1. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Strawman Agent Reference Architecture (DARPA ISO coABS Program - Draft 8-31-98) Craig Thompson Object Services and Consulting, Inc. (OBJS) thompson@objs.com, http://www.objs.com

2. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. DARPA coABS Objectives DoD Problem Joint Vision 2010 ABIS Study DARPA ISO next generation architecture The Vision networked society where every software artifact, information source, and device is connected and running in parallel intelligent automation-- application connectivity where networks of agents self- organize at run-time scaleable, evolvable, reliable, secure, survivable,... The Challenges what is an agent - an object with an attitude control and complexity - agent, ensemble and system behavior that is predicable and bounded scalability and pervasiveness - agents for the masses

3. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Object  Component  Agent  ? state behavior encapsulation inheritance reflection packaging serialization repository TBD Passing the Agent Test What is an Agent? deconstructionist view: agents augment objects with additional capabilities ACL process inside agent framework planning mobility rules … goal/task-oriented autonomous ontologies collaborative/teams

4. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. software that acts as a human’s agent to provide some service or function in an intelligent manner modular software that exhibits some of these properties: autonomy, mobility, intelligence objects with an attitude -- component software constructed according to certain principles and/or mechanisms, e.g., objects that use an ACL to communicate, objects that make use of a planner, … more definitions at: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/4633/Agents_definition.html What is an agent?

5. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. The presentation consists of a list of views of the Agent Reference Architecture

6. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Operational Payoff View “Make it so!” Warfighter INTERNET User Agent Task Agent Info Agent Process Agent Agent systems offer the potential for rapid comprehensive response and adaptation to the dynamic battlefield. what the end-user sees

7. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Target operational requirements: Humans and agents connect to the agent grid anytime from anywhere and get the information and capability they need. Enable teams led by humans and staffed by agents. Intelligent automation -- easier application connectivity where networks of agents self- organized at run-time. Reduce the 60% of time in command and control systems spent manipulating stovepipes; incrementally replace stovepipes. Connect the $40B worth of DoD equipment that currently only interoperates with one or two other components, permitting better knowledge sharing. Another example is a process improvement in factory 1 is broadcast immediately to factories 2..N. Agent-enable object and web applications to reconfigure as new data and function is added to the system. Add capability modularly. Stable, scaleable, evolvable, reliable, secure, survivable,... Scale to millions of agents so agents are pervasive and information and computation is not restricted to machine or organization boundaries. Survivable so if one agent goes down, another takes its place; Requirements View

8. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Adaptive to uncertainty and change Agents are goal directed and act on their own performing tasks on your behalf Agents coordinate and negotiate to achieve common goals Agents move to where they are needed Autonomous proactive Mobile Interoperate Agents interoperate with humans, other, legacy systems, and information sources Agents dynamically adapt to and learn about their environment Cooperative self-organizing delegation social personality social personality Characteristics of Agents

9. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agents + the Global Grid Server Component Library Component Library Agent Grid - System Concept View

10. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. agent properties & kinds communication capability computation capability by role in system information agent data sources interface agent NL fisheye view task agent web agent middleware agent mobile agent, itinerary social, personality, motivation, forgetting intelligent agent distribution messaging svcs* agent life cycle* - start, stop, checkpoint, name service** event monitoring leasing, compensation catalog services*, registry/repository* register*, offer/accept/decline publish*, subscribe* trading*, matchmaking, advertising*, negotiating*, brokering*, yellow pages* security** authenticate* encrypt access control lists* firewall* CIA model agent suspects transactions persistence* query, profile (of metadata)* data fusion replication* groups multicast (scarce) resource mgmt*, allocate*, deallocate*, monitor*, local, global optimization, load balancing*, negotiation for resources* scheduling time, geo-location rules, constraints planning* property list versioning, config Agent Ontology View (aka Functional/Compositional View) speech acts*: ACL* - KQML, FIPA ACL, OAA ICL planning* reactive* goal interactions* discrete vs continuous* constraints iterative, revision workflow systemic grid features common services AGENT SYSTEM single vs. multi-agent AGENT SYSTEM single vs. multi-agent ensembles # of agents* teams, peers, contracting, org. responsibility roles, capabilities, mutual beliefs hierarchy* conversational policies* scalability* policy*, management resource dial survivability evolvability reliabile* licensing & cost QoS* accuracy priorities GRID time-constrained* control*, coordination*, multi-agent synchronization cooperation, competition adaptation, evolution* via market model,... federates infrastructure primitives reflection serialization threads interceptors proxies filters multicast wrappers legacy sys data sources ONTOLOGY** ontolingua, OKBC metadata representations interests, locations, availability, capability, price/cost XML and web object models I*3 BADD AICE IA EDCS Quorum OMG JTF Jini ALP, HLA, IA Architecture Principle: separation of concerns deconstructionist view - what can you take away and still have an agent system secure*, trust societies closed vs. open, communities of interest learning by example... mobility** heterogeneous* computing environ. agent systems ACLs content languages ontologies policies services open world assumption autonomous decentralized* * = Architecture WG in Pittsburg * = Control WG in Pittsburg * = Interoperability WG in Pittsburg red = Sun Jini green = other DARPA programs content languages KIF, FOL, IDL, RDF missing views MOP More common services instrumenting, logging caching queuing routing, rerouting pedigree, drill down translation*... DDB

11. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Information Access Framework heterogeneous data sources and domain object models properties: LAN or WAN at known location or dynamically available relational Oracle, Sybase, Informix, ODBC, JDBC OODB information retrieval simulators geographical informaiton systems semi structured sources html, xml, other formatted sources, image information integration services data source wrappers ifilter, subscribe, notify, monitor, push, pull persistence replication caching query decomposition multi tier queries - get info from one source to complete query source discovery trader, brokering, yellow pages, matchmaking source selection transformation, translation services, semantic integration and transformation, includes unit conversion domain and ontology services term translation, correlation services, name/place query translation (e.g., from OQL to SQL ) fusing stream reflection control properties binding time... indexing working in parallel iterative query reformulaiton change propagation if data sources change (alternate source) if query changes context of query statically dynamically - specified in plan, case-based reasoning, workflow metrics operation effectiveness - info quality, timliness and cost of retrieval breadth of coverage - completeness, data source complexity maintenance or evolution over time cost in labor hours metadata properties operations covered query only vs update too data access systemic properties scaleable plug and play, open, component-based transparency of data location, access langauge, and protocol user queries static set vs dyanamic and frequently changing based on user task and need distributed all local to user machine, distributed on LAN, on WAN how homogeneous is content uniform across all sources unique per source overlapping sources partially redundant w inconsistencies incomplete homogeneity of information sources all in same query language syntatic differences multiple kinds source size - # of entity types 10, 50, >50 semantic impedence w user no vs all query term translation source responsiveness quick (<10 sec; medium - up to 60 sec; slow - <3 min; very slow - <3 min; batch overnite; unreliable cost availability, permission, quality, quantity, capabilities, type, synchrony synchronous query and response asynchronous interuptable desired response control all answers at once client controls server controls top N answers requence of data source changes never, seldom ( 1/mo; continuous - real-time feed frequency of user query changes never, seldom ( 1/mo

12. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Relevant Theories View speech acts, conversations/dialogs ontologies game theory economic markets patterns and protocols planning & case-based reasoning learns KBMS OO middleware service architectures (OMA/ORB) Web architectures distributed AI workflow dynamic DBMS simulation architecture description languages network management QoS... * = Architecture WG in Pittsburg

13. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Grid Federation View coABS grid Borg collective ALP cluster HLA federation DDB geolocation IA enclave swarm domain control regime smart space Jini enter and leave proxies services policies

14. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. OMG ALP I*3/BADD/AICE HLA DCOM FIPA W3C/Web Jini Related Technology/Community View Some relevant technologies and communities HPKB … we don’t want to invent yet another architecture so the architecture views must not just concatenate to each other. HTTP-NG DDB digital libraries Quorum WfMC ODP

15. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agent Architecture Issues What are agents? - code and data packets that are autonomous, adaptive, cooperative, mobile, interoperable … We want all these properties in future agent-based systems. We need experience building systems with these properties. Pervasiveness - How do we insure that the architecture stays lite-weight for wide-spread adoption. Embracing heterogeneity - We must piggyback agent systems on already pervasive infrastructure like ORBs, the Web, email, and DBMS systems. We must identify the specific kinds of heterogeneity we want agent system architectures to support. Separation of concerns agent-agent separation - can agents access each other’s state directly agent-service separation - do agents implement the long list of services that the grid provides or is that done via underlying component-based middleware? grid-agent separation - agents are autonomous but they cooperate and compete for resources within the software grid. The grid provides some global systemic properties and some basic shared services. Is there an explicit grid or is it implicit in the way agents interact with each other? Are some “services” (like planning) optionally distributed into agents or are they available from the grid’s planing service? Can new services be autoloaded into a grid that does not have them? Semantic interoperability, ontology - do ontologies scale? How do they extend class libraries? Licensing - Agents, data sources, and component software need an economic model so broad communities can get value from them. A model of licensing might be critical to success in the large. Agent communication language (ACL) - Is the ACL compositional and extensible so one can define new speech acts from existing ones? How many speech acts is enough? 20 or 5000? Control points - where are the control points where different control algorithms might be substituted into the architecture Grid federation issues - How are software grids federated - flat versus hierarchical models? If different grids contain different policy choices or different services, how does that affect agents communicating across grid boundaries? Can we add new services and -ilities to a grid once it is deployed? how transparent is addition or subtraction of services and ilities Coordination - Insure Agent Reference Architecture augments DARPA ISO ATAIS architecture. Provide template for next generation unified OMG, FIPA, and W3C agent standards. Insure that reference implementations (toolkits) exist and are widely available.

16. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. BACKUP

17. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Purpose of this presentation to provide a number of views of a generic Agent Reference Architecture What is a Reference Architecture its a meta-architectural blueprint for a family of concrete architectures that may appear in implemented systems, providing a collection of the component parts of the architecture, how they can fit together, and any constraints on how they fit. A litmus test for a good reference architecture is that it covers actual systems and provides a way to reason about missing pieces, subarchitectures that make sense, interdependencies of parts, and how the architecture relates to other nearby architectures. What should an Agent Reference Architecture do? help people understand the scope and value-added of agent systems so they can realize their potential more quickly (agents for the masses) explain the principle components of Agent Systems and their interactions explain how agent architecures solve DoD problems explain how agent systems complement OMA, HLA, Web, DBMS, and other important system architectures, also including AITS/NGII/NGA identify missing components identify what parts of the architecture already exist in COTS and GOTS, what parts are already prototyped, and what parts are still needed. Map the coABS investment and what industry will do. identify research issues (e.g., agent control, agent interoperability) explain how to scale agent systems; also how to insure systemic properties of agent systems identify candidate standards and a roadmap for adoption working with industry relevant consensus bodies Status this is a first draft and only covers some of the areas above. Textual notes augment this.ppt presentation. Towards an Agent Reference Architecture

18. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Architecture codify design of agent architecture, esp. grid properties and services what it means to be agent-ready Interoperability allow many kinds of agent systems to interoperate naming, ACL, KIF, ontology conversation policies, federation Control smooth grid policy mgmt how agent groups coordinate planning, teams Challenge Problem DoD Domain: NEO Non-combatant evacuation order quick insertion of temporary force lots of uncertainty most prevalent op DARPA coABS Working Groups

19. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. level 3: participant level user interface technologies domain entities like humans and simulated tanks level 2: common apps - level 1: control services - level 0: network and connectivity - By Level in System * * = used in 8/20 coABS chairs telecon

20. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. (from Alan Piszcz, MITRE) Other Architecture Views

21. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. (from Alan Piszcz, MITRE) Other Architecture Views

22. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Other Architectural Views Views Missing from this presentation review and refine all mapping identify additional requirements and map these to the Agent Reference Architecture identify additional issues and resolve issues recurse on sub-reference models for services and capabilities -or- point to existing specifications from FIPA, OMG, or the agent community identify mappings from the Agent Reference Architecture to OMG OMA, HLA, etc. to see the value added a mapping to implementations available as COTS or GOTS a mapping of coABS projects and components to other agent reference architecture views a priority view of components needed first, second, … by potential providers a roadmap for standards to complement FIPA’s and OMG’s (work through these groups)

23. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Architecture Issues requirements - from the point of view of DoD applications, what do we expect from agent technology. There are many answers: replace stovepipe systems with more reliable, scalable, survivable, evolvable, adaptable systems. Make it much easier to snap together future systems to meet flexible needs in uncertain environments reduce complexity - simplify agent technology so it is useful to the masses solve data blizzard, information starvation problems We need to write these down and then provide mappings to agent architecture capabilities that make these domain capabilities possible. avoid yet-another-architecture - the agent reference architecture cannot be a wholly different architecture than near-by relatives. It should overlay or augment architectures like ORBs, Web, HLA, Jini, ODP, Quorum, AICE, ALP. Or it may be that it provides local agent architectures that can interoperate. what are agents? - thin, thick, smart, dump, mobile, stationary, chatty, objects that use ACLs to communicate, … We must tease these (possibly orthogonal) properties apart and understand what our technology is adding to the picture. Especially if we want a large body of industry and DoD to adopt this next generation technology. Related: criterial characteristics, minimal, maximal, lite or heavy weight - Are there criterial properties of agent based systems? is there any minimal or maximal set of properties that we can agree on for something to be an agent- based system. Is it based on technical mechanisms (e.g., makes use of an ACL) or just any system with (some of) these properties: autonomy, adaptive, cooperative, mobile, interoperable. How can we keep the architecture lite weight and still accommodate all the services? grid-agent separation - agents are autonomous but they cooperate and compete in some context which we are terming the grid. The grid provides some global systemic properties and some basic shared services. are agents really autonomous (including being independent of the grid)? is there an explicit grid or is it implicit in the way agents interact with each other? are some “services” (like planning) optionally distributed into agents or are they available from the grid’s planing service. Does this matter? is there a maximal or minimal (lite-weight) grid and what happens if agents interoperate that come from differently configured grids? do agents ask other agents for their properties and grid capabilties can new services be autoloaded into a grid that does not have them?

24. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. agent-agent separation - can agents access each other’s state directly agent-service separation - how are agents and services related? For instance, do agents implement the long list of services that the grid provides or is that underlying component software? Does each agent contain a planner or is a planning service global to a collection of services? It might be a wave-particle distinction. embracing heterogeneity - it is clear we must do this if agents will live in internet settings. But we also cannot expect systems to work with complete heterogeneity. The Web works partly because widespread agreement on HTTP, HTML, XML,.. and DBMSs work because of SQL and related standards. So we must identify the specific kinds of heterogeneity we want agent system architectures to support. It is not enough to say we are embracing heterogeneity. semantic interoperability, ontology - how far beyond the standard OO class model or DBMS schema do ontologies go; do they scale (most ontologies are pretty narrow), specifically which interoperability problems are solved licensing - like many grid services, licensing’s degenerate form is no licensing. But agents and component software cannot succeed without an economic model that makes broad communities get value from them. One way to do this is via licensing space on your machine, capabilities and services, data sources, … A model of licensing might be critical for coABS to succeed in the large. Agent Communication Language (ACL) is the ACL compositional and extensible so one can define new speech acts from existing ones? How many speech acts is enough? 20 or 5000? control points - where are the control points where different control algorithms might be substituted into the architecture grid federation issues how are grids federated - flat model, hierarchical if different grids contain different policy choices or different services, how does that affect agents communicating across grid boundaries? can we add new services and -ilities to a grid once it is deployed? how transparent is addition or subtraction of services and ilities Architecture Issues There are many other issues! They are worth listing.

25. Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Craig Thompson 972-379-3320 August 31, 1998 © Copyright 1998 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Challenges Challenges for DARPA/ISO Next Generation Architecture What can coABS build on from other DARPA programs? Are reference architectures, service specs, common schema, data sources, reference implementations readily available in the NGA repository for plug-and-play? How about implementation guidance? What is our plan to transfer DARPA/ISO NGA architecture, specs, and implementations inside DARPA and outside to industry via standards and products? How do we insure lite-weight meta architectures that are still evolvable? Challenges for coABS Risks: silver bullet, overpromising, pin-down coABS unique contribution, do planning techniques scale for Internet and programming language communities? Define agent functions, keep complexity manageable for the programmer in the street. Insure the systems are implementable via prototyping; share toolkits where possible; build on COTS and GOTS where possible. Coordinate with DDB, AICE, and Quorum on design of an open decentralized global grid. Borrow and unify ideas of clusters, federates, enclaves from OMG, ALP, HLA, IA, Jini. Unify agent architecture with HLA, Web, ORB, workflow,... Insure coABS reference architecture provides template for next generation unified OMG, FIPA, and W3C standards and that reference implementations (toolkits) exist and are widely available. How do we foster an economy of componentized agent software? micro licensing component software and leasing resources across the network crossing organizational boundaries so the net is the DBMS, the net is the computer how to populate space with 100,000 advertisements?