Kazumasa Yokota

Semantic extensions of XML for advanced applications

XML is a de facto standard for structuring documents and their exchange in electronic forms. However it has many restrictions to represent various information from viewpoints of data-centered applications. Set and tuple constructors are useful for defining data structure, and identities and user views are indispensable for sharing common data, while XML, even with XML Schema, does not support such features. In this paper, we propose an approach to semantic extensions of XML by introducing some special attributes, by which conventional data constructors can be utilized and semantic elements for user views can be defined. Along this approach, we have been developing XML-based systems for heterogeneous document management, digital theme parks, and interactive multimedia presentation, where there are many enhancement requests to XML. We discuss the effectiveness of extensions by taking examples in our applications.

Fifth Generation Systems

The sections in this article are 1 Preliminary Study for the FGCS Project 2 Overview of R&D Activities and Results of the FGCS Project 3 Overview of the FGCS Follow-On Project 4 Promoting Organization of the FGCS Project 5 Distribution of R&D Results and International Exchange Activities 6 Concluding Remarks 7 Acknowledgments

An Agent-Based Coordination Model on Workflow Databases

Workflow management, one of the important technologies for supporting collaborative work, requires database technologies like distributed data management or transaction management. However, as workflow management systems have several heterogeneities like heterogeneity about agents, spatial heterogeneity, temporal heterogeneity, etc., collaboration model for workflow management should resolve these heterogeneities. In this paper, we propose a collaboration model for workflow management using a heterogeneous distributed problem solver Helios. Agents, environments in which agents coordinate each other, and coordination among agents are modeled by message passing among agents. These modeling give semantics of agents in Workflow Base, previously proposed formal workflow database model based on object-oriented data model, as coordination entities.