Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) is a
computer language designed to enable systems to share and re-use information from
knowledge-based systems. KIF is similar to
frame languages such as
KL-One and
LOOM
A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but th ...
but unlike such language its primary role is not intended as a framework for the expression or use of knowledge but rather for the interchange of knowledge between systems. The designers of KIF likened it to
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
. PostScript was not designed primarily as a language to store and manipulate documents but rather as an interchange format for systems and devices to share documents. In the same way KIF is meant to facilitate sharing of knowledge across different systems that use different languages, formalisms, platforms, etc.
KIF has a
declarative semantics.
It is meant to describe facts about the world rather than processes or procedures. Knowledge can be described as objects, functions, relations, and rules. It is a formal language, i.e., it can express arbitrary statements in
first order logic and can support
reasoners that can prove the consistency of a set of KIF statements. KIF also supports
non-monotonic reasoning. KIF was created by
Michael Genesereth,
Richard Fikes and others participating in the
DARPA knowledge sharing Effort.
Although the original KIF group intended to submit to a formal standards body, that did not occur. A later version called
Common Logic has since been developed for submission to
ISO and has been approved and published. A variant called SUO-KIF is the language in which the
Suggested Upper Merged OntologySuggested Upper Merged Ontology
is written.
A practical application of the Knowledge interchange format is 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.
The m ...
in a multi-agent system.
See also
* Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language
The Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language, or KQML, is a language
and protocol for communication among software agents and knowledge-based systems. It was
developed in the early 1990s as part of the DARPA knowledge Sharing Effort, which was aim ...
References
External links
Knowledge Interchange Format
page at the Stanford AI Lab
Common Logic
Knowledge representation languages
Ontology (information science)
Logic in computer science
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