FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

Document title	Resolutions from the Palermo, Italy, February 2003 Meeting
Document number	f-out-00140	Document source	Board of Directors
Document status	Preliminary	Date of this status	Date as: 2003/02/12
Change history
	Initial draft

Resolutions of the 28^th FIPA meeting in Palermo, Italy
February 10-12, 2003.

1. FIPA activities

· The composition of the FIPA Architecture Board has become as follows:

Name	Affiliation	Country
Fabio Bellifemine (Chair)	TILAB	Italy
Jonathan Dale	Fujitsu Labs US	US
David Levine	IBM	US
Misty Nodine	Telcordia	US

• Rob Hadingham has accepted the board’s invitation to join the FIPA Advisory Board.
• The board approved the resolutions of the FIPA Architecture Board
• The board approved the Japanese translation of the FIPA ACL specifications by Japanese Standards Association
• Tentative times and locations of the next 2 meetings in 2003:

Meeting	Dates	Location	Country	Host
29	August 20-22, 2003	Calgary	Canada	University of Calgary, co-located with Industrial Informatics (INDIN03)
29	June 16-18 / 23-25, 2003	Prague	Czech Republic	TBD, co-located with CEEMAS03
30	November 17-19, 2003	London	UK	TBD, co-located with OMG

2. FIPA requests that the secretariat remind all committee chairs to update their relevant sections of the FIPA website with current information.

3. The board will continue to work on the strategic positioning of FIPA and its activities with respect to other relevant standardization bodies.

4. Resolutions of Technical Committees, Working Groups, and Special Interest Groups:

FIPA Architecture Board Resolutions

The FIPA Architecture Board proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

• Thank for accepting, and welcome Misty Nodine (Telcordia) as new member of FAB
• Thank Phil Buckle for his previous contributions and regretfully note his withdrawal from FIPA and consequently from the FAB
• Approve the following workplans, create the relative Technical Committees, and appoint the following chairmen:

- Services, Jonathan Dale, Margaret Lyell

- Security, Stefan Poslad

- Modeling, James Odell

- Methodology, Massimo Cossentino ad interim

- Interaction Protocols, Gabriel Hopmans ad interim

• Approve the request of Gabriel Hopmans to carry on off-line via e-mail all the activities of the Interaction Protocols TC
• Request the secretariat to create a mailing list and web page for each of these new TCs
• Invite the Ontology TC to review its workplan in light of FIPA’s new requirements for relevant scoping
• Remind TC Semantics and WG Ad-Hoc that they have concluded their work time and they have to renegotiate their milestones and deliverables.
• Request F4BA to finish its activities in the next two months
• Suspend P&S SIG because of lack of results and resources
• Recommend FIPA to organize all the on-going activities along the following 3 clusters/tracks:

- Infrastructure: Ad-Hoc WG, Services TC, Security TC

- Communication: Ontology TC, Semantics TC

- Software Engineering: Interaction Protocol TC, Modeling TC, Methodology TC

TC chairs are responsible for organizing their activities and cross-TC intra-cluster relationships, including time and technology dependencies

• Remind each TC that the final goal of a technical committee is not a white paper but a standard specification. FAB recognizes however that in some cases a white paper is practically useful as an intermediate deliverable of the TC.
• Request each TC to deliver by the end of this meeting as a part of their resolutions a short statement describing the scope of their activity
• Suggest each TC to deliver by the end of next meeting a document with the overview and the Table Of Content of the standard document they are going to produce
• Thanks to Jonathan Dale and Bernard van Veelen for fixing the typos in the KIF specifications and recommends FIPA to release the new version C of document no. 10

WG Ad-hoc Resolutions 

The WG Ad-hoc proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

• Scope: The WG will specify a mechanism for dynamic discovery and interoperability of FIPA agents residing in different platforms on different devices in mobile ad-hoc environments.
• Workplan update according to the following decisions until next meeting: The WG will produce a whitepaper appointing possible approaches for achieving the scope. The whitepaper will be finished at FIPA29. The WG will produce a preliminary specification out of the results of the whitepaper until FIPA30.
• Continuing to write the whitepaper about ad-hoc reflector until FIPA29:

- Further analysis / classification of relevant existing ad-hoc and P2P technologies / mechanisms

- Investigation in relevant use-case scenarios

- Overview of possible architectures

- Proposal of a mechanism to adopt by FIPA (focussing on scenarios, architectures, definition of service mappings)

• WG Ad-hoc thanks: Vincenzo Croce, Nunzio Ingraffia, Keven Kearney, Renato Levy, Dario Lombardo, Vito Morreale, James Odell, Domenico Presenza, Takamichi Sakai, Rainer Unland, Mihaela Ulieru, Michael Berger.

