FOUNDATION FOR
INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS
FIPA 98 Specification
Part 1
Agent Management
Obsolete
Publication
date: 23rd October 1998
Copyright ©
1998 by FIPA - Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
Geneva,
Switzerland
This
is one part of the first version of the FIPA 98 Specification as released in
October 1998.
The latest version of this document may be found on the FIPA web site:
http://www.fipa.org
Comments
and questions regarding this document and the specifications therein should be
addressed to:
fipa98@fipa.org
It
is planned to introduce a web-based mechanism for submitting comments to the
specifications.
Please refer to the web site for FIPA's latest policy and procedure for dealing
with issues regarding the specification.
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Notice
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Use of the technologies described in
this specification may infringe patents, copyrights or other intellectual
property rights of FIPA Members and non-members. Nothing in this
specification should be construed as granting permission to use any of the
technologies described. Anyone planning to make use of technology covered by
the intellectual property rights of others should first obtain permission
from the holder(s) of the rights. FIPA strongly encourages anyone
implementing any part of this specification to determine first whether
part(s) sought to be implemented are covered by the intellectual property of
others, and, if so, to obtain appropriate licenses or other permission from
the holder(s) of such intellectual property prior to implementation. This
FIPA 98 Specification is subject to change without notice. Neither FIPA nor
any of its Members accept any responsibility whatsoever for damages or
liability, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this
specification.
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Contents
Foreword....................................................................................................................................................... iii
Introduction................................................................................................................................................... iii
1 Scope........................................................................................................................................................... 3
2 Normative reference(s)................................................................................................................................. 3
3 Terms and definitions.................................................................................................................................. 3
4 Symbols (and abbreviated terms)................................................................................................................ 3
5 Overview...................................................................................................................................................... 3
6 Agent Management Services....................................................................................................................... 3
6.1 Directory Facilitator (DF)........................................................................................................................... 3
Overview........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Management actions supported by the DF...................................................................................................... 3
6.2
Agent Management System (AMS)............................................................................................................ 3
Overview........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Management actions supported by the AMS................................................................................................... 3
Management actions supported by the other agents
used by the AMS........................................................... 3
6.3
Agent Communication Channel (ACC)....................................................................................................... 3
Overview........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Management actions supported by the ACC................................................................................................... 3
7. The Agent Platform..................................................................................................................................... 3
7.1 The AP Life-Cycle...................................................................................................................................... 3
7.2 The Home Agent Platform......................................................................................................................... 3
7.3 Agent Registration on an AP..................................................................................................................... 3
8. Inter-AP Communication............................................................................................................................. 3
8.1 Agent Naming and Addressing.................................................................................................................. 3
8.2 Agent Messaging....................................................................................................................................... 3
8.3 Sending Messages.................................................................................................................................... 3
8.3.1 Using the IPMT....................................................................................................................................... 3
8.3.2 Requesting an ACC to forward a message:............................................................................................ 3
8.4 Receiving messages.................................................................................................................................. 3
8.5 Transfer and routing of messages............................................................................................................. 3
8.6 Multiple Addresses.................................................................................................................................... 3
9 FIPA Baseline Protocol and ACC................................................................................................................. 3
9.1
Overview................................................................................................................................................... 3
9.2 IIOP........................................................................................................................................................... 3
10. Device Mobility.......................................................................................................................................... 3
10.1 Intermittent connectivity and session
mobility......................................................................................... 3
10.2 Synchronisation....................................................................................................................................... 3
10.3 Forwarding messages to a proxy agent.................................................................................................. 3
11 FIPA Agent Management Grammar and Ontology..................................................................................... 3
11.1 Letter Grammar....................................................................................................................................... 3
11.2 Agent Management Grammar................................................................................................................. 3
11.3 Rules for Well Formed Agent Management
Messages............................................................................ 3
11.4 Exceptions............................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5 Agent Management Actions..................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.1 register................................................................................................................................................. 3
11.5.2 search................................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.3 modify................................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.4 deregister............................................................................................................................................. 3
11.5.5 register-agent....................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.6 deregister-agent................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.7 search-agent......................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.8 modify-agent......................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.9 authenticate.......................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.10 forward............................................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.11 query-platform-profile......................................................................................................................... 3
