AMS - A DECLARATIVE FORMALISM FOR HIERARCHICAL REPRESENTATION OF PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE

This concise paper presents a domain-independent formalism, called Act ivity Manager System (AMS), for the explicit, hierarchical representat ion of procedural knowledge. The formalism is able to 1) describe proc edures at a reasonable level or complexity and completeness; 2) genera te dynamically procedures at different levels of abstraction; 3) organ ize knowledge hierarchies by means of abstract entities; and 4) allow knowledge reusability at different levels of abstraction. AMS uses the notions of Activity, Activity Network, State, and Memory Organization Packet for Activities (MOPA) to represent abstractions, and it allows the user to model an application in a hierarchical manner. The advant ages and limitations of AMS are also discussed.