Proof Markup Language
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The Provenance Markup Language (abbreviated PML; originally called Proof Markup Language) is an interlingua for representing and sharing knowledge about how information published on the Web was asserted from information sources and/or derived from Web information by
intelligent agents In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent is an entity that perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously to achieve goals, and may improve its performance through machine learning or by acquiring knowledge. Leading AI textbook ...
. The language was initially developed in support of
DARPA Agent Markup Language The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) was the name of a US funding program at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started in 1999 by then-Program Manager James Hendler, and later run by Murray Burke, Mark Greaves and Michael ...
with a goal of explaining how
automated theorem prover Automated theorem proving (also known as ATP or automated deduction) is a subfield of automated reasoning and mathematical logic dealing with proving mathematical theorems by computer programs. Automated reasoning over mathematical proof was a ma ...
s (ATP) derive conclusions from a set of
axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...
s.
Information Information is an Abstraction, abstract concept that refers to something which has the power Communication, to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the Interpretation (philosophy), interpretation (perhaps Interpretation (log ...
,
inference Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinct ...
steps,
inference rule Rules of inference are ways of deriving conclusions from premises. They are integral parts of formal logic, serving as norms of the logical structure of valid arguments. If an argument with true premises follows a rule of inference then the co ...
s, and agents are the three main building blocks of the language. In the context of an inference step, information can play the role of antecedent (also called premise) and conclusion. Information can also play the role of axiom that is basically a conclusion with no antecedents. PML uses the broad philosophical definition of agent as opposed to any other more specific definition of agent. The use of PML in subsequent projects evolved the language in new directions broadening its capability to represent provenance knowledge beyond the realm of ATPs and
automated reasoning In computer science, in particular in knowledge representation and reasoning and metalogic, the area of automated reasoning is dedicated to understanding different aspects of reasoning. The study of automated reasoning helps produce computer progr ...
. The original set of requirements were relaxed to include the following: information originally represented as logical sentences in the
Knowledge Interchange Format Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) is a computer language designed to enable systems to share and re-use information from knowledge-based systems. KIF is similar to frame languages such as KL-ONE, KL-One and LOOM (ontology), LOOM but unlike such lan ...
were allowed to be information written in any language including the
English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
; and
inference rules Rules of inference are ways of deriving conclusions from premises. They are integral parts of formal logic, serving as norms of the logical structure of valid arguments. If an argument with true premises follows a rule of inference then the c ...
originally defined as patterns over antecedents and conclusions of inference steps were allowed to be underspecified as long as they were identified and named. These relaxations were essential to explain how knowledge is extracted from text through the use of information extraction components. Enhancements were also required to further understand motivation behind the need of automated theorem provers to derive conclusions: new capabilities were added to annotate how information playing the role of
axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...
s were attributes as assertions from information sources; and the notion of questions and answers were introduced to the language to explain to a third-party agent why an automated theorem prover was used to prove a theorem (i.e., an answer) from a given set of axioms.


Development history

The first version of PML (PML1) was developed at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
's
Knowledge Systems Laboratory Knowledge Systems Laboratory (KSL) was an artificial intelligence research laboratory within the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University until 2007, located in the Gates Computer Science Building, Stanford. Work focused on knowledge ...
in 2003 and was originally co-authored by
Paulo Pinheiro Paulo Pinheiro is a Brazilian American computer scientist working in the areas of provenance and semantic web in support of sciences. Pinheiro has been a research scientist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Tetherless World Constellation ...
, Deborah McGuinness, and
Richard Fikes Richard Earl Fikes (born October 4, 1942) is a computer scientist and Professor (Research) Emeritus in the Computer Science department of Stanford University. He led Stanford's Knowledge Systems Laboratory from 1991 to 2006, and has held appoint ...
. The second version of PML (PML2) developed in 2007 modularized PML1 into three modules to reduce maintenance and reuse cost:
provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...
, justification, and trust relations. A new version of PML (PML3) based on
World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
's PROV is under development.


References

{{Reflist


External links


inference-web.org-main page Resources and Information.

PROV-Overview
Markup languages