11.5.12 quit...................................................................................................................................................... 3
11.6 Agent Management Objects.................................................................................................................... 3
11.6.1 df-agent-description.............................................................................................................................. 3
11.6.2
ap-profile.............................................................................................................................................. 3
11.6.3
service-description................................................................................................................................ 3
11.6.4
ams-agent-description.......................................................................................................................... 3
11.6.5
fipa-man-exception............................................................................................................................... 3
Annex A
Agent Communication Channel
Interface Description Language (Normative)............................... 3
Annex B ACC & FIPA Baseline Protocol (Informative)................................................................................... 3
Agent communication channel requirements................................................................................................. 3
FIPA baseline protocol requirements............................................................................................................. 3
Annex C Use of IIOP (Informative).................................................................................................................. 3
References...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Foreword
The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is a
non-profit association registered in Geneva, Switzerland. FIPA’s purpose is to
promote the success of emerging agent-based applications, services and
equipment. This goal is pursued by making available in a timely manner,
internationally agreed specifications that maximise interoperability across
agent-based applications, services and equipment. This is realised through the
open international collaboration of member organisations, which are companies
and universities active in the agent field. FIPA intends to make the results of
its activities available to all interested parties and to contribute the
results of its activities to appropriate formal standards bodies.
This specification has been developed
through direct involvement of the FIPA membership. The 48 members of FIPA
(October 1998) represent 13 countries world-wide.
Membership in FIPA is open to any
corporation and individual firm, partnership, governmental body or
international organisation without restriction. By joining FIPA each member
declares himself individually and collectively committed to open competition in
the development of agent-based applications, services and equipment. Associate
Member status is usually chosen by those entities who want to be members of
FIPA without using the right to influence the precise content of the
specifications through voting.
The members are not restricted in any way from designing,
developing, marketing and/or procuring agent-based applications, services and
equipment. Members are not bound to implement or use specific agent-based
standards, recommendations and FIPA specifications by virtue of their
participation in FIPA.
This specification is published as FIPA 98 specifications
ver 1.0. All these parts have undergone an intense review by members as well as
non-members during the past year as preliminary versions have been available on
the FIPA web site. FIPA members as well as many non-members have been
conducting validation trials of the FIPA 97 specification during 1998 and will
continue to subject the new output to further validation during the coming
months. During 1999 FIPA will publish revised versions of the current
specifications and is also planning to continue work on further specifications
of agent based technology.
Introduction
The FIPA
specifications represent the primary output of FIPA. It is important to
appreciate that these specifications have been derived from examining
requirements on agent technology posed by specific industrial applications chosen
by FIPA so far, and described in Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the FIPA 97
specifications.
FIPA specifies
the interfaces of the different components in the environment with which an
agent can interact, i.e. humans, other agents, non-agent software and the physical
world. FIPA produces two kinds of specifications:
·
normative
specifications
mandating the external behavior of an agent and ensuring interoperability with
other FIPA-specified subsystems;
·
informative
specifications of applications providing guidance to industry on the use of
FIPA technologies.
In
October 1997, FIPA released its first set of specifications, called FIPA 97,
Version 1.0. During 1998, comments on this specification were received. Based
upon these comments, parts of FIPA 97 were superseded by a second version
released in October 1998, introducing minor changes only.
Furthermore,
in October 1998 FIPA released a new set of specifications, called FIPA 98,
version 1.0, of which this document is a part.
The following
tables provide an overview of the complete set of FIPA specifications.
Sorted
by part:
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Released
October 1997
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Released
October 1998
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Part
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FIPA
97 Version 1.0
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FIPA
97 Version 2.0
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FIPA
98 Version 1.0
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1
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N
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Agent
Management
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Agent
Management
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Agent
Management Extensions
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2
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N
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ACL
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ACL
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3
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N
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Agent
Software Integration
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4
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I
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Personal
Travel Assistant
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5
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I
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Personal
Assistant
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6
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I
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Audio Visual
Entertainment & Broadcasting
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7
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I
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Network
Management & Provision
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8
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N
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Human-Agent
Interaction
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10
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N
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Agent
Security Management
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11
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N
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Agent
Management Support for Mobility
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12
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N
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Ontology
Service
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13
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I/M
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Developer’s
Guide
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N ==
normative; I == informative; M == methodology; Italicised
== superseded
Sorted
by topic:
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Topic
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FIPA 97(Version 1.0, unless otherwise
indicated)
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FIPA 98 Version
1,0
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Agent
Management
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1.
