FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

Resolutions of the Phoenix meeting
January 29 – February 2, 2001.

1.        FIPA notes the report of the Board of Directors concerning

·         The times and locations of the next 3 meetings in 2001:

·         Mail aliases shall be established for all committee chairs and other official FIPA positions.

·         The board requests that committees suggest an alternate chair to be added to the corresponding mailing lists. In the absence of an alternate chair, the editor of the committee will be appointed as alternate chair.

·         The technical proposal of the FIPA Secretariat shall be accepted.

·         The board encourages members and non-members to suggest future technical work and application areas in the form of workplans submitted to the FIPA Architecture Board.

·         The board believes that the current technical strategy and process of FIPA is sound; the board will continue to be responsive to the internal and external needs of the agent business community.

·         The board will investigate the legal issues regarding continuation of FIPA beyond its 5^th year and will establish the formal procedure by the April meeting.

·         The board requests that the resolutions of the particular committees be forwarded to their respective mailing lists.

2.        FIPA approves the Secretariat’s report of the previous three months (f-out-00079).

3.        FIPA approves the report of the Image Committee as follows:

The main output of the two Image Committee meetings was to re-examine the vertical application areas or market sectors. Unlike FIPA 97, which approached this aspect by defining informative application specifications, it is recommended that FIPA take a business-oriented approach by creating business cases for those sectors that the FIPA membership wishes to explore/promote. The financial, application integration, and holonic manufacturing sectors were all proposed – further suggestions are invited. One intended output from the ‘verticals’ exploration will include engagement with a ‘press consultant’ to summarize and distribute the business cases in the appropriate sectors. Another intended output will be an ‘umbrella’ use case/scenario/story that links the individual business cases together. It is expected that significant progress can be made before the London meeting; however these resolutions will probably span several meetings.

4.        Resolutions of Technical Committees, Working Groups, and Special Interest Groups

TC Architecture Resolutions

TC Architecture proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

·         Regarding Policies

·         Resolve to adopt PC00089 (Policies and Domains) as a preliminary specification

·         Resolve to request the FAB to issue a call for information about policy use, policy languages and policy mechanisms

·         Regarding Resources

·         Resolve to examine the extension of the Abstract Architecture to include the notion of resources, their descriptions and discovery

·         The TC expects to generate a preliminary report by April

·         TC Architecture extends its thanks and appreciation to B. Burg, N. Bush, M. Calisti, J. Choi, J. Dale, D. Greenwood, D. Hinkle, M. Huber, F. Igo, M. Jonkers, D. Libes, R. Luna, D. Martin, M. Nodine, J. Odell, C. Ono, D. Pierre, J. Pitt, M. Purvis, M. Stockman, H. Suguri, S. Willmott

TC Agreement Management Resolutions

TC Agreement Management proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

·         Edition of the draft specifications of the Agent Configuration Management by Jonathan Dale, Bernard Burg, by 1st March 2001

·         Email interactions on agree@fipa.org

·         The TC Agreement Management appoints Jeremy Pitt as editor for the Service Level Agreement Specification

·         Background information on SLA circulation on email

·          Service level Agreement in Telecoms (Martin Purvis)

·          Use cases (Jeremy Pitt, Marcus Huber)

·          Contracts and SLA (Jeremy Pitt, Bernard Burg)

·         The TC Agreement Management expects to submit a Workplan concerning ACL extensions and/or an alternate semantic framework to FAB by March 1, 2001. (Jeremy Pitt, Marcus Huber)

·         TC Agreement Management gratefully thanks: Phil Buckle (Emorphia), Bernard Burg (Hewlett Packard), Monique Calisti (EPFL), Patricia Charlton (Motorola), Jung Pill Choi(Samsung), Jonathan Dale (Fujitsu), Marcus Huber (OGI), Menno  Jonkers (Tryllian), Kiyoshi Kogure (NTT), Marian Nodine (Telcordia), Chihiro Ono (KDD), Denis Pierre (Aegis), Jeremy Pitt (IC), Martin Purvis (U. Otago), Hiroki Suguri (Comtec), Steven Willmott (EPFL) as well as TC Architecture for the shared meeting on Domains and Policies.

TC Gateways Resolutions

TC Gateways proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

·         Submit the preliminary version of 'FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in Bit-Efficient Encoding Specification', jointly produced by Sonera and University of Helsinki, to the FAB for transition to Experimental status (by 12 February 2001).

·         Provide feedback to the authors of the following submissions: (by 28 February 2001)

1. device ontology (Sonera);

2. message buffering (Sonera, University of Helsinki & KDD);

3. message transport behaviour (Sonera & University of Helsinki);

4. transport interoperability (Sonera & University of Helsinki);

5. disconnected mode support (KDD R&D Labs);

·         Hold an interim meeting in Helsinki (hosted by Sonera) to discuss the revised drafts of proposals A to D on 7 & 8 March 2001.

