[Modeling] Modeling an Agent Class- register your opinion

[James Odell]

Currently, many researchers refer to this as a "group."  There has been a
bit of writing on the group and its participants over the past few years --
particularly by Jacques Ferber (and some by me).  Treating a department or
organization as a group of agents is a very common example and usually
entails two perspectives:

1) Black box- where groups interact with other groups.  For example, Oracle
interacting with PeopleSoft.  Here, the view is as a group treated as an
agent.  

2) White box- where groups are "containers" for a  collection of interacting
entities.  For example, Oracle consists of individual such as Larry Ellison
and Guus Ramackers.  In this view, an individual (playing the role of, say,
President) in Oracle interfaces with an individual in PeopleSoft.  In other
words, it is the *roles* within groups that are the interface points for
intergroup interaction.

-Jim


On 6/20/03 4:17 AM, "Joaquin Peņa" indited:

> Right, as the department agent is like a coordinator of its
> employees this relation can be view as a "congregation" at
> organizational level (or view). But, I guess that a department is
> more a resource than an agent, unless it coordinates the employees
> community in someway.
> 
> If it coordinates agents, at the interaction view (we use role
> models for modelling interactions between agents) it is just a
> relation/relations between agents. That it is to say, a set of
> role models that models the common interaction between employees
> and its department in order to achieve system goals.