Standard

iConceptStore^™ Standard Edition

The iConceptStore^™ Standard Edition is the middle ground, from which all other editions stem (upwards and downwards). Its architecture, shown below, provides the required flexibility and extensibility of the iConceptStore^™ knowledge-based systems engineering framework and related toolset. The term Environment on the picture below means any iConceptStore^™ surrounding, parts of which (e.g., another system) may actively interact with iConceptStore^™ or just be passively affected by its actions.

Inheriting from its Enterprise Edition counterpart the new original iConceptStore^™ programmatic (C++ and COM) HTTP-based interface and related Virtual Desktop Service components – encompassing both system (binary) and task (semantic) levels – has proved beneficial for this edition as well since it provides transparent unified access across Internet and/or LAN to any iConceptStore^™ Standard Edition based services, residing on any remote Windows 11/10/7/XP or IoT Enterprise machine.

The light-weight and easy to install Standard Edition makes possible such inexpensive machines to host (among others) valuable Remote Process Control and Monitoring services with attached automated sensor/actuator hardware configurations, having their desired models of behaviour supplied and updated from multiple remote locations in the form of CML scripts, automatically compiled on arrival into any desired modelbase (in capacity of knowledge source, as indicated below) thus made immediately ready for activation.

Effects of the influence (execution of any CML Process/Action), applied to selected parts of the environment, can also be monitored from those same remote locations by means of information retrieval requests of different kinds. Switching between different models of behaviour (exhibited either consecutively or simultaneously) can be initiated either remotely or automatically by a higher-level CML knowledge component as soon as defined conditions, regarding the current state of certain fragment(s) of the environment, are met.

Note that CML scripts are flexible declarative knowledge descriptions (in this case – logical models of behaviour, a kind of conditional goal-directed action plans) rather than readily executable procedural programs (e.g., ordinary scripts such as JavaScript). Some of those models of behaviour may be fixed (predefined) for specific known static fragment of the environment. Others may be more general-purpose, intended for a targeted class of environment fragments with provisions for structural and/or parametric adjustments to allow for dynamic modification in accordance with any expected changes of the actual environment fragment or its specific characteristics.

In some cases the impact of the influence (execution of any CML Process/Action) may be predictable and appropriate actions predefined with the actual results verified by means of appropriate sensors. However, in other situations some kind of dynamic simulation to pre-emptively assess the effects may be required if errors are unacceptable. In such cases CML scripts can also include (possibly alternative) models of the target fragment(s) of the environment (as optionally indicated below), which may contain multi-level expert knowledge of different granularity and degree of detail.

Automation, especially industrial automation, deals with specific, sometimes unique, equipment under specific, sometimes unique, conditions. Consequently, behaviour related decisions need to take into account those specific circumstances, not some averaged (statistical) ones. Moreover, no large data sets, used to “train” so called AI systems, may characterise (or even exist for) such specific problem situations. Therefore, within any such context those statistical approximation based methods are just inapplicable for backend action planning, hence completely irrelevant (by analogy, just imagine justifying any court case decision based on averaged criteria rather than its specific circumstances).

Conversely, reasoning pseudo-consciously about stated goals within the context of the described kind of CML conceptual models of behaviour and environment, dynamically exploring the potential effects of alternative courses of purposeful actions (dynamic micro-planning) before selecting and applying them to the actual target fragment of the environment is what would differentiate iConceptStore’s knowledge-based intelligent behaviour from that of any other (deceptively called AI) system that may apply some blind (e.g., fixed statistical algorithms based) action-guiding strategies that resemble unconscious decision-making.

Although the iConceptStore^™ Standard Edition supports multiple Remote Process Control clients such as the iConceptStore^™ HttpAgent (HTTP Ad-hoc Request utility) its Master Link management component does not provide the genuine multi-user functionality of its Enterprise Edition counterpart since its Windows 10/7/XP target operating systems are not designed and implemented to serve such roles.

Among other benefits, the remote configurations of both Standard and Enterprise editions are much more stable than their desktop counterparts – because of the complete isolation between the server and client processes no client failure could affect the server operations (and vice versa). Some of the iConceptStore^™ utilities have been extended to work with the Standard and Enterprise editions as either local or remote clients. For more detail description of the remaining remote-access related parts of this architecture refer to the iConceptStore^™ Enterprise Edition section.

Since the Observer and Effector roles, shown in the iConceptStore^™ General Cognitive Architecture, can not be really implemented as general purpose components, the iConceptStore^™ infrastructure only provides linkage to such gears in the form of corresponding Perception and Recipient standard CML ties to be attached to corresponding custom-supplied EntityNet server-side extensions, the latter serving as a kind of specific sensor and actuator driver routines, respectively, as indicated on the next picture while emphasising the remaining essential parts of the iConceptStore^™ Standard Edition architecture (under an alternative deployment scenario iConceptStore^™ plays less active though no less important role):

In addition to the components of the iConceptStore^™ Light Edition, this edition provides a license for a dynamic development environment, including the complete set of COM, .NET and C++ programmatic interfaces along with a close integration of the iConceptStore^™ CML Compiler capabilities with those of the MS Visual Studio C++ 6.0 (including editor colour coding of CML keywords, uniform output, CML Compiler command button, CML project wizard, etc.). All the relevant documentation is provided as well.

The EntityNet Service for MS Excel Add-in is also included with this edition to provide direct access to most of the iConceptStore^™ sophisticated conceptual modelling capabilities from within Excel based application domain models (e.g., for the purposes of what-if analysis). This mixed-paradigm modelling is enabled by means of embedded dynamic spreadsheet links to arbitrarily complex conceptual model fragments, contained within iConceptStore^™ modelbases. In order to keep selected (active) spreadsheet cells and those external model fragments synchronized, any spreadsheet cell value change can be immediately propagated to its corresponding entity attribute in the respective conceptual model fragment. Conversely, dynamic feedback advise channels between Excel and EntityNet can be automatically turned on (and off) at run-time to provide timely updates to dependant attributes, embedded in active spreadsheet cells, whenever values of their conceptual model dependencies (possibly themselves depending on some other attribute or spreadsheet cell values) change.

The EntityNet service/server and client programs (Information Browser and VS instances, custom applications, etc.) are required to run on the same computer though information bases may reside in shared folders on different machines. The new remote access configuration requires a separate license, similar to that for the Enterprise Edition. Optionally, under a special additional run-time license both the iConceptStore^™ Run-Time and Embedded editions may inherit this light-weight remote access configuration.