First experiences with the SB-ONE knowledge representation workbench in natural-language applications

Abstract

SB-ONE is a workbench for the representation of conceptual knowledge, with the emphasis on applications in natural-language systems. Besides the SB-ONE language, the workbench comprises three different interfaces, a partition mechanism, a consistency maintenance system for the syntactic well-formedness of SB-ONE knowledge bases, a classifier, a realizer, a pattern matcher, a spreading-activation mechanism, an interpreter and classifier for SB-ONE to SB-ONE translation rules, an integration mechanism for an external frame-based representation, and a connection between SB-ONE and an extended Prolog. These components have been employed by a fairly large number of people in various natural-language applications. This paper describes the SB-ONE workbench, illustrates the motivations and philosophies behind its components, and reports some feedback received from users.