Conference heron::euro_swas_ai

200.0. ""Rough" Draft of KAM White Paper Executive Su" by HERON::ROACH (TANSTAAFL !) Tue May 29 1990 14:50

Printed by: Pat Roach                                    Document Number: 011605
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                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     24-May-1990 10:53pm CET
                                        From:     PAPAGEORGE
                                                  PAPAGEORGE@AITG@HERON@MRGATE@HUGHI
                                        Dept:      
                                        Tel No:    

TO:  ROACH@A1NSTC


Subject: FWD:  "Rough" Draft of KAM White Paper Executive Summary. Thanks. Themis

From:	AITG::PAPAGEORGE     16-MAY-1990 16:07:41.02
To:	lachiusa, mchugh, guess::hale
CC:	PAPAGEORGE
Subj:	 "Rough" Draft of KAM White Paper Executive Summary. Thanks. Themis





                        DRAFT - May 16, 1990


              Knowledge Asset Management (KAM) Technology
	      ===========================================


          Executive Summary
	  -----------------
 
          KAM is a next generation technology.  This technology advances the
          state of the art from data processing to knowledge processing.  
          It allows it's users to capture and codify knowledge as a corporate 
          asset, and manages that knowledge as a tangible corporate asset.

	KAM is a new technology that will serve as a foundation in the 			
	development of products and applications that enable corporations to 		
	manage Knowledge Assets. This foundation will allow software developers, 	
	application developers and MIS organizations to build the next 			
	generation of products, applications and information systems 			
	incorporating data and knowledge. 

	KAM will be robust and general enough to allow building products, 		
	applications and information systems on many platforms and operating 		
	systems and will free the developer from the task of designing new (and 	
	incompatible with all existing other products and applications) 		
	knowledge representations and inference mechanisms; instead the 		
	builder will be freed to concentrate on the product/application/system 		
	specific features. Furhermore, the builder will be able to maintain the 	
	systems built on the new technology foundation much easier than before, 	
	because of the "standard" representation and the C language used for 		
	KAM.

        From a technical point of view, KAM is a merger of the most powerful 		
	Knowledge Representation (ROCK) and the most powerful forward chaining
        Inferencie Engine (TIN) available.  Implemented in C and C++
        and delivered in C for compatibility with conventional software and for 	
	portability, it will set a new standard for the	knowledge processing 		
	market.

          ROCK is the implementation of a powerful schema representation 		
	language(CRL) with persistent schema storage. An example of this 		
	architecture in the past has been Knowledge Craft, a product with 		
	established benchmarks for power and speed of execution in the case of 		
	large knowledge bases. TIN is Digital's proprietary evolution of  a high 	
	performance forward chaining rules language. An example of this 		
	implementation  in the past has been VAX OPS5, again with well 			
	established benchmarks for power and speed of execution in the case of 		
	large rule bases.

	Major benefits are:
          
          Reasoning about knowledge
          
          KAM is addressing high performance for extremely large knowledge 
          bases.
          
          Integration and Embeddability with conventional systems

          Portability and Distributability within heterogeneous environments

      	  Finally, the reason all th members of IMKA chose to develop this new 		
	  technology is simple: each member of the IMKA alliance defined their 		
	  corporate needs in capturing and managing complex corporate-wide 		
	  knowledge.  Each company evaluated presently available technology and 	
	  applications for knowledge acquisition and determined that the 		
	  existing technology would not meet the business demands of the next 		
	  decade.