·         Allocate time at FIPA 21 (London) to further discuss proposal E.

·         Begin discussions with the FAB re the wider issues arising from the above submissions, namely: (by 12 February 2001)

·         Ownership of the message transport behaviour proposals;

·         Our requirement for a multi-valued Transport-behaviour envelope parameter  (see FIPA 00067);

·         Perceived inconsistency between MTS reference model and Abstract Architecture re insertion of a FIPA-addressable entity between two ACLs;

·         Seek guidance from appropriate FIPA members re the following: (by 28 February 2001)

·         Potential impact of selective message delivery on inter-platform communication;

·         Utility of ACL semantics with respect to disconnected mode support;

·         TC Gateways will produce specifications, as per the workplan dates (preliminary specifications by 07/01, experimental by 01/02).

·         TC Gateways will continue discussions re: the fipa-subscribe protocol via the reflector with a view to finalizing proposals at FIPA 21.

·         TC Gateways gives special thanks to David Levine, Donald Steiner, Fred Igo, Heikki Helin, Heimo Laamanen, Jamie Lawrence, John Shepherdson, Jung Pill Choi, Kari Koivuniemi, Michael Berger, Naohito Ogasawara, Phil Buckle, Santtu Toivonen, Satoshi Nishiyama, Stefan Poslad, Stefano Campadello, and Steve Willmott.

AgentCities WG resolutions

The AgentCities WG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

·         Produce a draft XML-based Content Language syntax which may be used within the Agentcities network:

·         Including producing a workplan for feeding the results back into FIPA to be accepted as a FIPA specification

·         Producing draft specification and highlighting issues

·         Action on P. Buckle, J. Dale, M. Purvis, D. Levine, S.Willmott

·         Continue mailing list discussions on:

·         XML-based Content Language syntax

·         Weather services

·         Service ontologies and an ontology of services

·         Security threats to Agentcities platforms

·         Special thanks to all those who contributed throughout the week, in particular the large number of people who attended the Thursday afternoon meeting.

Resolutions for Product Design and Manufacturing WG

·         Product Design & Manufacturing WG would like to thank Mihaela Ulieru and Jim Christensen for giving a Global Supply-Chain Architecture and Standard presentation at this meeting.

·         The PD&M WG endorses and encourages FIPA to continue to pursue potential liaison relationship with the holonic-manufacturing consortium HMC.

·         The PD&M WG resolves to add a new task to the workplan for defining an abstract architecture for holonic enterprises with work beginning at the April 2001 London meeting.

·         The PD&M WG will submit the modified workplan to the FAB for review and approval.

·         The PD&M WG will investigate how we can support the testing of AUML as a modelling technique for designing agent-based manufacturing applications.

·         The PD&M WG will release an informative document of manufacturing scenarios on the usage of FIPA technology for these applications. We would like to thank the holonic-manufacturing consortium for permitting us to utilize some of their real scenarios for this document.

·         The PD&M WG will be having an interim meeting in Sept. in conjunction with the OMG Agent group. Jim Odell is attempting to set up a meeting between the PD&M group and the OMG manufacturing task force.

·         The PD&M group proposes Jim Odell as the alternate chair.

·         The PD&M group would like to thank the attendees of the PD&M meeting this week and, in particular, Jim Odell for his leadership and chairmanship at this meeting in Nina Berry's absence.

FIPA Architecture Board Resolutions

The FAB proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

·         Promotion of Experimental specifications:

·         XC00001 FIPA Abstract Architecture Specification

·         XC00025 FIPA Interaction Protocol Library Specification

·         XC00026 FIPA Request Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00027 FIPA Query Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00028 FIPA Request When Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00029 FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00030 FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00031 FIPA English Auction Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00032 FIPA Dutch Auction Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00033 FIPA Brokering Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00034 FIPA Recruiting Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00036 FIPA Propose Interaction Protocol Specification

·         XC00037 FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification

·         Raise to the attention of the membership the following outstanding Preliminary specifications:

·         PC00021 FIPA Developer's Guide

·         PC00087 FIPA Agent Management Support for Mobility Specification

·         Raise to the attention of the membership the following outstanding Obsolete specifications:

·         OC00004 FIPA Human-Computer Interaction Specification

·         Recommends Jonathan Dale to the position of alternate chair of the FAB

·         Propose that html, word and pdf versions of all documents be maintained along with an index in the members’ area of the website.

·         Thanks to the membership for their contributions to the FAB's work this week

Ontology SIG resolutions

The Ontology SIG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

·         Resolve to develop a workplan to:

·         Examine FIPA00086 (Ontology Services)

·         Incorporate Agent Description Ontology

·         Recommend an Ontology Representation Language for FIPA's own use

·         We wish to extend our thanks and appreciation to the members of the Ontology SIG for their participation

Security SIG resolutions

During this FIPA meeting, the security SIG was especially well attended and actively supported. It discussed a range of security-related issues related to FIPA’s work and focused on producing two documents, which were submitted to the FAB for approval.

