- Section 2.11: Platforms and
Standards
An Agent-Based System's Architecture
to Describe Workflows in the Office
E. Blechschmitt, J. Sahm
Indicators to the Effects of Agent Technology
on Consumer Loyalty
M. Witkowski, J. Pitt, P. Fehin, Y. Arafa
The Use of Mobile Agents and Machine
Learning in Project Management
M.G. Fordyce, J.E.M. Tyler
Security Policy Assessment with Agents
A. Pasic, A. Pinuela, J.L. Castillo, D. Bonilla
XML Used for Remote Control of Public
Kiosk Systems (POI, POS)
R. Malkewitz, K. Richter
Structuring Knowledge with XML
E. Meissner
- The
Development of FactWrangler™ - Providing Classification
and Mark-Up Capabilities to Enhance Digital Content
P.M. Cunningham, J. Carolan
Interoperability and Business Models
for e-Commerce
M.-S. Li
The Emerging AP-233 STEP Standard: An
Essential Enabler to e-Business and e-Work
J. Johnson
The CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network: Standards
for Interoperable Process Engineering Software Components
J. Köller, B. Braunschweig, K. Irons, M. Jarke, M. Pons
An
Agent-Based System's Architecture to Describe Workflows in the
Office
Eric BLECHSCHMI'IT
and Jorg SAHM
Fraunhofer-IGD, Darmstadt, Dept. Animation & Image Communication,
Rundeturmstrasse 6
D - 64283 Darmstadt
In the office world 'real'
procedures only appear as workflow. The workflow has to be done
by human secretaries supported by technical instruments such
as computers and their specific programmes. Ideally the human
secretary will only have to intervene if his specialised knowledge
or his social competency is required. But nowadays the user still
has to define tasks, receives and interprets the results and
after that define new tasks. In the research project OfficePlus
done at the Fraunhofer-IGD, sponsored by the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation,
a new agent-based system has been developed. The system consists
of a repository of agents that enables the user to easily integrate
the system in his office workflow.
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Indicators
to the Effects of Agent Technology on Consumer Loyalty
Mark WITKOWSKI(1),
Jeremy PITT(1), Patrick FEHIN(2) and Yasmine ARAFA(1)
(1) Intelligent & Interactive Systems Section, Department
of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Imperial College
of Science, Technology and Medicine, Exhibition Road, London,
SW7 2BT, UK
(2) Compaq Computer International B. K, eBusiness Solutions Group,
European Software Centre, Ballybrit Business Park, Galway, Ireland
In the increasing trend towards
e-commerce, there are concerns that vendor-customer relations
will become excessively de-personalised, surely to the detriment
of all involved. The EU MAPPA (EP28831) project seeks to add
value to systems for e-business by employing several aspects
of Agent technology, including animated on-screen character Agents
("synthetic personae") and personalization to the individual
customer, to help establish strong customer relationships and
to engender a sense of loyalty as might exist when business is
done directly between people. We report on a series of controlled
user studies to further investigate the effects of three key
indicators related to preferences and loyalty between an Agent
based system and the user.
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The
Use of Mobile Agents and Machine Learning in Project Management
Michael G Fordyce and
Jon E M Tyler
The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK
Scheduling project activities
is an iterative and time-consuming process. This paper describes
an innovative technique which can be used to automate these processes.
The techniques described have been demonstrated through the implementation
of a prototype automatic scheduler for meetings. The software
uses an incremental learning algorithm to determine user preferences.
The preferences are applied to a dedicated negotiation protocol
to shorten the cycle of negotiation and to produce a result acceptable
to all the users. The prototype system utilises mobile objects
and autonomous agents with dedicated communication protocols.
A test bed was developed to evaluate the performance of the system.
The practical use and benefits of the system are discussed.
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Security
Policy Assessment with Agents
Aljosa Pasic, Ana Pinuela,
Jose Luis Castillo and Daniel Bonilla
SEMA Group sae, Albarracin 25,28037 Madrid, Spain
This paper describes the idea,
objectives, global approach, achievements and exploitation possibilities
of SPARTA project (Security policy adaptation reinforced through
agents). It defines the common principles to elaborate an adaptive
security policy and technical procedures which are to be used,
together with the specific activities and resources necessary
to implement a coherent security policy. It analyses intrusion
scenarios and a role of mobile agents in monitoring and intrusion
detection with a suggestion for the security policy reinforcement.
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XML
Used for Remote Control of Public Kiosk Systems (POI, POS)
Rainer MALKEWITZ and
Kai RICHTER
ZGDV e. V., Rundeturmstrasse 6, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany
This paper deals with the topic
of providing assistance for the use of e-business terminals in
public places (kiosks), such as banking machines (ATM), ticket
selling machines and alike. A special emphasis in our research
has been put on such methods that enable people with special
needs - often summarised as the "disabled" - to use
the addressed services. However, we do not limit ourselves to
any specific user group - since additional assistance is valuable
also for the non-disabled majority. In the approach presented
here central problems like separation of application logic and
presentation, communication and user interface management have
been solved by means of extensible Markup Language (XML) technologies.
