The Purple Technology Platform consists of a three-tier architecture that addresses the understanding language problem.

• The DNLE foundation tier supports intelligent, content-aware retrieval, organization, storing, searching, and manipulation of documents in multiple formats and from multiple sources.

• An integration tier - Interactive AI - built on top of the foundation, utilizes the DNLE core services to provide the infrastructure and high-level interface of artificial intelligence services to enterprise applications and business processes.

• The top application tier provides standards-based programming models and a flexible API, and a user-interface, to support access to the rich set of services and data provided by the foundation and integration tiers.

Interactive AI is the integration tier that makes applications, and robots, seem smart.

While DNLE provides a host of powerful services, they aren't very useful if application developers don't know what to do with them. Utilizing the DNLE services optimally is critical to enabling the real power of DNLE as a platform for building systems with artificial intelligence capabilities. By providing a higher-level layer of services, Interactive AI abstracts away the complexities of the low-level DNLE services and leverages those services in ways that may not be immediately apparent to the software developer.

In addition to serving as an integration tier for DNLE, Interactive AI also provides the following middle-tier services:

• A set of conversation management functions for handling questions within the context of a conversation.

• Data mining services for retrieving web-based information when it cannot be found in a DNLE knowledgebase.

• Maintenance functions for DNLE knowledgebases.

• Interactive AI is implemented as a Microsoft .NET Webservice.