Data processing: artificial intelligence – Knowledge processing system – Knowledge representation and reasoning technique
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-17
2002-12-03
Khatri, Anil (Department: 2122)
Data processing: artificial intelligence
Knowledge processing system
Knowledge representation and reasoning technique
C706S046000, C706S048000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06490574
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to rule-based intelligent agent systems, and, in particular, to improvements for managing events and rule sets in multi-user intelligent agent environments.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
An intelligent agent is a specialized program which autonomously performs tasks on behalf of users based on instructions given to it by the users, and may also communicate and exchange data with other intelligent agents. One example of an intelligent agent program is called a personal assistant. Personal assistant programs, which often use rule-based forms of instructions, are quickly becoming the state-of-the-art method for automatically performing tasks on the workstation, particularly in an office environment.
Personal assistant programs offer the user a particular set of events which the personal assistant can automate, conditions to be evaluated about the events, and actions to be taken based Qn the events and conditions. The events specify occurrences of events in an office environment designated by the user, such as the point in time when the user receives an electronic mail item. The conditions are related criteria at the time the event occurs, such as a certain time of day or from whom the electronic mail was sent. The actions are the functions designated by the user to occur automatically when the event occurs under the stated conditions.
For example, a personal assistant may process three types of events:
1. Mail: When mail arrives
2. Time: At a specific time
3. File: If file manipulation occurs.
Table 1 shows events, conditions, and action elements offered by an exemplary personal assistant program which performs mail manipulation:
TABLE 1
Instruction Book - TestBook
Instruction Edit Tools Parts options Help
Name: Mail Instruction 1
Event
Conditions
Actions
New Mail
Contains
Move to
Keyword
Folder
Time Alarm
When Time
Look for
Overdue
Mail
As shown in Table 1, a user has defined two events: “New Mail” and “Time Alarm.” The entries of the “Conditions” column are the criteria under which the personal assistant program is to take an action on the event, such as looking for a certain string of characters, “keyword,” in the text of a received mail item, and/or starting an action at a certain time “time.” The “Actions” column indicates the action that the program must take once the specified set of conditions is satisfied, such as transferring a mail item to a particular mail folder and/or scanning the user's existing mail to generate reminders for overdue mail items.
The user selects events, conditions, and actions to be used in building a rule, then the user connects these elements appropriately. Rules can be built to execute all actions if any condition is met, all actions only if all conditions are met, or ordered actions if select criteria are met. Only certain conditions and certain actions can be associated with each event.
Continuing with the example, a typical rule may be defined with the elements shown in Table 2:
TABLE 2
Instruction Book - TestBook
Instruction Edit Tools Parts options Help
Name: Mail Instruction 1
Event
Conditions
Actions
New Mail
Contains
Move To
Keyword =
Folder =
“For Sale”
“Junk
Mail”
This rule causes the following to occur: if a new mail item arrives and the text of the mail item contains the phrase “For Sale”, the mail item is moved into he “Junk mail” folder.
A user may define a personal variable to be used in rules. For example, the user might define the term “mgr” to be set to the value “Joe”, then a rule can be built to send a file to the “%mgr%” folder, which would cause the mail to be sent to the “Joe” folder. Therefore, instead of changing all the rules which refer to Joe, only the definition of the personal variable “mgr” needs to be changed.
A user may also be able to dynamically assign values to personal variables in a rule. This feature may be useful for such tasks as registering applications for use in other rules, even if the name of the application is not known at the time the rule is built, but becomes known when a particular rule fires.
The example personal assistant has been described above as operates on behalf of a single user. However, intelligent agents may operate on behalf of multiple users simultaneously, such as in a server system shared by the users. In such multi-user environments an additional degree of complexity is added since the rules used by the intelligent agent can be defined and changed by each of the agent's users. Consequently, the system must keep track of on whose behalf it is processing a particular event and use the correct rule sets for processing of that user's events. Moreover, the system must also allow modifications to one user's rule sets while the intelligent agents is processing events for other users.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus which operates a rule-based intelligent agent to process events occurring in a computer system on behalf of a group of users. The method and apparatus 1) receive at least one event set and rule set for each of the group of users; 2) associate, with each event set and each rule set, a respective selection key which identifies the rule set and the event set with the respective user; 3) monitor the computer system to detect an occurrence of an event condition, the detected event condition corresponding to an event specified in at least one of the received event sets; 4) assign at least one selection key to the detected event condition, each assigned selection key corresponding to the at least one specified event of the received event sets; and 5) processing the detected event condition using at least one rule set having a respective selection key which matches the selection key assigned to the event condition.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4754410 (1988-06-01), Leech et al.
patent: 4943932 (1990-07-01), Lark et al.
patent: 5140671 (1992-08-01), Hayes et al.
patent: 5159685 (1992-10-01), Kung
patent: 5218669 (1993-06-01), Kobayashi et al.
patent: 5283856 (1994-02-01), Gross et al.
patent: 5412753 (1995-05-01), Alston et al.
patent: 5446874 (1995-08-01), Waclawsky et al.
patent: 5506955 (1996-04-01), Chen et al.
patent: 5555346 (1996-09-01), Gross et al.
patent: 5603031 (1997-02-01), White et al.
patent: 5778155 (1998-07-01), Hepner
patent: 5832467 (1998-11-01), Wavish
patent: 6085183 (2000-07-01), Horn et al.
patent: 6182059 (2001-01-01), Angotti et al.
patent: 6321217 (2001-11-01), Maeda et al.
patent: 2271004 (1994-03-01), None
Muller, “Improving network operation with intelligent agents”, Int. Jour. of Network Mgmt. vol. 7, pp. 116-126, 1997.*
Boone, “Concept features in Re agent an intelligent email agent”, ACM Autonomous agents, pp. 141-148, 1998.*
Meech et al, “A multi agent system for personal messaging” National Research Council of Canada pp. 144-145, 2000.*
Palumbo et al, “The operational semantics of an active message system”, ACM pp. 367-375, 1992.*
Logan et al., “Modelling information retrieval agents with belief revision”, ACM, pp. 91-100.*
Ovans and Havens, “Intelligent mediation an architecture for the real time allocation of interface resources”, ACM IUI, pp. 55-61, 1992.*
IBM Tech. Disclosure Bulletin, vo. 37, No. 11, pp. 539-541, Nov. 1994.*
IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, “Rule-Based Dynamic Personal Variables”, vol. 37, No. 11, Nov. 1994, pp. 539-541.
IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, “Dynamic Control of Intelligent Agent Rules” vol. 38, No. 04, Apr. 1995, pp. 541-542.
IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, “Method of Rule-Based File, Window, and Message Processing”, vol. 38, No. 07, Jul. 1995, pp. 45-46.
Bennett Robert B.
Coleman Andrew
Gdaniec Joseph M.
Geddes Janet E.
Stephens Wendy E.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Khatri Anil
RatnerPrestia
Samodovitz, Esq. Arthur J.
LandOfFree
Method and system for managing rules and events in a... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Method and system for managing rules and events in a..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method and system for managing rules and events in a... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2972799