Papers of the Business Rules for E-Commerce Project:
Publications, Reports, Patents, Talk Slides, etc.

Format Notes: To view POSTSCRIPT format documents, you need an appropriate viewer such as ghostview or gv on UNIX or GSView on WIN95/WIN98/WIN NT. To view PDF format documents, you need an appropriate viewer such as Adobe Inc.'s free Acrobat(TM) Reader on UNIX or WIN95.
"Postscript" below means in postscript format (uncompressed).

• Project Overviews:
  • Detailed Project Overview, as Talk Slides:
    "Business Rules for Electronic Commerce: Interoperability and Conflict Handling", By Benjamin N. Grosof (July 28, 1999). This contains about 50 slides.
    You can get HTML or a single file in pdf format (good for printing, but unfortunately appears on screen only in sideways-rotated orientation, at least in Acrobat Reader 3.0) or a single file in postscript format (in postscript viewer, set Orientation to be Landscape; this file may be somewhat device-dependent for printing).

  • Brief Project Overview, in Prose:
    you can get it in HTML: it's simply the project home page.

• Courteous Logic Programs: Introduction and Basic-case Version:

  "Courteous Logic Programs: Prioritized Conflict Handling for Rules" (Dec. 30 1997, revised from May 8 1997). By Benjamin N. Grosof. IBM Research Report RC 20836.
  You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.
  Includes TALK SLIDES as an appendix.

  Publication History: This report is an extended version of the ILPS-97 publication with the different title "Prioritized Conflict Handling for Logic Programs", in: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Logic Programming (ILPS-97), edited by Jan Maluszynski, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, pages 197-211. Held Port Jefferson, NY, USA, Oct. 12-17, 1997. (Book title is: "Logic Programming: Proceedings of the 1997 International Symposium". This report also essentially supersumes another earlier publication: "Practical Prioritized Defaults Via Logic Programs" (June 10, 1996), By Benjamin N. Grosof, in: Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, edited by Moises Goldszmidt and Vladimir Lifschitz. Held Timberline, OR, USA, June 10-12, 1996.

  Correction and Version Note: Theorem 25 (Preservation in Prioritized Merging) contains a bug. The theorem statement needs some additional restricting conditions. Details are in a forthcoming version of the paper.

• Courteous Logic Programs: Compiler Approach and Expressive Generalization:
  • Overall compiler approach, plus generalization to enable recursion and reasoning about the prioritization ordering itself:

    "Compiling Prioritized Default Rules Into Ordinary Logic Programs" (May 7, 1999). By Benjamin N. Grosof. IBM Research Report RC 21472.
    You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.
    Submitted for publication.
    Comments: The demo paper below -- IBM Research Report RC 21473 -- is complementary, and includes a long example.

  • Generalization to enable pairwise mutual exclusions as the scope of conflict, beyond just p versus classical-negation-of-p as the scope of conflict:

    "A Courteous Compiler From Generalized Courteous Logic Programs To Ordinary Logic Programs" (July 20, 1999). By Benjamin N. Grosof.
    Report included as part of documentation in the IBM CommonRules 1.0 alpha prototype Web release of July 30, 1999 on AlphaWorks.
    You can get full paper in postscript (sometimes this does not print; includes a figure not contained in the pdf version) or in pdf (suitable for printing) format.
    Comments:

    • This describes the version of courteous logic programs implemented in the IBM CommonRules 1.0 alpha prototype release available free on AlphaWorks.
    • This extends and complements the paper above -- IBM Research Report RC 21472 -- that introduces the compiler approach and gives an earlier step of expressive generalization.
    • The demo paper below -- IBM Research Report RC 21473 -- is complementary, and includes a long example.

• Demo Overviews of the CommonRules/DIPLOMAT System and of Further-Generalized Courteous Logic Programs with Compiler (the further expressive generalization is to include pairwise mutual exclusions):
  • "DIPLOMAT: Compiling Prioritized Default Rules Into Ordinary Logic Programs, for Electronic Commerce Applications (Extended Abstract of Intelligent Systems Demonstration)" (May 7, 1999). By Benjamin N. Grosof. IBM Research Report RC 21473.
    You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.

    Publication History: This report is an extended version of the AAAI-99 publication of the same title, in: Proceedings of AAAI-99 (National Conference on Artificial Intelligence), edited by James Hendler and Devika Subramanian. AAAI Press /MIT Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA / Cambridge, MA, USA. Held Orlando, FL, USA, July 18-22, 1999.

