The Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language, or KQML, is a language and protocol for communication among software agents and

knowledge-based systems A knowledge-based system (KBS) is a computer program that reasons and uses a knowledge base to solve complex problems. The term is broad and refers to many different kinds of systems. The one common theme that unites all knowledge based systems i ...

. It was developed in the early 1990s as part of the

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

knowledge Sharing Effort, which was aimed at developing techniques for building large-scale knowledge bases which are shareable and reusable. While originally conceived of as an interface to knowledge based systems, it was soon repurposed as an

Agent communication language Agent Communication Language (ACL), proposed by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA), is a proposed standard language for agent communications. Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) is another proposed standard. Th ...

.Tim Finin; Jay Weber; Gio Wiederhold; Michael Gensereth; Richard Fritzson; Donald McKay; James McGuire; Richard Pelavin; Stuart Shapiro; Chris Beck
DRAFT Specification of the KQML Agent-Communication Language (PostScript)
June 15, 1993. Work on KQML was led by

Tim Finin Timothy Wilking Finin (born 1949 in Walworth, Wisconsin) is the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Chair in Engineering and is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). His rese ...

of the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...

and Jay Weber of EITech and involved contributions from many researchers. The KQML message format and protocol can be used to interact with an intelligent system, either by an

application program Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

, or by another intelligent system. KQML's "performatives" are operations that agents perform on each other's knowledge and goal stores. Higher-level interactions such as contract nets and negotiation are built using these. KQML's "communication facilitators" coordinate the interactions of other agents to support

knowledge sharing Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge (namely, information, skills, or expertise) is exchanged among people, friends, peers, families, communities (for example, Wikipedia), or within or between organizations. It bridges the ind ...

. Experimental prototype systems support concurrent engineering, intelligent design, intelligent planning, and scheduling. KQML is superseded by

FIPA-ACL Agent Communication Language (ACL), proposed by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA), is a proposed standard language for agent communications. Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) is another proposed standard. The ...

References

{{reflist Knowledge representation languages Multi-agent systems