Firstly, it has reviewed and enhanced a previous Request For Information FIPA document (f-out-00065) and has submitted it to the FAB for approval with a view to being made public and distributed accordingly.

Secondly, it has considered, reviewed and modified an earlier security work-plan proposal (f-in-00031) with the intent to attain Work-Group status and has submitted it to the FAB for approval. The main objective of this work-plan is to produce an informational output document (such as a FIPA positional statement or white-paper) on security to be used as input to future FIPA specification(s) on agent security. This work-plan will involve:

1.        Reviewing current and previous specifications that relate to security such as FIPA00020 (deprecated).

2.        Reviewing responses to the call for information on security.

3.        Assessing how the use of security impacts the current FIPA ACL and FIPA agent infrastructure specifications and defining possible modifications to the ACL (envelope, speech acts, interaction models and or ontologies) and MTS to support specific security policies.

4.     Deriving requirements for security and defining security policies by analyzing (and possibly testing) security use within concrete domains such as AgentCities.

In addition, this work-plan will also provide input into the work-plans of related TCs, WGs and SIGS, such as  Architecture, Agreements, AgentCities and PD&M.

The FIPA Security SIG proposes the following resolutions.

·         That the FIPA membership accept this approach to the area of security.

·         That the proposed Request For Information is reviewed and approved by the FAB in a timely fashion and made available on the FIPA web site and distributed to the appropriate mailing lists.

·         That the proposed Work-Plan is reviewed and approved by the FAB in a timely fashion

·         That a web page for the Security SIG be created on the FIPA web site, with the intention of transforming it into a Security Working Group page when appropriate.

·         That FIPA members interested in the topic of security provide comment and feedback via the security  reflector security@fipa.org

·         That the following be thanked for their work in the Security SIG at this meeting of FIPA:  Monique Calisti, Patricia Charlton, Satoshi, Nishiyama, JungPill Choi, Chihiro Ono, Robert E. Luna, Dabiel Deluca, Jamie Lawrence, Dominic Greenwood, Heikki Helin, Stefano Campodello, Fred Igo, Mike Stockman, Phil Buckle, Martin Purvis, David Drake, Katherine L. Morse, Denis Pierre, David Levine, Noel Bush Luan Vu and Stefan Poslad.  (Apologies are offered to anyone whose name was omitted.)

Liaison SIG resolutions

The status of the following external activities were discussed: OMG, FIPA-OS, BT’s Zeus, JAS, TIIERA, Comtec, April, Tryllian, IEEE Upper Ontology, Intel, Artificial Life. No updates were received on the following activities (although some were reported elsewhere): HMS, P2P, JCP, GRID Forum, DAML, OIL, UDDI.

Significant news included the following:

·         The OMG Agent SIG now has significant interest in ontologies and mobility, Ontology SIG now established.

·         FIPA-OS coordination has been transferred from Nortel Networks to the Emorphia start-up company.

·         The Java Agent Services (JAS) expert group has formed and significant implementation progress made.

·         TIIERA developer’s manual and source code available on request.

·         APRIL now FIPA 2000 compliant (mostly) – available under GPL license.

·         Tryllian have released an agent development kit as a commercial product – uses FIPA ACL.

·         IEEE Standard Upper Ontology: ‘50+ emails per day’

·         Artificial Life: commercial company, FIPA 97 applied to ‘verticals’

All contributors are thanked for their contributions, and invited to provide updates at the London meeting.

All members are encouraged to share ‘related special-interest activities’ at future Liasion SIG meetings.

Notes from the Liaison SIG will be available on the FIPA web site shortly.

PtP SIG resolutions

The PtP SIG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

·         To send a representative to the next meeting of the Peer-to-Peer Working Group (PtPWG) in Santa Clara on Feb. 7-8, 2001. (Donald Steiner)

·         To increase the visibility of FIPA to the Peer-to-Peer community, and to propose this to the Image Committee.

·         To provide a link to the PtPWG website as well as to other relevant sites from FIPA’s site.

·         Special thanks to all those who contributed throughout the week, in particular the large number of people who attended the Tuesday afternoon meeting.

5.        FIPA thanks the following individuals for participating in and making valuable contributions to the FIPA Workshop:

The video proceedings of the workshop will be made available on the FIPA web site.

6.        FIPA thanks Intel for offering FIPA excellent meeting facilities and friendly support in Phoenix and for hosting its 20^th meeting, in particular: Mike Stockman and Sandy Ellison of Intel, Mike Friedman and Steve Welsh from AVHQ, and Sally Ross of the Hawthorne Suites Hotel.

7.        FIPA invites its membership and contributors to the FIPA process to its 21^st meeting, April 2-6, 2001 in London, UK to be hosted by Imperial College.