Towards a formal language for knowledge representation in autonomic service-component ensembles

We aim at identifying the content and design principles of KnowLang, a new formal language for knowledge representation in a particular class of autonomic systems termed ASCENS. Autonomic Service-Component Ensembles (ASCENS) are multi-agent systems formed as mobile, intelligent and open-ended swarms of special autonomic service components capable of local and distributed reasoning. Such components encapsulate rules, constraints and mechanisms for self-adaptation and acquire and process knowledge about themselves, other service components, and their environment. With KnowLang we provide a development environment that strives to answer fundamental questions related to knowledge representation and reasoning in ASCENS. Knowledge in such systems is structured into knowledge domains each composed of domain ontology and a logical framework providing knowledge vocabulary and logical foundations used for reasoning. We formalize our approach to KnowLang in terms of formal specification layers, syntax, and parameterization required to cover the specification of the ASCENS knowledge domains and reasoning primitives.