FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

Document title:

FIPA X2Standard Work Plan

Document number:

f-wp-00021

Document source:

FIPA Board and FAB

Document status:

Approved

Date of this status:

2002/02/15

Change history:

2002/02/13

Initial draft; Submitted to the FAB for approval

2002/02/15

FAB comments (see end)

 

Contact person:

Fabio Bellifemine

fabio.bellifemine@tilab.com

 

Problem Statement:

The interest towards the FIPA community at large and the FIPA specifications in particular, is growing. Several distinct agent platforms, applications, and collaborative projects are being based upon the FIPA specifications. There is evidence that a core set of these FIPA specifications is being used since a number of years and that they are robust and effective enough. However, the fact that all FIPA specifications are in Preliminary and Experimental status and none of them has reached the Standard status is often perceived as a barrier for industries to embrace the standard and invest into tools and applications.

 

Objective:

The objective of this work plan is to identify, and promote to Standard status a core set of FIPA specifications.

           

Specifications Generated: 

No new FIPA specifications will be generated by this activity. The scope is in fact limited to improving Experimental specifications by reconciling them through removing ambiguities and inconsistencies. 

 

Relationships external to FIPA

All the community of users of the FIPA specifications will be invited at large (via an announcement to Chat mailing list) to provide specific and detailed comments, and possibly also propose solutions, for bugs, inconsistencies, and improvements to the clarity and readability of all Experimental specifications.

 

It is envisaged also the exploitation of the FIPA liaison with the Agentcities project, whose network of inter-communicating platforms is a valuable environment for possible tests of the FIPA specifications. As appropriate, TC X2Standard may release revised versions of the specifications for public review.

 

Plan for Work and Milestones:

The goal of TC X2Standard will be achieved in the period of time of 3 FIPA meetings, each with a time slot of 3 full days allocated to the new TC nominated to carry out this work plan. Between FIPA meetings, activity will be mostly conducted via e-mail by using the new mailing list x2standard@fipa.org

                                         

If needed, ad-hoc interim meeting will be organized, with announcements of these meetings being made well in advance.

 

The achievement of the goal of this work plan requires adopting the following process:

 

·         The FAB will give the control of the source of the latest versions of the Experimental specifications to TC X2Standard.

·         TC X2Standard will analyse and make the necessary modifications using the Track Changes feature of Word switched on and using the ChangeLog annex at the end of each specification to note major changes only.

·         At the end of each meeting, and after any substantial interim revision, TC X2Standard will make available to the FIPA members the updated documents by publishing them in a FIPA members-only repository, and notifying the membership through the chat mailing list.

·         After each meeting, TC X2Standard will submit a report of the current set of proposed solutions to outstanding problems, and the current list of unresolved issues to the membership. Closure of this list is required by the Friday of the meeting prior to meeting at which the modified specifications will be submitted to the FAB and Membership.

·         At the end of the work plan, TC X2Standard will submit all of the modified specifications to the FAB which will expedite the approval process and the final vote.

·         In order to have a consistent and usable core of specifications eventually approved to Standard status, it is necessary that the final FIPA membership vote is organized as a per-group of documents basis rather than as a per-document basis to give the complete vision of this coherent set of FIPA specifications.

 

Dependencies: All of the FIPA specifications that at 31st March, 2002 are at Experimental status within FIPA. In particular, ACL and its message structure, message encodings, content languages, interaction protocols, the message transport service and the defined transport protocols, agent management, and the abstract architecture specifications. The full list of documents will be released at the end of the 25th meeting (April, 2002).

 

Support:

·         FIPA Board of Directors

·         FIPA Architecture Board

 

FAB Comments:

This work plan has been approved and has been assigned to the X2S Technical Committee.