Basic System (Version 2.0)
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1. Extension
to Basic System
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10. Agent
Security Management
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11. Agent
Management Support for Mobility
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Agent
Communication
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2. Agent
Communication Language
(Version 2.0)
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8.
Human-Agent Interaction
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12. Ontology
Service
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Agent S/W
Integration
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3. Agent
Software Integration
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Reference
Applications
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4. Personal
Travel Assistant
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5. Personal
Assistant
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6.
Audio/Visual Entertainment &
Broadcasting
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7.
Network Management &
Provisioning
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The parts of
the FIPA 98 specifications are briefly described below.
Part
1 - Agent Management
This part covers agent management
for inter-operable agents, and is thus primarily
concerned with defining open standard interfaces for accessing agent management
services. It also specifies an agent management ontology and agent platform message transport. This specification
incorporates and further enhances the FIPA 97, Part 1, Version 2.0
specification. The
internal design and implementation of intelligent agents and agent management
infrastructure is not mandated by FIPA and is outside the scope of this part.
Part 8 – Human-Agent Interaction
This part
deals with the human-agent interaction part of an agent system. It specifies
two agent services: User Dialog Management Service (UDMS) and User
Personalization Service (UPS). A UDMS wraps many types of software components
for user interfaces allowing for ACL level of interaction between agents and
human users. A UPS can maintain user models and supports their construction by
either accepting explicit information about the user or by learning from
observations of user behavior.
Part
10 – Agent Security Management
Security risks
exist throughout agent management: during registration, agent-agent interaction,
agent configuration, agent-agent
platform interaction, user-agent interaction and agent mobility. The Security
Management specification identifies the key security threats in agent
management and specifies facilities for securing agent-agent communication via
the FIPA agent platform. This specification represents the minimal set of
technologies required and is complementary to the existing FIPA 97 and FIPA 98,
Part 1 specifications. This part does not mandate every FIPA-compliant agent
platform to support agent security management.
Part
11 – Agent Management Support for Mobility
This specification represents a
normative framework for supporting software agent mobility using the FIPA agent
platform. This framework represents the minimal set of technologies required
and is complementary to the existing FIPA 97 and FIPA 98, Part 1
specifications. Wherever possible, it refers to existing standards in this
area. The framework supports additional non-mobile agent management operations
such as agent configuration. The specification does not mandate that every
FIPA-compliant agent platform must support agent mobility, nor does it cover
the specific requirements for agents on mobile devices with intermittent
connectivity, which is covered by the scope of the existing FIPA Agent
Management activity.
Part
12 – Ontology Service
This part deals with technologies enabling agents to manage
explicit, declaratively represented ontologies. It specifies an ontology
service provided to a community of agents by a dedicated Ontology Agent. It
allows for discovering public ontologies in order to access and maintain them;
translating expressions between different ontologies and/or different content
languages; responding to queries for relationships between terms or between ontologies;
and, facilitating identification of a shared ontology for communication between
two agents.
The
specification deals only with the communicative interface to such a service
while internal implementation and capabilities are left to developers. The interaction
protocols, communicative acts and, in general, the vocabulary that agents must
adopt when using this service are defined. The specification does not mandate
the storage format of ontologies, but only the way the ontology service is
accessed. However, in order to specify the service, an explicit representation
formalism, or meta-ontology, has been specified allowing communication of
knowledge between agents.
Part
13 – FIPA 97 Developer's Guide
The Developer’s Guide is meant to be a companion document to
the FIPA 97 specifications, and is intended to clarify areas of specific
interest and potential confusion. Such areas include issues that span more than
one of the normative parts of FIPA 97.
1 Scope
This document is part of the FIPA 1998 specifications
covering agent management for inter-operable agents. This specification
incorporates and further enhances the FIPA97 part 1 version 2 specification.
The Security Management (FIPA98 part
10) and the Agent Management Facilities for Mobility (FIPA98 part 11)
specifications represent companion specifications.
This document contains specifications
for agent management including: agent management services, agent management
ontology, agent platform message transport.
This document is primarily concerned with
defining open standard interfaces for accessing agent management services. The
internal design and implementation of intelligent agents and agent management
infrastructure is not mandated by FIPA and is outside the scope of this
specification.
The document provides a series of
examples to illustrate the agent management actions defined.
2 Normative
reference(s)
Object Management Group : Common Object Request
Broker Architecture (Version 2)
Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) : Common
Object Request Broker Architecture (Version 2)
FIPA – International standard for the
inter-operation of software agents – Part 1: Agent Management (V.2.0).
FIPA – International standard for the
inter-operation of software agents – Part 2: Agent Communication Language
(V.2.0).
FIPA – International standard for the
inter-operation of software agents – Part 3: Agent/Software Integration
(V.2.0).
FIPA – International standard for the inter-operation of
software agents – Part 10: Agent Management Support for Mobility (V.1.0).
FIPA –
International standard for the inter-operation of software agents – Part 11:
Agent Security Management (V.1.0).
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this specification, the following terms
and definitions apply:
Action
A basic construct which represents
some activity which an agent may perform. A special class of actions is the
communicative acts.
Agent
An Agent is the fundamental actor in
a domain. It combines one or more
service capabilities into a unified and integrated execution model which can
include access to external software, human users and communication facilities.
Agent cloning
The process by which an agent creates a copy of itself on an
agent platform.
Agent code
The set of instructions used by an agent.
Agent Communication Language (ACL)
A language with precisely defined
syntax, semantics and pragmatics that is the basis of communication between
independently designed and developed software agents. ACL is the primary
subject of the FIPA 97 specification, part 2.
Agent Communication Channel (ACC)
The Agent Communication Channel is an agent which uses
information provided by the Agent Management System to route messages between
agents within the platform and to agents resident on other platforms.
Agent data
Any data associated with an agent.
Agent invocation
The process by which an agent can create another instance of
an agent on an agent platform.
Agent Management System (AMS)
The Agent Management System is an
agent which manages the creation, deletion, suspension, resumption, authentication
and migration of agents on the agent platform and provides a “white pages”
directory service for all agents resident on an agent platform. It stores the
mapping between globally unique agent names (or GUID) and local transport
addresses used by the platform.
Agent Platform
An Agent Platform provides an
infrastructure in which agents can be deployed. An agent must be registered on
a platform in order to interact with other agents on that platform or indeed
other platforms. An AP consists of three capability sets ACC, AMS and default
Directory Facilitator.
Agent Platform Security Manager (APSM)
An Agent Platform Security Manager is responsible for
maintaining the agent platform security policy. The APSM is responsible for
providing transport-level security and creating agent audit logs. The APSM
negotiates the requested intra- and inter-domain security services of other
APSM's in concert with the implemented distributed computing architectures,
such as CORBA, COM, DCE, on behalf of an agent in its domain.
ARB Agent
An agent which provides the Agent
Resource Broker (ARB) service. There must be at least one such an agent in each
Agent Platform in order to allow the sharing of non-agent services.
Communicative Act
A special class of actions that
correspond to the basic building blocks of dialogue between agents. A
communicative act has a well-defined, declarative meaning independent of the
content of any given act. CAs are modelled on speech act theory. Pragmatically,
CAs are performed by an agent sending a message to another agent, using the
message format described in FIPA97, part 2.
Content
That part of a communicative act
which represents the domain dependent component of the communication. Note that
"the content of a message" does not refer to "everything within
the message, including the delimiters", as it does in some languages, but
rather specifically to the domain specific component. In the ACL semantic
model, a content expression may be composed from propositions, actions or
IRE's.
Content Language
The content of a FIPA message refers to whatever the communicative act
applies to. If, in general terms, the communicative act is considered as a
sentence, the content is the grammatical object of the sentence. This content
can be encoded in any language, the content
language, denoted by the :language parameter of the communicative act.
