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Internet Logic

EstablishIT: An interactive system for collaboratively applying eligibility criteria

The project started in 2002 and is expected to end in 2003.

The interaction will be between two business partners, one that sets the eligibility criteria and another, the requester, that tries to meet them. This system generalizes the three main explanation features found in expert system technologies: "how", "why not" and "what if". The top-level query is the request for eligibility posed by the requester. On receiving this request and the eligibility criteria, the system creates a proof or a partial proof and displays (some of) it as a tree to the requestor. The proof is composed of instances of the definite clauses that express the eligibility criteria, and the facts that the system has access to that describe this requestor and the situation at hand. If the proof has no missing parts, it corresponds to an answer to a "how" query, in that it tells how the eligibility was established. But if the proof is missing facts, these gaps are denoted with a "red mark". This structure answers the "why not" query, telling why eligibility could not be established. The requester has the option of temporarily hypothesizing that some fact is true in an attempt to discover what other information might arise if it were true. This corresponds to a "what if" query. The prototype is also being developed based on the j-DREW inference engine as part of Keping Jia's master's thesis.

Extensions are planned to follow in step with developments in the Policy RuleML project; different interactions will be necessary for different modalities. For example, why, why not and how questions about obligations and permissions may be ambiguous. Is the requester's question "Why is obligation status applied to a given condition?" or is it asking "Why is that particular condition the one I am obliged to meet?" Other modalities and speech acts in the logic raise deeper questions.

The complete knowledge issue arises again here: when an explanation is sought and the underlying conditions change, the correct explanation to the requester requires a reference to the new information and what has been changed as a result. It may be best if the explanation is given for a static situation, and a re-validation is suggested after the interaction is complete.

Our research results could have an impact on Web services delivery and e-shopping.

Research opportunities related to this project: we are looking for research collaborations with researchers interested declarative debugging, Web Services permissions.

Possible applications include: permissions and access control to secure and private systems, online shopping.

Research Contact

Dr. Bruce Spencer
Group Leader
Internet Logic
NRC Institute for Information Technology
46 Dineen Drive
Fredericton, NB E3B 9W4
Telephone: +1 (506) 444-0384
E-mail: Bruce.Spencer@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

Business Contact

Marc-Alain Mallet
Business Development Officer
Business Development Office, New Brunswick
NRC Institute for Information Technology
46 Dineen Drive
Fredericton, NB E3B 9W4
Telephone: +1 (506) 444-0394
Fax: +1 (506) 452-3859
E-mail: Marc-Alain.Mallet@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca