Agent Orientation and Information Systems

1
Agent OrientationandInformation Systems

• Eric YuUniversity of Toronto
• Presentation at Tsinghua University, Beijing,
  China
• July 8, 1999

2
Information Systems research at theUniversity of
Toronto

• Dept. of Computer Science
• Databases, Information Systems
• Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Rep.
• Software Engineering, Requirements Eng.
• Dept. of Industrial Engineering
• Faculty of Management
• Faculty of Information Studies
• Knowledge Media Design Institute

3
Outline of this talk

• 1. An Emerging Paradigm in Computing
• 2. Agent Orientation for Enterprise Information
  Systems?
• 3. An Agent-Oriented Modelling Framework i
• 4. Research Directions

4
AOIS workshop _at_ AutonomousAgents99
Seattle USA May 1, 1999 _at_ CAiSE99
Heidelberg Germany June 14-15, 1999

• Invited speakers
• Katia Sycara (Carnegie-Mellon Univ.)
• Mike Huhns (Univ. S.Carolina)
• John Mylopoulos (Univ. Toronto)
• Cristiano Castelfranchi (Psych., NRC, Italy)
• Stefan Kirn (TU-Ilmenau, Germany)
• 2 panels, 9 contributed papers
• http//aois.org

5
Part 1 Agent-Orientation as an
emergingparadigm in Computing

• Programming Paradigms
• Agent Abstractions
• Agent Architectures

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Programming Paradigms

• 1950s -- Machine and assembly language
• 1960s -- Procedural programming
• 1970s -- Structured programming
• 1980s -- Object-based and declarative
  programming
• 1990s -- Frameworks, design patterns, scenarios,
  protocols, and components (ActiveX/COM and Java
  Beans)
• The trend has been from elements that represent
  abstract computations to elements that represent
  the real world

Huhns AOIS99
7
Features ofLanguages and Paradigms
Huhns AOIS99
8
Agent Abstractions

• Agent abstractions are mentalistic
• beliefs agents representation of the world
• knowledge (usually) true beliefs
• desires preferred states of the world
• goals consistent desires
• intentions goals adopted for action
• Multi-agent abstractions involve interactions
• social about collections of agents
• organizational about teams and groups
• ethical about right and wrong actions
• legal about contracts and compliance

Huhns AOIS99
9
Why Do These Abstractions Matter?

• Because modern applications go beyond traditional
  metaphors and models in terms of their dynamism,
  openness, and trustworthiness
• virtual enterprises manufacturing supply chains,
  autonomous logistics
• electronic commerce utility management
• communityware social user interfaces
• problem-solving by teams

Huhns AOIS99
10
Agent architectures
Kirn AOIS99
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Reactive Agents
World
Controller
Stimuli
Plans
E f f e c t o r
S e n s o r
. . .
. . .
Agent
Kirn AOIS99
12
Deliberative Agents
World
Cognition
Inference Strategies
Memory
E f f e c t o r
S e n s o r
Utility Function
Inter- pretation
Agent
Kirn AOIS99
13
Types of Information Agents
Application Program
User Interface Agent

• Standard information agents and architectures
  are becoming available

Reply
Reg/Unreg (KQML)
Reply
Query or Update In SQL
Ontology Agent
Broker Agent
Reg/Unreg
(KQML)
Mediator Agent
Ontology (CLIPS)
Reg/Unreg (KQML)
Mediated Query (SQL)
Reg/Unreg (KQML)
Schemas (CLIPS)
Mediated Query (SQL)
Reply
Reply
Database Resource Agent
Database Resource Agent
Huhns AOIS99
14
Part 2 Agent-Orientation for Enterprise
Information Systems

• The Changing Nature of Enterprise
• The Challenge for Enterprise Systems
• Why Agent-Orientation for Enterprise Systems

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The Changing Nature of Enterprise

• distributed and networked
• people, organization, and work practices, not
  just the technology!
• diversity, local autonomy, open-endedness
• much uncertainty, incomplete knowledge control
• need flexibility
• change and evolution
• constantly and rapid

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The Challenge for Enterprise Systems

• need to deal with conflicting needs and demands
  from many players / stakeholders

From Integration to Cooperation
AutonomousIslands
Cooperationworking together
FullIntegration
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Why Agent-Orientation for Enterprise Information
Systems

• Agent orientation addresses the demands and
  challenges of new enterprise environments and
  systems
• What would it mean?
• We should develop Agent-Oriented...
• requirements engineering techniques, models
• design and architectural approaches
• implementation methods and technologies
• run-time and evolution support

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Part 3An Agent-Oriented Modelling Framework i

• Understanding Why intentionality
• Strategic Dependencies
• Strategic Rationales
• Analysis and Design Support
• Knowledge Representation

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Modelling for Enterprise Systems

• It is well-recognized that many types of
  modelling are required to deal with the various
  aspects of enterprise, e.g.,
• activity modelling
• function modelling
• resource modelling
• information modelling
• organization modelling
• e.g., CIMOSA, GERAM,...

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Towards richer organization modelling

• How do we express and reason about
• motivations
• rewards
• different ways for achieving objectives
• understanding why
• opportunities and vulnerabilities
• strategic business and social relationships

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Consider one very successful enterprise...

• important organizational and social aspects are
  missing in conventional models

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Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships and
Rationales - the i modelling framework
Strategic Actors

• have goals, beliefs, abilities, commitments
• depend on each other for goals to be achieved,
  tasks to be performed, resources to be furnished
• are semi-autonomous -- not fully knowable /
  controllable

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Wants and Abilities
I can provide ...
I want...
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A Strategic Dependency Model
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Roles, Positions, Agents
LEGEND
agent position role

• A Strategic Dependency model showing reward
  structure for improving performance, based on an
  example in Majchrzak96

26
Some strategic dependencies between IKEA and its
customers
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A Strategic Rationale Model
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Analysis and Design Support

• opportunities and vulnerabilities
• ability, workability, viability, believability
• insurance, assurance, enforceability
• node and loop analysis Yu ICEIMT97
• design issues
• raising, evaluating, justifying, settling
• based on qualitative reasoning Chung Nixon Yu
  Mylopoulos, forthcoming monograph

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Means-Ends Analysis
Handle claim
Verify policy
Claims Handling
Settle claim
Prepare offer
Settlement cost?
Whose fault?
Determine fault
Get accident info
Actor boundary
Determine cost to settle
D
D
Minimal repairs
D
D
Accident info
Sufficient treatment
D
Injury info
Police
Appraise damage
Doctor
Appraiser
Witness
Mylopoulos AOIS99
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Sample i representation for an actor (in Telos)

• TELL Class Physician IN PositionClass ISA
  ProfessionalPosition WITH
• resDepends, committedTo fs FeeForTreatment
  WITH dependee cmClaimsManager end
• goalDepended, commitsTo td Treated(p.injury)
  WITH depender pPatient end
• taskDepends, committedTo tm TakeMedication(p.med
  ) WITH dependee pPatient end
• covers tp TreatingPatient(p) bi
  Billing(p.insurCo)
• integrityConstraint correctClaimsManager
  cmp.insurCo.claimsMgr
• end

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The Strategic Rationale Model - a partial schema
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Contributions

• new ontology
• new types of reasoning
• applied to business process modelling, enterprise
  modelling, requirements engineering, software
  process, organization analysis
• Some applications by external groups
• software maintenance domain Briand95, 97
• CIM Petit98

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Ongoing Work

• formal knowledge representation using a
  conceptual modelling language Telos
• tool building - GUI, repository support
• knowledge libraries
• strategic knowhow
• case-based reasoning
• patterns
• case studies
• coordination with other modelling techniques

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Related Work

• Goal-Oriented and Agent-Oriented Requirements
  Engineering (e.g., Feather87, Dardenne93,
  Chung93, Bubenko93, Dubois94, Anton97)see also
  ISRE, ICRE, RE j., REFSQ.
• CSCW, groupware, workflow, COOCS (now GROUP)
• Enterprise Integration (e.g., ICEIMT)
• AI, Distributed AI
• Organization Theories

