stan@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Stan Schwartz) (04/19/89)
Does anyone in netland know of any currently available shells or tools for building blackboards? Sources, please. Also, if you've used them, how helpful were they, and if you had to build one again would you prefer to use the tool or do it from scratch? Respond either here or by e-mail. Thanks, muchly. (If I get enough responses, I'll post a summary.) Stan Schwartz (also at CHI Systems, Inc., Gynedd Plaza III, Bethlehem Pike at Sheble Lane, Spring House, PA 19477, (215) 542-1400)
lbaum@unido.uucp (04/26/89)
In article <4643@uklirb.UUCP> you write: >Does anyone in netland know of any currently available shells or tools for >building blackboards? Sources, please. Also, if you've used them, how >helpful were they, and if you had to build one again would you prefer to >use the tool or do it from scratch? Respond either here or by e-mail. >Thanks, muchly. (If I get enough responses, I'll post a summary.) > > > Stan Schwartz The most notable available blackboard shells are: BB1 - This is a public domain blackboard system developed at Stanford by Barbara Hayes-Roth. It runs on TI Explorers, Symbolics and Vaxen (at least) and is written in Common Lisp. This system provides the BB1 Control Architecture as described in her 1985 AI Magazine article. Email: bhr@sumex-aim.stanford.edu GBB - The Generic Blackboard system was developed at U Mass, by Dan Corkill and Kevin Gallagher. GBB concentrates on the issue of efficient retrieval of data from the blackboard, as opposed to the control shell. It comes with a primitive control shell, but the expectation is that you will write your own shell. On the other hand, GBB provides very powerful database machinery, using indexing schemes to track objects, so that finding objects on the blackboard that match various patterns is much faster than in other blackboard systems. Here at Boeing, we have a blackboard system, Erasmus, which integrates the BB1 control architecture with GBB. There is a public domain version of GBB, but future releases will be commercial; I do not know the price. Write to cork%cs.umass.edu@relay.cs.net GEST - This was built by John Gilmore at Georgia Tech. It provides an integration of blackboard architecure with tradition knowledge engineering tools; i.e. you build your knowledge sources out of a rule system and integrate them via a blackboard, using frames as the underlying blackboard representation paradigm. I do not know if GEST is available to the public, or for sale, or what. You can write Gilmore at spr@pyr.gatech.edu (This is really Stephen Roth's address; he is Gilmore's associate.) If you hear about other available systems please relay that information to me. (I have been working in the field of blackboard architectures for four years and have been on the organizing committee of the two AAAI workshops on blackboard architectures, so I am knowledgeable in this field.) Larry Baum Advanced Technology Center Boeing Computer Services uucp: uw-beaver!bcsaic!lbaum (206) 865-3232 internet: lbaum@atc.boeing.com