Conversation
An ongoing sequence of communicative
acts exchanged between two (or more) agents relating to some ongoing topic of
discourse. A conversation may (perhaps implicitly) accumulate context that is
used to determine the meaning of later messages in the conversation.
CORBA
Common Object Request Broker Architecture, an established standard allowing object-oriented distributed systems
to communicate through the remote invocation of object methods.
Directory Facilitator
The Directory Facilitator [1] is an agent that provides a
“yellow pages” directory service for the agents. It stores descriptions of the
agents and the services they offer.
Explicit & Implicit
An ontology is explicit
when it is specified in declarative form as a set of axioms and definitions
(e.g. as a set of Ontolingua statements) that an agent can refer to (e.g. by
means of an OKBC interface). An ontology is implicit,
when the assumptions on the meaning of its vocabulary are only implicitly
embedded in some piece of software.
Feasibility Precondition (FP)
The conditions (i.e. one or more
propositions) which need be true before an agent can (plan to) execute an
action.
Knowledge model
It is a specification of the set of primitives used by a
certain class of representation languages. As such, a knowledge model can be
considered as a meta-ontology. For instance, several ontology servers use an
object oriented model of knowledge based on primitive notions like classes,
frames, properties, constraints, axioms and functions. FIPA adopts for the
specification of these notions the OKBC version 2.0.4 Knowledge Model, which is
called FIPA-meta-ontology or FIPA knowledge model.
Illocutionary effect
See speech act theory.
Knowledge Querying and Manipulation
Language (KQML)
A de facto (but widely used)
specification of a language for inter-agent communication. In practice, several
implementations and variations exist.
Local Agent Platform
The Local Agent Platform is the AP
to which an agent is attached and which represents an ultimate destination for
messages directed to that agent.
Message
An individual unit of communication
between two or more agents. A message corresponds to a communicative act, in
the sense that a message encodes the communicative act for reliable
transmission between agents. Note that communicative acts can be recursively
composed, so while the outermost act is directly encoded by the message, taken
as a whole a given message may represent multiple individual communicative
acts.
Message content
See content.
Message transport service
The message transport service is an
abstract service provided by the agent management platform to which the agent
is (currently) attached. The message transport service provides for the
reliable and timely delivery of messages to their destination agents, and also
provides a mapping from agent logical names to physical transport addresses.
Meta-ontology
For allowing a FIPA agent to communicate through ACL
messages aboutontologies, it is
necessary to describe the concepts used to speak about anontology. This description is called the meta-ontology. It is an
ontologyitself as it provides the
ontology to refer to another ontology. Therefore,the meta-ontology should be powerful enough to deal with all
potentiallyavailable ontologies and
make explicit, at least informally, these concepts.
Mobile agent
An agent that is not reliant upon the agent platform where
it began executing and can subsequently transport itself between agent
platforms.
Mobility
The property or characteristic of an agent that allows it to
travel between agent platforms.
Ontology
An ontology is an explicit specification of the structure of
a certain domain (e.g. e-commerce, sport, …). For the practical goals of FIPA
(that is enabling development and deployment of inter-operable agent-based
applications), this includes a vocabulary (i.e. a list of logical constants and
predicate symbols) for referring to the subject area, and a set of logical
statements expressing the constraints existing in the domain and restricting
the interpretation of the vocabulary. Ontologies therefore provide a vocabulary
for representing and communicating knowledge about some topic and a set of
relationships and properties that hold for the entities denoted by that
vocabulary.
Ontology Agent
An agent that provides the Ontology Service specified
in this specification. The main objective of the Ontology Agent is to offer to
FIPA agents a unified view of the services offered by the different ontology
servers. Its second objective is to allow an ontology server to be known by
FIPA agents. Moreover some ontology agents can provide the agents with services
such as translation facilities. Like any other FIPA agent, the ontology agent has
to be registered to the DF and to provide the DF with the published ontologies
and available services.
Ontology Name
The ontologies referred to by the agents can be provided by
different ontology servers. Consequently, these ontology names are constructed
from: the OA name, and the ontology logical name (given by the ontology
designer e.g. “car“).
