Brs: a Generic-binary Relation System for Knowledge-based Systems

There are many frame-based knowledge representation formalisms, mainly because of the diversity of applications. Their characteristics are generally incompatible and difficult to extend, and it is also difficult to share the knowledge bases built using them. That is why we have taken an interest in definition of a common substratum for all these formalisms. The system we propose, called BRS for Binary Relation System, is based on the manipulation of binary relations, which provides many advantages. It permits the definition of new knowledge representation languages according to needs and also plays an interlingua role for knowledge base exchanges, with easy to write conversion procedures. Finally, it authorises a satisfactory formalisation of object-oriented systems built using BRS so that, in addition to classic logic, relations theory can be used. From that point of view, our work is similar to projects like KIF or KQML. Here we present the first version of our system, implemented in Smalltalk 80. We describe the principles of the BRS virtual machine and give an example of translation of a frame system into a BRS representation.