Exchanging data and ontological definitions in multi-agent-contexts systems

In recent work we have extended DACMAS, which is a formalization of ontology-based and commitment-based multi-agent systems. Our extension allows a system to include not only agents but also external contexts. The objective is that of modeling real-world situations where agents not only interact among themselves, but also consult external heterogeneous data-and knowledge-bases to extract useful information. In this paper we further enhance the approach, so that a querying agent is enabled to specify in ontological terms which data it intends to extract from a context, or vice versa needs to be made aware of ontological assumptions the received results are based upon.