FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

 

FIPA Propagate Communicative Act Specification

 

Document title

FIPA Propagate Communicative Act Specification

Document number

DC00050A

Document source

FIPA TC C

Document status

Deprecated

Date of this status

2000/10/16

Supersedes

None

Contact

fab@fipa.org

Change history

2000/10/16

Deprecated by FIPA00037

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2000 Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - http://www.fipa.org/

Geneva, Switzerland

Notice

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 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.

Foreword

The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is an international organization that is dedicated to promoting the industry of intelligent agents by openly developing specifications supporting interoperability among agents and agent-based applications. This occurs through open collaboration among its member organizations, which are companies and universities that are active in the field of agents. FIPA makes the results of its activities available to all interested parties and intends to contribute its results to the appropriate formal standards bodies.

The members of FIPA are individually and collectively committed to open competition in the development of agent-based applications, services and equipment. Membership in FIPA is open to any corporation and individual firm, partnership, governmental body or international organization without restriction. In particular, members are not bound to implement or use specific agent-based standards, recommendations and FIPA specifications by virtue of their participation in FIPA.

The FIPA specifications are developed through direct involvement of the FIPA membership. The status of a specification can be either Preliminary, Experimental, Standard, Deprecated or Obsolete. More detail about the process of specification may be found in the FIPA Procedures for Technical Work. A complete overview of the FIPA specifications and their current status may be found in the FIPA List of Specifications. A list of terms and abbreviations used in the FIPA specifications may be found in the FIPA Glossary.

FIPA is a non-profit association registered in Geneva, Switzerland. As of January 2000, the 56 members of FIPA represented 17 countries worldwide. Further information about FIPA as an organization, membership information, FIPA specifications and upcoming meetings may be found at http://www.fipa.org/.

Contents

1     Scope. 1

2     Propagate. 2

3     References. 4


1         Scope

This document specifies the Propagate communicative act which is compliant to [FIPA00037] requirements.

 


2         Propagate

Summary

The sender  intends that the receiver  treat the embedded message as sent directly to the receiver,   and wants the receiver to identify the agents denoted by the given descriptor and send the received propagate message to them.

Content

A tuple of a descriptor, that is, a referential expression, denoting an agent or agents to be forwarded the propagate message, an embedded ACL communicative act, that is, an ACL  message, performed by the sender to the receiver of the propagate message and a constraint condition for propagation, for example, timeout.

Description

This is a compound action of the following two actions. First, the sending agent requests the recipient to treat the embedded message in the received propagate message as if it is directly sent from the sender that is, as if the sender performed the embedded communicative act directly to the receiver. Second, the sender wants the receiver to identify agents denoted by the given descriptor and to send a modified version of the received propagate message to them, as described below.

 

On forwarding, the :receiver parameter of the forwarded propagate message is set to the denoted agent(s) and the :sender parameter is set to the receiver of the received propagate message. The sender of the embedded communicative act of the forwarded propagate message is also set to the same agent as the propagate message’s sender.

 

This communicative act is designed for delivering messages through federated agents by creating a chain (or tree) of propagate messages. An example of this is instantaneous brokerage requests using a proxy message (see [FIPA00052]) or persistent requests by a request-when message (see [FIPA00058]) embedding a proxy message.

Formal Model

<i, propagate(j, Ref x d(x), <i, cact>, f)> º

  <i, cact(j)>;

    <i, inform(j, Ii(($y) (Bj (Ref x d(x) = y) Ù Done(<j, propagate(y,

                     Ref x d(x), <j, cact>, f)>, Bj f))))>

    FP: FP(cact) Ù Bi a Ù ØBi (Bifj a Ú Uifj a)
    RE: Done(cact)
Ù Bj a

 

Where:

 

  a= Ii(($y) (Bj (Ref x d(x) = y) Ù

             Done(<j, propagate(y, Ref x d(x), <j, cact>, f)>, Bj f)))

 

Agent i performs the embedded communicative act to j: <i, cact(j)> and i wants j to send the propagate message to the denoted agent(s) by Ref x d(x).

 

Note: <i,cact> in the propagate message is the ACL communicative act. that is, the ACL message, without a :receiver prarmeter. Ref x d(x) is one of the referential expressions: ix d(x), any x d(x) or all x d(x).

Example

Agent i requests agent j and its federating other brokerage agents to do brokering a video-on-demand server agent to obtain "SF" programs.

 

(propagate

  :sender i

  :receiver j
  :content

    ((iota ?x

      (registered

        (:agent-description
          (:name ?x)

          (:service-description
            (:service-name agent-brokerage)))))
          (proxy

            :content

              ((iota ?y

                (registered

                  (:agent-description
                    (:name ?y)

                    (:service-description
                      (:service-name video-on-demand)))))
          (request

            :content

              (action

                (send-program
                  (:category "SF")))
                   :ontology vod-server-ontology
                   :protocol fipa-reqest …)
                   true)
                :ontology brokerage-agent-ontology
                :conversation-id vod-brokering-2
                :protocol fipa-brokering …)
                (hop-limit 5))
  :ontology brokerage-agent-ontology
  :hop-count 1 …)

                                                            


3         References

[FIPA00037]      FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00037/

[FIPA00052]      FIPA Proxy Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00052/

[FIPA00058]      FIPA Request When Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00058/