TC Modeling

The TC Modeling proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

• The TC Modeling participants determined that a primary goal of FIPA AUML is to be domain independent. Initially, we will examine areas the TC currently has expertise: service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM), simulation, real-time, AOSE, robotics, information systems. Other areas will be examined over time as we can.
• The TC Modeling participants have initially identified thirteen sources of notations that should be considered for a FIPA AUML: UML 2.0, AOR, PASSI, MESSAGE, Tropos (includes i* and GRL), Adelphi, Gaia, Brixs, Styx, Prometheus, Madkit, OPEN, OPM. A one-to-two page summary of each will be produced for public view by 12 March 2003.
• The TC Modeling participants have initially identified twelve modeling areas that should be explored for a FIPA AUML: multi- vs. single agent, agent “class/component” and implementation structure, goal and soft goals, use cases, social aspects, environment, workflow/planning, levels of abstraction, temporal constraints, policies, deployment and mobility. A description of each will be produced for public view by 12 March 2003; a revised version will be produced based on feedback by 15 June 2003.
• The TC Modeling participants have initially identified useful existing diagram types that the FIPA AUML might use and extend: class, component, sequence, deployment, state chart, use cases, and activity diagrams, colored Petri nets.
• The TC Modeling participants will produce an initial version of the FIPA AUML language specifications for Class Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams by 1 June 2003.
• The chairs of the Software Engineering track TCs will ensure that there will be close collaboration of these TCs.
• The TC Modeling request the FIPA Secretariat to create a mail list modeling@fipa.org and to notify and transfer current subscribers of the auml@fipa.org mail list.
• The TC Modeling would like to thank the twenty participants for their participation at this meeting.

TC Services Resolutions

The outline of the TC Services meetings was:

• Had a presentation on DAML-S vs. WSDL from Margaret Lyell
• Began work on an Abstract Service Model based on input from Jonathan & Margaret; revised during the sessions
• Input and discussion are captured in the notes, which will be disseminated on the Services TC mailing list.

The TC Services proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

• The scope of the Services TC is to:

- Analyze the existing service models in existence today;

- Produce an Abstract Service Model specification based on this analysis;

- Produce service grounding specifications for DAML-S and Web Service;

- Revise existing FIPA Service Descriptions specifications.

• To begin production of a draft Abstract Service Model Specification based upon input from this meeting (Jonathan & Margaret, due mid-March 2003)
• To fold the white paper into a conference submission and to write this between meetings (Margaret & Jonathan, due April 1, 2003)
• Thank all contributors to the TC, especially Margaret Lyell, Misty Nodine, Giovanni Caire, Thierry Bouton, Keven Kearney and everyone else.

TC Security

The TC Security proposes the following resolutions:

1. To progress with work on its new work-plan to:

· Progress with its work-plan to produce an abstract security model and to produce concrete groundings of this model via security profiles;

· Complete its overview of current security models and to generate the requirements and profiles for one or more concrete groundings of the model by May 2003.

2. That the following be thanked for their active input at this meeting: Tadashi Araragi, Fabio Bellifemine, Biermarco Burrafato, Giovanni Caire, Monique Calisti, Vincent Louis, Margaret Lyell, Makota Okada, Gabriele Passantino, Sergi Robles, Takamichi Sakai, Vincenzo Savarino, Silvio Sorace and Stefan Poslad. (Apologies are offered to anyone whose name was omitted).

TC Ontology Resolutions

This activity will focus on:

· Send comments and inputs to on-going standardisation efforts into ontology domain (ontology representation language, upper ontologies on policies, contracts…)

· Enabling interoperability between agent systems at the communication level by providing methods and guidelines to produce ontologies for agents (separate knowledge level from service level), and propose an upper ontology for content language (interoperability at the content language).

Ontology TC Ontology proposes the following resolutions:

· Update workplan according to re-focus of the ontology TC activities (march 1^st)

· Collect comments on webONT specifications (OWL) to have a pertinent and official response from FIPA.

· Put together specific requirements on ontologies for agents (requirements sent to webONT working group, mid-April)

· Prepare a document where ontology requirements for agents are covered (Deadline end of April).

· Define a new and completed version of the upper ontology (abstract content language for interoperability at the content language) proposed during the Palermo meeting based on requirements document. (Deadline: next meeting).

• Thanks to: Stephan Poslad, Vincent Louis, Giovanni Caire, Alfredo Garro, Paola Turci, Vito Morreale, Domenico Presenza, Takamichi Sakai, Susanna Bonura, Isabel Matranga, Keven Kearney, Tadashi Araragi, Luca Sabatucci, Makoto Okada, Radovon Cervenka, Margaret Lyell, Menno Jonkers, Misty Nodine, Jonathan Dale, Jim Odell, Monique Calisti, Thierry Bouron.

TC Methodology Resolutions

The TC Methodology proposes the following resolutions:

• To accept the following scope that the TC is proposing for this year work

- It is necessary to formally represent method fragments in order to store them in the method base. A method is essentially composed of two elements: the structure of the product (the artefact resulting from the developer activity) and the procedures necessary to construct the artefact.

- The first phase of this TC work will aim at creating:

• A glossary of agent development methodologies related concepts (due October 2003)
• A model notation and guidelines for creating the meta-model of the method fragments (due June 2003)
• A notation for describing the procedural aspects of building the specific artefact in a method fragment (due June 2003)
• A skeleton of the constraints related to each method fragment (due October 2003)

- We will explicitly refer to existing standards and AOSE contributions (OMG SPEM, OPEN, Adelphe, Message, …)

• To examine existing approaches in order to choose/prepare the initial specifications of the fragment methods meta-model for the next meeting
• To work on the glossary in order to have a first draft ready before the next meeting
• TC Methodologies gratefully thanks all people attending the meeting and the others contributing offline

TC Semantics Resolutions

The TC Semantics did not meet.

Image Committee Resolutions

Beside this document, some slides summarizing the Image Committee discussion are going to be sent by the Image chair (M. Calisti) to the image, the BoD and the FIPA secretariat. The Image Committee aims to improve the visibility of FIPA for enabling a better interaction of all the members and increase visibility toward the external community. Especially in this crucial period, the main concern is to ensure visibility and facilitate the contribution of the whole industrial and scientific community to FIPA.

The Image Committee proposes the following resolutions:

• FIPA newsletter: we discussed two main options. Not to have the FIPA newsletter any more or have it in a new more effective approach. The Image Committee adopted the latter option: FIPA has to have an official voice and an official channel for distributing information. In order to increase the potential impact o the newsletter, the IC discussed the following main points:

- Goal: primarily to attract interest from external organizations, and thereby to inform people about what is going on in FIPA

- Target: outside world (that is not necessarily aware of how things work inside the community) and the FIPA community

- Structure:

• Business oriented successful/failure stories, product description, projects overview, company description, and deployment of agents in real industrial settings (particular relevance is given to FIPA compliant agents) should represent the main contribution. Depending on the length, we can invite members to submit a Member Profile.

§ Technology overview: invited people, ad hoc or global calls.

§ FIPA report on various activities (TCs, WGs, SIGs)

§ Announcements corners

§ A space for advertisements? Still open issue

- Procedure and guidelines:

§ Ad hoc calls

§ Open calls

§ Review process: case by case

§ 1 issue after every meeting

- Distribution:

§ UMBC mailing list

§ DAI mailing list

§ AgentLink, AgentCities

§ Platforms lists (both FIPA and non-FIPA), chat list

§ PISA project

§ ontoWeb mailing list

- Volume 4 issue 1:

§ Issue due by end of April 2003:

§ We should discuss today about content:

§ Meeting Report (President)

§ News in brief (J. Kelly)

§ Palermo workshop report (Vito and Massimo)

§ FIPA scope and current activities overview (activities track description) – FAB/BoD – Jonathan Dale

§ Technology overview - what is DAML-S, W3C activity, its future, link to FIPA – ask David Martin (interview kind of article)

§ Business input: open call (Monique will invite Navi Radjou from Forrester)

§ Member profiles: Telcordia (Misty Nodine, to be asked)

§ Announcement corners: 6th EU calls! (Monique)

· Liaisons: The goal is to keep strong liaison, clarify scope and objectives, create visibility and awareness (relevant events and activities of mutual interest)

- OMG (contact person Jim Odell)

- ontoWeb (contact person Monique)

- WebOnt (contact person Jonathan)

- Semantic Web (contact person Tim Finin to be asked)

- Agentlink (contact person Monique)

- Agenticties (contact person Jonathan)

- ObjectWeb (contact person Monique)

- Holonic Manufacturing (contact person Mihaela Ulieru)

• Relevant related events:

- The secretariat and the IC should make sure important FIPA related events are advertised on the chat mailing list. For specific particularly relevant events we should take into account the announcement corner of the FIPA Inform! Newsletter.

• IC supporting F4BA:

- Image has an important role in collecting input for the F4BA white paper and distributing output toward the outside community. We will make sure we keep that in mind and we will work on that.

• Thanks to: Menno Jonkers, Stefan Poslad, Jonathan Dale, Fabio Bellifemine, Michael Berger.

5. FIPA thanks the following individuals for participating in and making valuable contributions to the FIPA Workshop:

Name	Affiliation
Vito Morreale	Engineering Ingegneria Informatica
Giovanni Caire	TILAB
Massimo Cossentino	University of Palermo

6. FIPA thanks Engineering Ingegneria Informatica for offering FIPA excellent meeting facilities and friendly support in Palermo, Italy, and for hosting its 28^th meeting, in particular: Giuseppe Sajeva and his team, and also the FIPA Secretariat Jacquie Kelly.

7. FIPA invites its membership and contributors to the FIPA process to its 29^th meeting, dates and location to be announced shortly.