Achieving knowledge interoperability: An XML/XSLT approach

Abstract

Development of an intelligent system requires not only profound understanding of the problem under study, but also employment of different knowledge representation techniques and tools often based on a variety of paradigms and technological platforms. In this context automation of knowledge sharing between different systems becomes increasingly important. One solution might be to extend a knowledge modeling tool by implementing a set of new classes or functions for importing other knowledge formats (using, e.g. Java, C++, etc.). But, this can be a rather difficult and time consuming task. Since XML is now widely accepted as knowledge representation syntax, we believe that a more suitable solution would be to use eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) a W3C standard for transforming XML documents. A special advantage of this approach is that even though an XSLT is written independently of any programming language, it can be executed by a program written in almost any up-to-date programming language. We experiment on an XSLT-based infrastructure for sharing knowledge between three knowledge modeling and acquisition tools that use different conceptual models for knowledge representation in order to evaluate cons and pros of the proposed XSLT approach. Two of these tools, JessGUI and JavaDON are ongoing efforts of the GOOD OLD AI research group to develop interoperable development tools for building intelligent systems, while the third one is Protégé-2000, a broadly accepted ontology development tool.