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Part 4 Research Directions

• 1 Requirements-Driven Information Systems
  Engineering (J. Mylopoulos, E. Yu)
• 2 Cooperative Information Systems
• (G. DeMichelis, E. Dubois, M. Jarke, F. Matthes,
  J. Mylopoulos, M. Papazoglou, J. Schmidt, C.
  Woo, E. Yu)
• 3 Intentionality Management (E. Yu)

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Research Direction 1Requirements-Driven
Information System Engineering

• Traditionally, IS Engineering has been
  implementation-driven.
• This means that the programming paradigm of the
  day dictated the design and requirements
  paradigms.
• So, structured programming led to structured
  design and (requirements) analysis, while
  object-oriented programming led to
  object-oriented design and analysis.
• What would requirements-driven
• IS Engineering look like??

Mylopoulos AOIS99
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Why Requirements-Driven?

• Requirements analysis is arguably the most
  important phase of information system
  development thats where the most and the
  costliest errors are introduced in software
  systems.
• The importance of detailed design and
  implementation will wear off over time, thanks to
  software reuse, COTS and the like requirements
  analysis will always be there and will always be
  important.
• Requirements analysis is the phase where
  technology meets the real world, where technical
  considerations have to be balanced against
  personal, organizational and social ones this
  calls for special skills on the part of the
  requirements engineer, and makes the phase
  particularly challenging.

Mylopoulos AOIS99
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Where Are We??
Agent-oriented programming
i
KAOS
Z
UML
Detailed design
Early requirements
Architectural design
Late requirements
Implementation
Mylopoulos AOIS99
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Where Do We Want To Be??
Agent-oriented programming
i
Detailed design
Architectural design
Late requirements
Early requirements
Implementation
Guiding Principle Push concepts as far down as
possible (and see what happens!)
Mylopoulos AOIS99
40
Research Direction 2Cooperative Information
Systems

• Cooperative Information Systems A Manifesto
  G. DeMichelis, E. Dubois, M. Jarke, F. Matthes,
  J. Mylopoulos, M. Papazoglou, K. Pohl, J.
  Schmidt, C. Woo, E. Yu in Cooperative
  Information Systems Trends and Directions, M.
  Papazoglou and G. Schlageter (eds). Academic
  Press, 1997.
• A three-faceted view of information systemsG.
  DeMichelis, E. Dubois, M. Jarke, F. Matthes, J.
  Mylopoulos, J. Schmidt, C. Woo, E. Yu.
  Communications of the ACM, December 1998.

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When is an IS cooperative?

• An information system is cooperative if it
  shares goals with other agents in its
  environment, such as other information systems,
  human agents and the organization itself, and
  contributes positively towards the fulfillment of
  these common goals.

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Three Facets of Working Together
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Complementarity of... Organizational Facet
andGroup Collaboration Facet
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Towards a generic architecturefor Cooperative
Information Systems
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Research Direction 3Intentionality Management

• Beyond information management
• managing the networks of intentional attitudes
  and relationships goals, beliefs, wants,
  abilities, commitments,
• managing choice, decision making, uncertainty,
  openness and freedom
• is an elaboration on an important aspect of
  knowledge management

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Intentionality Management (contd)

• Software development is but one example of
  intentionality-intensive work environments.
• other examples enterprise management, virtual
  enterprise, product design/development,
  knowledge work in general, ...

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Summary and Conclusions

• We are at the threshold of a new era for
  computing.
• Agent-Orientation will give us
• (not only) more powerful computing technologies
• (but also) more effective computing that will
  better meet enterprise and human needs
• through use of social organization paradigm for
  computing
• and incorporation of social organizational
  analysis into overall framework for modelling
  analysis, and design

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Sponsors and Partners

• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
  of Canada (NSERC)
• Communications and Information Technology Ontario
  (CITO)
• Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems
  (IRIS)
• Mitel Corporation
• IBM
• For further information and references, please
  see http//www.fis.utoronto.ca/yu