FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in XML Specification

 

Document title

FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in XML Specification

Document number

PC00085F

Document source

FIPA Agent Management

Document status

Preliminary

Date of this status

2000/08/16

Supersedes

None

Contact

management@fipa.org

Change history

2000/05/25

Initial draft

2000/06/16

Updated the DTD to resolve some ambiguities and updated example accordingly. Replaced href attribute with value. Modified the AID object semantics in order to permit the name field to contain a URL and to clearly specify the name of the user-defined properties.

2000/06/19

Added a notes appendix temporarily to keep track of issues related to the specification. Minor phrasing edits.

2000/06/21

Modified the semantics of user-defined for AID level and top level. Updated DTD and examples.

2000/06/29

Made use of user defined parameters more clear; changed a-id to agent-identifier; changed a-id-user-defined to aid-user-defined

2000/07/21

Changed the names of content-* parameters to be consistent with 00067 specification. Change envelope-to and –from to “to” and “from”. Deleted Section 2.2. on lexical analysis . Removed user-defined elements in envelope (user may define a new tag instead) and in the AID (now unsupported). Removed transport behaviour sub-elements (transport-errors etc.) which are not supported in other syntaxes. Relative time removed for consistency with other specifications

2000/08/16

Changed the url and name tags from attribute to start/end form. Added specification for the envelope MIME type and on the body / envelope separation. Added some more references.

 

© 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 organisation 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 organisations, 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 organisation 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 organisation, membership information, FIPA specifications and upcoming meetings may be found at http://www.fipa.org/.

Contents

1     Scope. 1

2     XML Envelope Representation. 2

2.1      Component Name. 2

2.2      Mime type. 2

2.3      Syntax. 2

2.4      Additional Syntax Rules. 3

2.5      Representation of Time. 4

3     References. 5

4     Informative Annex A – Examples. 6

5     Informative Annex B – Notes. 10


1         Scope

This document is part of the FIPA specifications and deals with message transportation between inter-operating agents. This document also forms part of the FIPA Agent Management Specification [FIPA00023] and contains specifications for:

 

·         Syntactic representation of a message envelope in XML form (see [W3Cxml]).


2         XML Envelope Representation

This section gives the concrete syntax for the message envelope specification that must be used to transport messages over a Message Transport Protocol (MTP - see [FIPA00067]). This concrete syntax is designed to complement [FIPA00071] and [FIPA00084].

 

2.1        Component Name

The name assigned to this component is:

 

fipa.mts.env.rep.xml.std

 

2.2        Mime type

Where required, the MIME type (see [RFC2046] of items generated according to this specification is taken to be application/xml. The charset encoding used in this section must conform to [W3Cxml].

 

2.3        Syntax

The following DTD specifies the encoding of the abstract FIPA specification as an XML message:

<!--

Document Type: XML DTD

Document Purpose: Encoding of FIPA ACL message envelopes (as in [FIPA0067]).

See http://www.fipa.org

Last Revised: 2000-08-16

-->

 

<!ELEMENT     envelope               ( params+ )>

 

<!ELEMENT     params                 ( to?,

                                      from?,

                                      comments?,

                                      acl-representation?,