Intelligent portal engine

A computer system, comprising:

• means for representing at least one user goal with respect to a domain;
• means for representing at least one task for a software component, which task can be accomplished in the domain independent of stated user goals;
• means for establishing an association between at least one linguistic or pragmatic item and the user goal, the at least one linguistic or pragmatic item having an association with the at least one task;
• means for inferring, using the associations, that the software component is appropriate for achieving the at least one user goal, using the associations;
• and
• means for distributing the representation of the user goal, the representation of the task, the associations, an inference, or a performance of the task through execution of the software component among processing resources of the computer system.

An article of manufacture, comprising:

• a storage medium;
• and
• a plurality of programming instructions stored in the storage medium and configured to cause an apparatus, in response to execution of the instructions by an apparatus, to perform operations associated with inferring at least one meaning of a user's actions with respect to a software component out of a plurality of software components for at least one user involving at least one domain, the operations comprising:
• representing at least one user goal with respect to the domain, the goal represented independent of tasks which the plurality of software components can perform;
• representing at least one task which can be accomplished by the software component in the domain independent of stated user goals;
• establishing an association between at least one at least one linguistic or pragmatic item and a meaning of the user's actions, the at least one linguistic or pragmatic item having an association with the task;
• establishing an association between the at least one linguistic or pragmatic item and the user goal;
• inferring, using the associations, that the software component which can accomplish the at least one task is appropriate out of the plurality of software components for achieving the at least one user goal;
• and
• performing the at least one task by executing the software component using at least one association to infer the meaning of the user actions with respect to the software component.