s* [M|m]\s* [.]?)” … end;

Task Recognition

Appointment … context keywords/phrase: “appointment |want to see a |…” Dermatologist … context keywords/phrases: “([D|d]ermatologist) | …” I want to see a dermatologist next week; any day would be ok for me, at 4:00 p.m. The dermatologist must be within 20 miles from my home and must accept my insurance.

Appointment … context keywords/phrase: “appointment |want to see a |…” Dermatologist … context keywords/phrases: “([D|d]ermatologist) | …”  I want to see a dermatologist next week; any day would be ok for me, at 4:00 p.m. The dermatologist must be within 20 miles from my home and must accept my insurance.

Appointment … context keywords/phrase: “appointment |want to see a |…” Dermatologist … context keywords/phrases: “([D|d]ermatologist) | …”   I want to see adermatologist next week; any day would be ok for me, at 4:00 p.m. The dermatologist must be within 20 miles from my home and must accept my insurance.

Appointment … context keywords/phrase: “appointment |want to see a |…” Dermatologist … context keywords/phrases: “([D|d]ermatologist) | …”       I want to see adermatologist next week; any day would be ok for me, at 4:00 p.m. The dermatologist must be within 20 miles from my home and must accept my insurance.

Process Ontology

Task Execution • Domainindependent subprocesses • Coded once • Specialized for a domain • A domaindependent subprocess • Domain execution • Automatically generated

Domainindependent subprocesses Task View Creation      

Domainindependent subprocesses Task View Creation

Domainindependent subprocesses Task Constraints Creation Date … NextWeek(d1: Date, d2: Date) returns (Boolean{T,F}) context keywords/phrases: next week | week from now | … Distance internal representation : real; input (s: String) context keywords/phrases: miles | mile | mi | kilometers | kilometer | meters | meter | centimeter | … Within(d1: Distance, “20”) returns (Boolean {T or F}) context keywords/phrases: within | not more than |  | … return (d1d2) … end;

Domainindependent subprocesses Task Constraints Creation Taskimposed constraints: NextWeek(d1: Date, d2: Date) Person(x) is at Address(a1) and Dermatologist(y) is at Address(a2) and Within(DistanceBetween(a1, a2), “20”)  i2 (Dermatologist(y) accepts Insurance(i2 ) and Equal(“IHC”, i2))

Domainindependent subprocesses Obtaining Information from the System

Domainindependent subprocesses Obtaining Information from a User

Domainindependent subprocesses Constraint Satisfaction

Domainindependent subprocesses Negotiation

DomainDependent Subprocess Date(“28 Dec 04”) and NextWeek(“28 Dec 04”, “5 Jan 05”) Person(Person100) is at Address(“Provo 300 State St.”) and Dermatologist(Dermatologist0) is at Address(“Orem 600 State St.”) and Within(DistanceBetween(“Provo 300 State St.”, “Orem 600 State St.”), “22”)  i2 (Dermatologist(Dermatologist0) accepts Insurance(i2) andEqual(“IHC”, i2))

Contributions • Simplification of everyday task execution • Domainindependent subprocesses • Task ontology based system extension

Ontology Aware Software Service Agents: Meeting Ordinary User Needs on the Semantic Web