Ontology Server
Provider of an Ontology Service, not necessarily in the FIPA
domain, or FIPA-compliant. Examples of ontology servers already existing
outside FIPA are: Ontolingua, XML/RDF ontology servers, ODL databases
ontologies servers. Access to the services provided by these ontologies servers
are based on various APIs such as the OKBC interface, the ODL interface or
HTTP.
Ontology sharing problem
The problem of ensuring that two
agents that wish to converse do, in fact, share a common ontology for the
domain of discourse. Minimally, agents should be able to discover whether or
not they share a mutual understanding of the domain constants.
Perlocutionary Effect
See speech act theory.
Personalization
An agent’s ability to take individual preferences and
characteristics of users into account and adapt its behavior to these factors.
Proposition
A statement which can be either true or false. A closed
proposition is one which contains no variables, other than those defined within
the scope of a quantifier.
Protocol
A common pattern of conversations
used to perform some generally useful task. The protocol is often used to
facilitate a simplification of the computational machinery needed to support a
given dialogue task between two agents. Throughout this document, we reserve
protocol to refer to dialogue patterns between agents, and networking protocol
to refer to underlying transport mechanisms such as TCP/IP.
Rational Effect (RE)
The rational effect of an action is
a representation of the effect that an agent can expect to occur as a result of
the action being performed. In particular, the rational effect of a
communicative act is the perlocutionary effect an agent can expect the CA to
have on a recipient agent. Note that the recipient is not bound to ensure that
the expected effect comes about; indeed it may be impossible for it to do so.
Thus an agent may use its knowledge of the rational effect in order to plan an
action, but it is not entitled to believe that the rational effect necessarily
holds having performed the act.
Software Service
An instantiation of a connection to a software system.
Software System
A software entity which is not conformant to the FIPA Agent
Management specification.
Speech Act
The notion of a speech act is
derived from the linguistic analysis of human communication. It is based on the
idea that with language the speaker not only makes statements, but also
performs actions, e.g. a request or an assertion. In this context, a verb
denoting a speech act, is called a performative,
since saying it makes it so. See FIPA97, part 2 for more details.
Speech Act Theory
A theory of communications which is
used as the basis for ACL. Speech act theory is derived from the linguistic
analysis of human communication. It is based on the idea that with language the
speaker not only makes statements, but also performs actions. A speech act can
be put in a stylised form that begins "I hereby request …" or "I
hereby declare …". In this form the verb is called the performative, since
saying it makes it so. Verbs that cannot be put into this form are not speech
acts, for example "I hereby solve this equation" does not actually
solve the equation.
Stationary agent
An agent that executes only upon the agent platform where it
begins executing and is reliant upon it.
TCP/IP
An internet networking protocol used to establish
connections and transmit data between hosts
User Agent
An agent which interacts with a human user.
User Dialog Management Service
An agent service in order for FIPA agents to interact with
human users; by converting ACL into media/formats which human users can
understand and vice versa, managing the communication channel between agents
and users, and identifying users interacting with agents.
User ID
An identifier for a real user.
User Model
A user model contains assumptions about user preferences,
capabilities, skills, knowledge, etc, which may be acquired by inductive
processing based on observations about the user. User models normally contain
knowledge bases which are directly manipulated and administered.
User Personalization Service
An agent service that offers abilities to support
personalization, e.g. by maintaining user profiles or forming complex user
models by learning from observations of user behavior.
Wrapper Agent
An agent which provides the FIPA-WRAPPER service to an agent
domain on the Internet.