Our work is currently supported by the project EMBASSI, which
is co-funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF).
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Structuring
Knowledge with XML
Erik Meissner
ZGDV - Computer Graphics Centre, Rundetunnstr. 6, D-64283 Dannstadt,
Germany
Collecting the knowledge of
an R&D-institute is a challenge, but structuring the knowledge
is even more challenging. This paper describes a three-layer-architecture
for collecting, structuring and browsing of information items.
The architecture is based on open standards like XML and TopicMaps.
The user can access the knowledge collection via intranet/internet
with conventional web-browsers.
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The
Development of FactWrangler™ - Providing Classification
and Mark-Up Capabilities to Enhance Digital Content
Paul M Cunningham and
John Carolan
International Information Management Corporation (IIMC), 13 Docklands
Innovation Park, 128 East Wall Road, Dublin 4, Ireland
International Information Management
Corporation Ltd (IIMC) develops and licenses XML based content
enhancement technologies. IIMC's services and solutions are designed
to help users find relevant information quicker and more accurately
than by using a table of contents or free text searching. Content
enhancement enables users to structure, filter and mark up valuable
information. This is achieved by cross referencing related documents,
and adding classification and semantic mark-up. As a by-product,
the enhanced content is easy to publish in formats to suit PC's
and faxes as well as phones and wireless devices. FactWrangler
is an application for editors engaged in marking up content,
and supports a variety of different document formats typically
found on intranets and external websites. This paper discusses
some of the key issues associated with enhancing digital content,
and considers the benefits of designing FactWrangler as an XML
component application and using international standards to classify
and manage content.
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Interoperability
and Business Models for e-Commerce
Man-Sze Li
IC Focus Ltd, 42 Clifton Road, London N8 8JA, United Kingdom
Technical interoperability
is often considered as a pre-requisite for a global and open
e-commerce marketplace. The proliferation of e-commerce architectures
encourages market fragmentation. The commodity view of technologies
seriously undermines the viability of individual e-commerce businesses.
The disconnect between technologies and business practices creates
short termism in business model creation and funding of the e-commerce
industries. A seamless value chain that underpins an economic
structure is ultimately dependent upon a shared approach to and
a shared view of business processes and business semantics. Fragmentation
at the basic level of architectures is not only commercially
detrimental to individual businesses, it also decreases the long-term
benefits of e-commerce to the market as whole.
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The
Emerging AP-233 STEP Standard: An Essential Enabler to e-Business
and e-Work
Julian Johnson
BAE SYSTEMS, W365B, Warton, Preston, PR4 1AX, UK
The newer product design processes
include more incremental product evolution than previously, an
active involvement of customers, partners and suppliers, and
comprehensive use of electronic communication. This combination
of distributed integrated product team operation and extensive
use of information technology has led to the concept of virtual
enterprise operation, involving all stakeholders in a co-ordinated
way through appropriate phases of a product's lifecycle. The
type of information exchange in this context has also grown considerably,
and now involves definitions of product context, requirements,
product functionality and behaviour, architectures, product properties,
validation and verification information, and product data management
(PDM) information. The European project SEDRES-2 - systems engineering
data representation and exchange standardisation-has been the
main contributor to the development of AP-233, a new part of
the STEP standard (IS0 10303), covering all of these types of
product data. This paper outlines the objectives, approach and
status of SEDRES-2, and gives an explanation of the current status
and content of AP-233. Finally the relevance of AP-233 as an
essential enabler to e-business and e-work is explained. The
remaining work and outlook for completion of AP-233 is described.
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The
CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network: Standards for Interoperable Process
Engineering Software Components
J. KOLLER(1), B. BRAUNSCHWEIG(2),
K. IRONS(3), M. JARKE(1,4), M. PONS(5)
(1) RWTH Aachen, Informatik V, Ahornstr. 55, 52056 Aachen, Germany
(2) Institut Francais du Petrole, France
(3) Dow Chemical, USA,
(4) GMD FIT, Germany
(5) ATOFINA. France
Facing economic, environmental,
and safety constraints, the process industries (chemicals, oil
and gas, food) are forced to improve performance of their plants
and to reduce time for product development phases and innovation
cycles. Process simulation has become a vital tool in order to
achieve these goals. Despite this market pressure, valuable research
results and innovative software products find their way only
slowly into commercial process simulation software, because until
now these systems were not interoperable. The EU-project CAPE-OPEN
(CO) has defined a component based software standard to overcome
the bottlenecks in interoperability by assuring plug-and-play
interoperability of simulation components. One of the achievements
of the follow-up EU-project Global CAPE-OPEN (GCO) is the installation
of a membership-based organisation called the CAPE-OPEN Laboratories
Network (CO-LaN), responsible for dissemination and maintenance
of the CO standard. The CO-LaN offers to visitors and members
various web-based services in a web-portal targeted at supporting
and bringing together suppliers and users of simulation software.
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