    Comments:

    • The AAAI-99 publication is a short refereed paper (2 proceedings pages) describing an official conference demo.
    • The report augments that with a long demo example about e-storefront personalized discounting and targeted promotions, that illustrates prioritized conflict handling, the courteous compiler, and translation between rule systems/languages.
    • The detailed paper on the courteous compiler approach etc. -- IBM Research Report RC 21472 -- is complementary.
    • Similar to the above AAAI-99 demo publication is the following AMEC-99 workshop publication, which is more oriented towards e-commerce agent applications. It is a refereed abstract (2 proceedings pages, containing references) describing an official workshop demo and talk (30-minute plenary-session presentation).
      • "DIPLOMAT: Business Rules Interlingua and Conflict Handling, for E-Commerce Agent Applications (Overview of System Demonstration)" (July 31, 1999), By Benjamin N. Grosof, in Proceedings of the IJCAI-99 Workshop on Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC-99) (National Conference on Artificial Intelligence). Held Stockholm, Sweden, July 31, 1999, in conjunction with the IJCAI-99 conference..
        You can get it in postscript or in pdf format.

• Business Rules Markup Language (BRML), an XML Rule Interlingua for Agent Communication, based on Courteous/Ordinary Logic Programs:

  "An Approach to using XML and a Rule-based Content Language with an Agent Communication Language" (May 28, 1999). By Benjamin N. Grosof and Yannis Labrou. In: Proceedings of the IJCAI-99 Workshop on Agent Communication Languages (ACL-99). Held Stockholm, Sweden, Aug. 1, 1999, in conjunction with the IJCAI-99 conference..
  Paper also available as IBM Research Report RC 21491 (May 28, 1999).
  You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.

  Comments: The paper gives alpha-version XML DTD's for BRML and for Agent Communication Markup Language, a new XML version of FIPA standards-draft Agent Communication Language. It also gives the relationship of these to each other and to ANSI standards-draft Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) (you can also see another KIF site). See the current IBM CommonRules version documentation for the latest updated XML DTD for BRML.

• Contract Language for Negotiations and Configuring Auctions, using and extending Courteous Logic Programs:

  "Towards a Declarative Language for Negotiating Executable Contracts" (May 11, 1999). By Daniel M. Reeves, Benjamin N. Grosof, Michael P. Wellman, and Hoi Y. Chan. In: Proceedings of the AAAI-99 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Electronic Commerce (AIEC-99), edited by Tim Finin and Benjamin N. Grosof. Proceedings available as a AAAI Technical Report. AAAI Press / MIT Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA / Cambridge, MA, USA. Held Orlando, FL, USA, July 18, 1999.
  Paper also available as IBM Research Report RC 21476 (May 11, 1999).
  You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format .

  Comments: this gives an approach to configuring auctions and negotiations, starting by representing contract provisions in the Courteous Logic Programs knowledge representation, and extending the contract language's ontology with vocabulary specific for defining what are the open-for-negotiation aspects of a contract.

• Business Rules in Contracts, as an application of Courteous Logic Programs in XML:

  "A Declarative Approach to Business Rules in Contracts: Courteous Logic Programs in XML" (Sept. 21, 1999). By Benjamin N. Grosof, Yannis Labrou, and Hoi Y. Chan. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC-99), edited by Michael P. Wellman. Held Nov. 3-5, 1999, in Denver, Colorado, USA. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 1999.
  You can get abstract or full paper in postscript or in pdf format.
  Comments: An extended version is planned be available as an IBM Research Report, probably in October or November 1999.

• Distributed Trust Management: Security and Authorization Policies with Delegation of Trust, using and extending Courteous/Ordinary Logic Programs:

  "A Logic-based Knowledge Representation for Authorization with Delegation" (May 28, 1999). By Ninghui Li, Benjamin N. Grosof, and Joan Feigenbaum.
  IBM Research Report RC 21492.
  You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.

  Publication History: This report is an extended version (containing full proofs) of the CSFW-99 publication: "A Logic-based Knowledge Representation for Authorization with Delegation (Extended Abstract)", by Ninghui Li, Joan Feigenbaum, and Benjamin N. Grosof, in: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop (CSFW-99). Held Mordano, Italy, June 28-30, 1999.

  Comments: The technical approach is a multi-agent knowledge representation that extends first ordinary logic programs, and then courteous logic programs, by adding features for delegation and k-out-of-n thresholds.

• "Proceedings of the AAAI-99 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Electronic Commerce (AIEC-99)" (July 18, 1999), edited by Tim Finin and Benjamin N. Grosof. (NB: editorship order is alphabetic.) Available as a AAAI Technical Report. AAAI Press / MIT Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA / Cambridge, MA, USA. Held Orlando, FL, USA, July 18, 1999.

Additional relevant older papers from the earlier Intelligent Agents Project (1994-97), which the Business Rules for E-Commerce Project grew out of.

