KNOWLEDGE BROKERS USING SIGNED FEATURE CONSTRAINTS

摘要

A method of implementing a knowledge broker software agent which processes knowledge requests expressed in terms of feature constraints, if necessary decomposing the requests into subrequests. The invention employs a subset of feature constraints, called "signed feature constraints" (SFC), each feature constraint having at least a positive component and a negative component, each of the positive component and the negative component including one or more relations, such as sort relations and feature relations. An advantage is that SFCs can be used in knowledge retrieval engines to specify, in a common language, (i) knowledge search requests, (ii) the answers to these requests and (iii) the state of the knowledge retrieving agents (referred to herein as knowledge brokers). A method for solving SFCs is also disclosed.