AMS formalism

Abstract

The Activity Manager System (AMS) formalism anchored on key concepts such as activity, action, activity network, state, and MOPA (Memory Organization Packets for Activities) is capable of modeling a broad spectrum of office activities, ranging from the structured to the ill-structured, in a rigorous and comprehensive manner. The formalism can also be used to guide the development of Office Information Systems (OISs). It is domain independent and is particularly suited for the hierarchical representation of procedural knowledge. The formalism has the following features: 1) As in the rule-based formalism, control is separated from knowledge, and programming is replaced by the explicit, declarative representation of packets of knowledge; 2) Using the activity network concept, we can obtain an explicit hierarchical representation of procedural knowledge; 3) The activity concept provides the formalism with a representation of a rule-like entity; and 4) The MOPA concept plays the role of organizing and reconstructing knowledge in an appropriate manner, and allows the dynamic generation of Activity Networks at various levels of abstraction. The formalism as a theoretical underpinning for the development of OISs has been demonstrated at Bull's Advanced Studies Laboratory by Ader (in developing the office model) and Li (in developing the AMS).