DAI-List Digest Monday, 17 May 1993 Issue Number 120 Topics: "Intelligent" Workflow Technology Research? Re: "Intelligent" Workflow Technology Research? DAIW-93 Schedule Correction Multimedia 93 Workshop Announcement Federating Expert Systems in an ODP environment CFP for KI-93 Workshop on Communication, Coordination and Cooperation in Multiagent Systems Administrivia: Please send submissions to DAI-List@mcc.com. Send other requests, such as changes in your e-mail address, to DAI-List-Request@mcc.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: mklein@atc.boeing.com Subject: "Intelligent" Workflow Technology Research? Date: Tue, 11 May 93 17:24:18 PDT I am involved in a project investigating how computing can provide "intelligent" agents/services to improve the functionality of existing workflow technology. Some key areas we have identified for further investigation include task assignment (computer-supported assignments of tasks to agents based on an expressive model of the organization's hierachy, resources, members, their skills, experience and workload etc), exception handling (providing customizable policies for dealing with contingencies like approaching/passed deadlines, missing resources, changing requirements) and queue management (identifying opportunities to reduce work by merging common subtasks across multiple tasks in an individuals' work queue). Just to give you an example, we have been investigating the use of rationale capture technology to record the reasons for a given workflow having a given structure to facilitate computer-supported workflow modification in response to exceptional conditions such as resource availability changes. I would appreciate any pointers people can offer to publications or research groups addressing this area, and would be glad to share the pointers I already have. Thanks. Mark Klein, PhD Boeing Computer Services Building 33-07, Mailstop 7L-44 2760 160th Ave SE Bellevue WA 98008 USA Voice: (206) 865-3412 Fax: (206) 865-2964 ------------------------------ From: Austin Tate Subject: Re: "Intelligent" Workflow Technology Research? Date: Wed, 12 May 93 03:10:12 CDT Mark, to give some input relating to your query on intelligent flow management based on rationale, you may know that we are working on a number of task planning systems (based on Nonlin, O-Plan and O-Plan2) including work with the the US government as part of the Planning Initiative. These all use goal structure/rationale capture as their underlying process and plan representation. in work with Japan, we have done scheduling applications of the same architecture (a variant called TOSCA - The Open SCheduling Architecture) in manufacturing. We have put considerable thought into how the work we have done can be used to link levels of business process modelling and strategic decision making, tactical plan elaboration, and operational dispatch through intelligent work flow management with explanation and rescheduling aids based on process and plan rationale. We have just won a large (2.4 milion pounds) project in the UK with government support as part of the UK Itelligent Systems Integration porgramme. Our consortium involves 4 other groups to explore this further. We have explored our thinking with flow manager product companies as we are sure that flow managers are the way to deliver the benefits of the work we are doing. This project is called ENTERPRISE. Two user sites are involved in tnbe project. AIAI is one of the main technology providers. This is effectively one of the large scale enterprise integration pilots called for in the working sessions if the First Conference on Enterprise Integration Modelling. We have a number of projects internally and with clients which instantiate parts of the overall ideas and are in productive use for them. Our HARDY diagramming aid (in C++) already allows for capture of processes and defintion of processes, output of quality manuals and the like. Prof. Austin Tate, Technical Director AI Applications Institute University of Edinburgh 80 South Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1HN United Kingdom email A.Tate@ed.ac.uk tel UK +31 650 2732 fax UK +31 650 6513 ------------------------------ From: Michael N. Huhns Subject: DAIW-93 Schedule Correction Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 18:47-EDT May 21 Tuomas Sandholm "An Implementation of the Contract Net Protocol Based on Marginal Cost Calculations" ------------------------------ From: shoshi@thumper.bellcore.com (Shoshana Loeb) Subject: Multimedia 93 Workshop Announcement Date: Tue, 11 May 93 17:22:34 EDT [[ The following seems particularly amenable to DAI techniques - Huhns]] Call for Participation ACM Multimedia 93 Workshop on Programming Abstractions for Distributed Multimedia Applications August 3, 1993 Anaheim, California Workshop Description This one day workshop is aimed at identifying high-level abstractions that are suitable for expressing the communication and coordination needs of distributed multimedia applications. Today's networks support only very general-purpose, low-level mechanisms (based on TCP/IP or similar protocols) for programming such applications. This makes the task of programming distributed multimedia applications very complex and cumbersome. A natural approach to overcome this complexity is to provide a software layer that customizes the general-purpose, low-level mechanisms for the specific task of developing distributed multi-media applications. The ease and convenience of application development depends crucially upon the suitability of the programming abstractions provided by this layer. Experience with distributed multimedia applications so far suggests that there are two important classes of abstractions that address independent functional aspects of networked multimedia applications: session (also called conference) abstractions, and transport abstractions. The session abstractions provide mechanisms for coordinating the activities of agents involved in a communication session. They may also provide mechanisms for negotiation among the agents to resolve conflicting policies and requirements of the agents. Connections among these agents are described by the transport abstractions. The workshop addresses issues in developing effective abstractions for conveniently programming distributed multimedia applications, and involves the participation of researchers from a variety of areas including: multimedia communications, computer communications, information networking, telecommunications, real-time systems, open distributed systems, software engineering, and programming languages. Workshop Format: The workshop is organized around the following main activities: a set of invited talks that cover the foundations and state-of-the-art in public network and internet based multimedia communications, and several expert panels focusing upon: 1. Initiation and management of sessions. 