Reference: V. Chaudhri, A. F., R. Fikes, P. Karp, J. Rice. OKBC: A Programmatic Foundation for Knowledge Base Interoperability. Proceedings of AAAI-98, Madison, Wisconsin, February, 1998.
Abstract: The technology for building large knowledge bases (KBs) is yet to witness a breakthrough similar to the industrial revolution, so that a KB can be constructed by the assembly of prefabricated knowledge components. Knowledge components include both pieces of domain knowledge (for example, theories of economics or fault diagnosis) and software tools (for example, editors and theorem provers). Most of the current KB development tools can only manipulate knowledge residing in the knowledge representation system (KRS) for which they were originally developed. Open Knowledge Base Connectivity (OKBC) is an application programming interface for accessing KRSs, and was developed to enable the costruction of reusable KB tools. OKBC improves upon its predecessor, the Generic Frame Protocol (GFP), in several significant ways. OKBC can be used with a much larger range of systems because its knowledge model includes general assertions and has a better way of controlling inference. OKBC can be used on practically any platform because it supports network transparency and has implementations for multiple programming languages. In this paper, we discuss some of the technical design issues faced in the development of OKBC, and we report practical experiences in using it.
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