• Situated Logic Programs (i.e., with clean Procedural Attachments), and their use for rule-based Intelligent Agents embedded in networked applications, including the earlier system ABE / RAISE; ABE is IBM's Agent Building Environment, a C++ alpha tool in release 1996-98, of which RAISE is the research-version core rule engine:
  • "Building Commercial Agents: An IBM Research Perspective (Invited Talk)" (Apr. 21, 1997). By Benjamin N. Grosof. In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on The Practical Applications of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM97), edited by Barry Crabtree. The Practical Applications Company, Blackpool, Lancashire, UK. Held London, UK, April 21-23, 1997.
    Paper also available as IBM Research Report RC 20835 (May 08 1997).
    You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format .

    Comment: This is an overview paper presented as an invited conference talk. The core of ABE / RAISE is a forward-chaining rule engine, implementing the situated logic programs knowledge representation.

  • PATENT: "Flexible Procedural Attachment to Situate Reasoning Systems"
    U.S. Patent 5,778,150 (granted July 7, 1998; filed July 1, 1996). By Benjamin N. Grosof, David W. Levine, and Hoi Y. Chan. (Ordering listed on patent document of inventors is always simply alphabetic.)
    You can get the patent document, or its abstract, at the U.S. patents server (search by author, e.g., "Grosof", or by patent number). For convenience, here's the contentful abstract in HTML .

    Comment: Complements and extends the description of situated reasoning in the PAAM97 overview paper -- IBM Research Report RC 20835.

  • "Reusable Architecture for Embedding Rule-based Intelligence in Information Agents" (Dec. 01 1995). By Benjamin N. Grosof, David W. Levine, Hoi Y. Chan, Colin J. Parris, and Joshua S. Auerbach. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Information Agents, at the ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM-95), edited by Tim Finin and James Mayfield. Held Baltimore, MD, USA, Dec. 1-2, 1995.
    Paper also available as IBM Research Report RC 20305 (Dec. 05 1995).
    You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.

    Comment: describes an early version of the RAISE architecture.

  • "Globenet and RAISE: Intelligent Agents for Networked Newsgroups and Customer Service Support" (Nov. 10 1995). By Benjamin N. Grosof and Davis A. Foulger. In: Proceedings of the 1995 AAAI Fall Symposium on AI Applications in Knowledge Navigation and Retrieval edited by Robin Burke. Held Nov. 10-12, 1995, at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. AAAI Technical Report FS-95-03, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA.
    Paper also available as IBM Research Report RC 20226 (Oct. 17 1995).
    You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.

    Comment: describes the use of RAISE to enhance the pre-existing Globenet application system with intelligent agent capabilities.

• The Role of Conflict Handling in Agents Learning from user instruction and from inter-agent knowledge-level communication: :

  "Conflict Handling in Advice Taking and Instruction" (July 07 1995). By Benjamin N. Grosof. IBM Research Report RC 20123.
  Publication History: This report is an extended version of the ML-95 Workshop publication, in: Proceedings of the ML-95 Workshop on Agents that Learn From Other Agents, edited by Diana Gordon (gordon@aic.nrl.navy.mil). Held at the Twelfth International Conference on Machine Learning (ML-95), Tahoe City, CA, USA, July 9, 1995.
  You can get abstract; or full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format.

  Comment: "Advice Taking" means one agent taking knowledge (e.g., rules) from another.

• Authoring of Rules, including User Interface aspects:

  "Approaches to Authoring of Rules for Intelligent Agents" (Mar. 21, 1996). By Benjamin N. Grosof. In: Proceedings of the 1996 AAAI Spring Symposium on Acquisition, Learning, and Demonstration: Automating Tasks for Users, edited by Yolanda Gil. Held at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, Mar. 1997. AAAI Technical Report SS-96-02, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA.
  You can get short full paper in postscript or in pdf or in dvi format -- it's a 3-page extended abstract.

• Mobile Agents:
  • "Itinerant Agents for Mobile Computing" (Oct. 1995). By David Chess, Benjamin N. Grosof, Colin G. Harrison, David W. Levine, and Colin J. Parris (NB: authorship order is alphabetic). In: IEEE Personal Communications, Oct. 1995.
    Publication History: Preprint was available (now copyright is restricted) as IBM Research Report RC 20010 (Oct. 17 1995, revised from Mar. 27 1995).
    You can get introduction and summary or e-mail us to request a reprint of the full paper in postscript or pdf format.

    Comments: This is about architecture for making intelligent agents be "itinerant", i.e., mobile in the sense that they move between different machines to run on, executing first on one machine then on another, carrying their partial state as they go. This also includes the concept of an Agent Meeting Point.

    This builds upon a closely related paper, whose intellectual origins grew in large part out of group discussions in the Intelligent Agents project:

    • "Mobile Agents: Are They A Good Idea?" (1994). By David Chess, Colin Harrison, and Aaron Kershenbaum.
      IBM Research Report.
      You can get abstract or full paper in postcript or in pdf format.

More stuff --- especially, other older papers about reasoning and learning in agents --- is available at
Benjamin Grosof's Papers page.

For further information, please contact: Benjamin Grosof at grosof@us.ibm.com

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