4 Symbols (and abbreviated terms)
ACC: Agent
Communication Channel
ACL: Agent Communication Language
AMS: Agent Management System
AP: Agent Platform
API: Application Programming
Interface
APSM: Agent Platform Security Manager
ARB:
Agent Resource Broker
CA: Communicative Act
CORBA:
Common Object Request Broker
Architecture
DB: Database
DCOM: Distributed COM
DF: Directory Facilitator
FIPA: Foundation for Intelligent
Physical Agents
FP:
Feasibility Precondition
GUID: Global Unique Identifier
HAP: Home Agent Platform
HTTP: Hypertext Transmission Protocol
IDL:
Interface Definition
Language
IIOP: Internet Inter-ORB Protocol
IPMT: Internal Platform Message
Transport
IRE:
Identifying Referring
Expression
OMG: Object Management Group
ORB:
Object Request Broker
P3P: Platform for Privacy
Preferences Project
PICS: Platform for Internet Content
Selection
RE:
Rational Effect
RMI: Remote
Method Invocation, an inter-process communication method embodied in Java
SL: Semantic Language
SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SQL:
Structured Query Language
S/W: Software System
TCP
/ IP: Transmission Control
Protocol / Internet Protocol
UDMA: User Dialogue Management Agent
UDMS: User Dialogue Management Service
UPA: User Personalization Agent
UPS: User Personalization Service
XML: eXtensible Markup Language
5 Overview
Agent
management provides the normative framework within which FIPA Agents exist and
operate. It establishes the logical reference model for the creation,
registration, location, communication, migration and retirement of agents.
The entities
contained in the reference model are logical capability sets (i.e. services)
and do not imply any physical configuration. Additionally, the implementation
details of individual platforms and agents are the design choices of the
individual agent system developers.
Figure 1 is a
graphical representation of the agent management reference model.
Figure 1 : Agent Management Reference Model
The agent
management reference model consists of the following logical components each
representing a capability set. These can be combined in
physical implementations of agent platforms.
·
An Agent is the
fundamental actor on an agent platform which combines one or more service
capabilities into a unified and integrated execution model which may include
access to external software, human users
and communications facilities.
An Agent may have certain resource brokering capabilities for accessing
software, (see FIPA 97 Part 3 Agent-Software Interaction).
An Agent must have one or more owners,
(for example, based on organisational affiliation or human user). An Agent
supports several notions of identity. A Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), also
known as agent-name, labels an agent over all FIPA domains so that it may be
distinguished unambiguously in the agent universe. An agent may be registered
at a number of addresses at which it can be contacted. An Agent may have
certain resource brokering capabilities for accessing software, (see FIPA 97
Part 3 Agent-Software Interaction).
·
Directory
Facilitator (DF) : The
DF provides “yellow pages” services to other agents. The DF is a mandatory,
normative agent. Agents may register their services with the
DF or query the DF to find out what services are offered by other agents.
·
Agent
Management System (AMS): An AMS is a mandatory component of the AP. It is an agent which exerts
supervisory control over access to and use of theAP. Only one AMS
will exist in a single AP.
The AMS maintains a directory of logical agent names
and their associated transport addresses for an agent platform. The AMS offers
“white pages” services to other agents.
·
Agent
Communication Channel (ACC) : All
agents have access to at least one ACC. The ACC is the default communication
method between agents on different AP’s. The message
routing service offered by the ACC must be reliable and orderly and will adhere
to the requirements specified in section 9, FIPA Baseline Protocol and ACC. (See
also Annex B and preferred requirements for ACC and baseline protocol)
·
An Agent Platform
(AP) provides the physical infrastructure in which agents can be deployed.
The AP consists of the machine(s), operating system, agent support software,
FIPA agent management components (DF, AMS, ACC), Internal Platform Message
Transport and agents. The Internal Platform Message Transport is outside the scope of FIPA.
The
internal design of an AP is an issue for AP developers and is not a subject of
standardisation within FIPA. AP’s and the agents which are native to those APs,
either by creation directly within or migration to the AP may use any proprietary
method of intercommunication. For example, an AP could be implemented in Java
and message-passing could be equivalent to function calls.
It
should be noted that the concept of an AP does not mean that all agents
resident on an AP have to be co-located on the same host computer. FIPA
envisages a variety of different APs from single processes containing
lightweight agent threads, to fully distributed APs built around proprietary or
open middleware standards.
FIPA
is concerned only with how communication is carried out between agents who are
native to the AP and agents outside the AP, or agents who dynamically register
with an AP. Agents are free to exchange messages directly by any means they can
support.
·
Internal
Platform Message Transport (IPMT) is
the proprietary means of exchanging messages within an AP and is outside the
scope of FIPA.
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