Framework: the LAMA platform for KBS development

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LAMA is a software platform devoted to the generation of KBSs, i.e. both knowledge base and inference engine design. The platform supplies a generic environment, composed of common tools that can be shared for designing different KBSs. LAMA provides designers with a common kernel of computational building blocks for the composition of different engines and their corresponding task-oriented knowledge base framework. The LAMA platform offers a unified framework to compose engines from reusable reasoning components or  reusing (parts of) existing engines. Engines can also be tested, compared or modified using the platform. The components of the LAMA component library are finer grainsized than classical problem-solving methods, thus offering designers the right level of abstraction: independent from any programming language, while free enough to fine-tune engine behaviour. As for experts, LAMA provides them with the same graphical interfaces and knowledge base description language to express their knowledge at the expertise level.
 

The platform includes:

BLOCKS, a library of components for engine design: just above the programming language, it provides basic structures and instructions, divided into general and task-specific ones. These instructions correspond to the designer's interface.  We have developed a first version of this library focusing on the complex, but well-defined PS task.
YAKL, a language for expert knowledge expression: it provides a ``model-view'' of the expert knowledge.  The language includes general templates for important concepts, as well as task-oriented ones for PS, such as goals, operators, arguments, rules, etc.
KB verification toolkit, associated facilities for knowledge base verification: they analyse the contents of an expert knowledge base to check its consistency and completeness, according to the knowledge assumptions (i.e. contents and properties) enforced by the engine in use.
YAKL parser and translator: it translates KB contents into programming structures that the engine can manage.
LIVE, a graphical user interface: it enables to visualise the contents of a KB and will soon allow to follow the solving of a processing objective by the engine.
LAd, a communication manager: it allows engines, knowledge bases, and interfaces to interact in a uniformed way.
 

  More about LAMA:

LAMA is the result of a common effort within the ORION team: Mar Marcos (Ph.D student), Patrick Itey (computer science engineer) and myself work on it at present, John Van den Elst and Régis Vincent contributed to it in the past as Ph.D. students. The overall research is supervised by Sabine Moisan (senior researcher).

LAMA main page

LAMA papers

Crubézy, M., Marcos, M., Moisan, S. Experiments in Building Program Supervision Engines from Reusable Components.
To be published in ECAI'98 Workshop on Applications of Ontologies and Problem-Solving Methods. (link to workshop)
Vincent, R., Moisan, S., Thonnat, M. : A Library for Program Supervision Engines, INRIA Research Report 3011, october 1996. (Report in french).

Work around generic tasks, Center for Cognitive Sciences, Ohio State University, USA.
KREST, based on the concept of components of expertise, Free University of Brussels, Belgium.
PROTEGE-II, Stanford Medical Informatics and Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, USA.
SPARK, BURN and FIREFIGHTER, Cambridge Research Lab., Digital Equipment Corp.,USA.
Par-KAP and other work, SWI, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science, USA.
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