Abstract
Knowledge transaction processing is a very new research area in mobile environments. The main goal of this chapter is to explore and study knowledge representation, reasoning, and transactions in mobile environments. As the outcome of the discussion, this chapter presents and formalizes a knowledge transaction language and model for use in mobile computing environments. In addition, this research further formalizes a framework for a mobile logic programming multi-agent system. The formalization of the knowledge transaction model and the multi-agent system framework herein presented is a first step towards a rigorous and consistent study of knowledge base and intelligent agent in mobile environments.
TopIntroduction
Knowledge representing and reasoning are two important aspects of
artificial intelligence. Within the intelligent agent community,
numerous frameworks/models have been developed for problem solving,
knowledge representation and reasoning, such as the stable
model/answer set (Baral, 2003;
Bordini
2006;
Toni 2005), SMODEL, DLV
and XSB model (Eiter,
1997;
Gebser,
2008;
Nemela,
1996;
Rao, 1997). These models
are knowledge oriented with declarative semantics, and their
specification language can specify the details of knowledge
transactions. However, the discussion of these models is limited to
conventional stationary environments, and has not been extended to
mobile environments.
Within the mobile system community, on the other hand, many efforts
have been invested in developing mobile agent systems. These efforts
have effectively led the development of mobile agent systems such as
Telescipt (White, 1996),
IBM’s Aglets (White,
1996), Concordia (Walsh,
1998),
Voyager (Glass,
1998),
Agent TCL (Glass,
1998),
KLAVA (Bettini, 2002; Deugo 2001), and recent works
on MEMPHIS (Papadakis, 2006),
JIMAF (Fortino, 2008),
ABRTTDMS (Chen, 2009).
However, these well-known mobile agent systems are not knowledge
oriented.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Extended Logic Programs: An extended logic program is a set of rules of the form
A Mobile Logic Programming Multi-Agent System for Mobile Environments: Is a formalized multi-agent system in this chapter to be used for knowledge transaction processing and knowledge study in mobile environments.
Knowledge Transaction: Is a collection of knowledge operations on databases that must be executed atomically, either all operations are performed or none are. The knowledge representing, reasoning and decision making are activities of the knowledge transaction. L0 ? L1, …, Lm, not Lm+1, …, not Ln, (I)
Transaction: Is a collection of operations on the physical, abstract application states or databases that must be executed atomically, either all operations are performed or none are. A transaction can be considered as a collection of actions with the ACID properties - Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. Where 0 = m = n, and each Li is a literal. In the body of rule (I), both classical negation ¬ and weak negation not are allowed to be presented. The extended logic program can include explicit negative information.
Mobile Environment Architecture Model: An environment model to present the salient features of mobile environments in three levels: Home Server, Mobile Support Stations and Mobile Hosts.
Transaction Processing: The term transaction processing system is generally used to mean a complete system. A Transaction Processing system includes application generators, operations tools, one or more database systems, utilities, and networking and operating system software.
Knowledge Transaction Model: Is a rule-based knowledge transaction model formalised in this chapter to be used for knowledge transaction representation, formalization and knowledge reasoning in mobile environments.