Representation of Temporal Knowledge for Web-based Applications
Stephanie Spranger · 2002
The representation of temporal information, and reasoning about such temporal information is important for many (intelligent) computer systems. This has led to the development of a wide variety of temporal formalisms with a concise syntax, proper semantics, and computational inference rules. An overview of such temporal reasoning and data modeling formalisms is given. Any temporal formalism is usually developed with regard to its intended application – be it planning, forecasting, learning, or scheduling since any application’s particular temporal information crucially varies from the one’s of some other application. Subsequent to the overview, Web-based planning systems and scheduling are considered. Such systems ask for representation of temporal knowledge. An automated appointment scheduling system is described to such an extent that it can be easily implemented, and its temporal aspects are thoroughly investigated. This is achieved by investigating the structure of appointments an appointment scheduler must be able to reason about, and by suggesting a possible hierarchy of calendar systems for modeling knowledge bases. Throughout this discussion, an available specification language for modeling temporal concepts of calendar systems (i.e., a particular temporal formalism) is used. The discussion provides means for designing a set of knowledge bases containing temporal concepts of different calendar systems, and an automated appointment scheduler.