Cooperative Problem Solving: A New Direction for Active Databases

The emphasis of this paper is to evaluate and demonstrate the applicability of the active rule paradigm in novel application domains. Briefly, an active rule capability is supported through the ECA (event-condition-action) rule abstraction. Occurrence of a defined event triggers the evaluation of a condition. If the condition evaluates to true, the action is carried out. Several aspects of the ECA rule abstraction, such as composite events, event consumption modes, coupling modes, and conflict resolution have been investigated by the database research community [Con96]. Although the applicability of active capability has been extensively explored in the context of database systems, its potential for novel applications has received rather less attention. However, its importance for application areas such as workflow [BJ94], cooperative problem solving [CKNT93], and real-time [BH96] is becoming clearer. This paper studies the relevance of active capability as well as the applicability of active DBMS for cooperative problem solving (CPS) as formulated in the Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) domain. Briefly, CPS is the process of solving problems which cannot be solved by a single problem solving agent (PSA), e.g. software tools, knowledge based systems. CPS is an enabling technology for future generations of distributed knowledge bases. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate tools for supporting this emerging technology. We believe that active capability can play a significant role here.