2. Specification of processing, presentation and transport of multimedia streams. 3. Mechanisms for describing, accessing and managing network and application provider services. The aspects covered under each of these topics include: convenience and expressive power of abstractions, separation of concerns, security and privacy, mechanisms for policy enforcement, fault-tolerance, network resource optimization, extensibility and application interoperability. Workshop Location: The workshop will be held in conjunction with the ACM Conference on Multimedia (sponsored by SIGBIO, SIGCHI, SIGCOMM, SIGGRAPH, SIGIR, SIGLINK, and SIGOIS) In Anaheim, California. Participation in the workshop is free of charge, but participants must register for the ACM Multimedia 93 in order to attend the workshop. Workshop Participation: It is our intention to limit the participation in the workshop to about seventy. To accomplish this, workshop participation is by invitation only. If you are interested in participating in the workshop please send a brief statement of interest (not exceeding two pages) to the workshop organizers (preferably by e-mail). This statement should specify your current activities which are related to the workshop topics. The statements are due by June 15th, and notifications of acceptance to the workshop will be sent by July 1st. The statements of interest of the workshop participantes will be distributed at the workshop in order to promote communication. Please send your statement of interest (preferably via e-mail as ascii text, or by fax) to the workshop organizers: Shoshana Loeb or R.C. Sekar Bellcore, 2A-267 Bellcore, 2A-274 445 South St, 445 South St, Morristown, NJ, 07960 Morristown, NJ, 07960 Phone: (201) 829-4528 Phone: (201) 829-4609 Fax: (201) 829-5889 Fax: (201) 829-5889 email: shoshi@bellcore.com email: sekar@thumper.bellcore.com Important Dates: Statement of interest: June 15, 1993 Notifications: July 1, 1993 Workshop: August 3, 1993 ------------------------------ From: nirad@cs.uq.oz.au Subject: Federating Expert Systems in an ODP environment Date: Wed, 12 May 1993 00:35:25 +1000 (EST) Hello, I was wondering if anyone here can point me to any work being done in ODP (open distributed processing) c.f. ISO & CCITT standardization regarding cooperative expert systems? Nirad Sharma (nirad@cs.uq.oz.au) Phone: (+61 7) 365 2812 Department of Computer Science Fax: (+61 7) 365 1999 The University of Queensland. QLD 4072. AUSTRALIA ------------------------------ From: "Sahin Albayrak" Subject: Call for papers Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 20:38:54 +0200 Call For Papers KI-93 Workshop on Communication, Coordination and Cooperation in Multiagent Systems In the framework of the 17. (engl. Bezeichnung der Fachtagung) for Artificial Intelligence,September 13-16, 1993, Humboldt University, Berlin and in connection with a meeting of the GI Fachgruppe 1.1.6.Distributed Artificial Intelligence of the German Society for Informatics (GI). Topics: A central problem of distributed AI is the adequate description of communication in support of coordination and cooperation in multiagent systems. Some traditional applications are tailored specifically to a particular application thereby mixing different levels of abstraction. Others lean heavily on the speech-act theory and have difficulties using it for describing dialogues. At least three aspects are to be distinguished: * Connection to OSI/ISO layer model * Structure of the co-operation protocols from message types to dialogues * Relationship to metalayer, which is relevant for adequate protocol selection. Even though many details are being discussed controversially by the DAI community the necessity of a communication standard for multiagent systems is not contested. Goal and approach The workshop goal is to place known approaches into a common framework for reasons of comparision and thereby advancing the standardization efforts. The organizers of the workshop attempt to reach a targeted concentrated and structured discussion at the workshop. * Introductory lectures communication and cooperation, coordination & cooperation * selected lectures * comparison and classification of the talks in a summary * Discussion, specifically addressing the following questions: * What does the interface to ordinary communication look like? * What is the purpose of a standard for communication protocols? (Can KQML serve as a model for such a standard?) * What levels of abstraction are to be distinguished? * How are task-specific protocols (e.g., for task assignment) and domain-specific protocols (e.g. for manufacturing) dealt with in the context of standards. Participants who intend to give a lecture are requested to send a three-page extended abstract to the organizers. Addressing the questions given above will be welcomed. All lecturers will receive the selected contributions of the other lecturers in advance and are requested to establish a relation to their work. After the workshop all contributions, summaries of discussions and a summary of the workshop will be mailed to the participants. Deadlines: May 28, 1993 Submission of Contributions July 1, 1993 Notification about acceptance of participation or contribution. Everybody who has registered for KI-93 is invited to participate. Organizing committee: - Dr. Sahin Albayrak Technische Univ. Berlin, DAI-Labor, Sekr. FR6-7, FranklinstraSEe 28/29, 1000 Berlin 10 Tel.: 030-314-24943, Fax.: 030-314-22357 - Dr. Kurt Sundermeyer Daimler-Benz AG, Forschung Systemtechnik Berlin, Alt-Moabit 91b, 1000 Berlin 21 Tel.: 030-39982-107, Fax.: 030-39982-236 ------------------------------ End of DAI-List Digest Issue #120 *********************************