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In this thesis the Semantic Web and its core technology---Web Ontology Language (OWL)---were studied. Considering the features of the different units involved in the dairy industry, OWL, in its capacity as an ontology description language, can be used to encode and thus exchange ontology among the units in the dairy industry. After creation of OWL file using Protege, an OWL parser was programmed to decode the ontology and data contained in the OWL file. Based on these investigations, it was determined that OWL can be used to encode, exchange, and decode data between farms and the units that interact with them, although large volumes of data among the service agencies pose certain challenges in terms of transfer size. A structure of the Semantic Web services in the dairy industry is proposed for Semantic Web Service registration, search and usage related to certain farm-management tasks. With the help of the Semantic Web and OWL, one can expect a more efficient data processing in the future dairy industry.

Knowledge compilation improves search-intensive problem-solvers that are easily specified but inefficient. One promising approach improves efficiency by constructing a database of problem-instance/best-action pairs that replace problem-solving search with efficient lookup. The database is constructed by reverse enumeration- expanding the complete search space backwards, from the terminal problem instances. This approach has been used successfully in counter-planning to construct perfect problem-solvers for sub domains of chess and checkers. However, the approach is limited to small problems because both the space needed to store the database and the time needed to generate the database grow exponentially with problem size. This thesis addresses these problems through two mechanisms. First, the space needed is reduced through an abstraction mechanism that is especially suited to counter-planning domains. The search space is abstracted by representing problem states as equivalence classes with respect to the goal achieved and the operators as equivalence classes with respect to how they influence the goals. Second, the time needed is reduced through a hueristic best-first control of the reverse enumeration. Since with larger problems it may be impractical to run the compiler to completion, the search is organized to optimize the tradeoff between the time spent compiling a domain and the coverage achieved over that domain. These two mechanisms are implemented in a system that has been applied to problems in chess and checkers. Empirical results demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. In most problems and 80/20 rule was demonstrated, where a small number of patterns were identified early that covered most of the domain, justifying the use of best-first search. In addition, the method was able to automatically generate a set of abstract rules that had previously required two person-months to hand engineer. / Graduation date: 1992

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-116).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 240-248.

Thesis (PhD) -- Macquarie University, Division of Information and Communication Sciences, Department of Computing, 2007. / "Submitted January 27 2007, revised July 27 2007". Bibliography: p. 281-304.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX202524.

Report (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. M.S. 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-69). Also available via the Internet.