mowahs motivation (1) -- virtual organizations with mobile and distributed actors:

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 1

MOWAHS: Mobile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems

Jan. 25, 2000 (rev. 26. Jan.)

Reidar Conradi, Mads NygårdDept. Computer and Information Science (IDI)

NTNU

www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/mowahs.html www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/db

Tel +47 73.593444 (rc), +47 73.593470 (mn), Fax +47 73.594466


MOWAHS motivation (1) -- virtual organizations with mobile and distributed actors:

Server

Laptop computer

Workstation

Base Station

Database

PDA

WAP

Meetings,conferences etc.


MOWAHS motivation (2)

• Applications: nomadism, virtual organizations – 300 mill. mobile phones in Jan. 2000,

3 bill. in 2005 and 10% with powerful PCs/PDAs?

– Entry ticket to become a global (virtual?) company: reduced by factor 100 in recent years.

– Enormous dynamics: 3C convergence, liberalization.

– New work modes: RAD, nomadic, 100% on-line.

• Technology: mobility, agents, ...– “Deluge”: www, IP, Java, CORBA, XML, applets / servlets /

displets, agents = active html pages?, BSCW tool, …

– E.g. XML used for sending electricity bills to bank, XML/Java tools to make graphical editors.


MOWAHS motivation (3)• The new network economy:

international companies, managers, developers, products, markets.

• The industry: uses the new IT (or else it dies), but also reinforces the same technology.

• UMTS:• ”UMTS is a set of services which we cannot imagine

today, with a technology that does not yet exist, for user needs which we don’t yet know”. --- Juha Rupeli of Nokia, chairman.


MOWAHS motivation (4)

• Some challenges:– How to support both fixed and portable PCs / PDAs?

– How to support different and varying connectivity?

– How to federate heterogeneous devices, tools, data?

– How to effectively support work on mobile platforms?

– How to fast and reliably build / evolve such support?

– How to asses the impact on humans / virt. organizations?

• Piggy-back on existing technologies and solutions:– CAGIS: Multiagent architecture for prosesses / transactions.

– CAGIS: Cooperating workspaces and meeting places.

– Other: groupware, agents, XML, multimedia, UMTS, WfM process interaction standard, ...


MOWAHS: Mobile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems (1)

• Newly accepted NFR basic R&D project, 2001-04.• Sw.eng. and database groups at IDI:

– 2 IDI teachers: Reidar Conradi, Mads Nygård.

– 2 PhD students: Carl Erik Sørensen, NN?

– 2 postdocs: Alf Inge Wang, Heri Ramampiaro (?).

• Budget: 5 mill. kr totally.

• Outspring from CAGIS project in 1997-2001.• Support nomadic computing over heterogeneous

platforms: process and transaction support.• Internationalization, coop. with Telenor(?), ...


MOWAHS goals (2)

• G1) Helping to understand and to continuously assess and improve workprocesses in virtual organizations.

• G2) Providing a flexible, common work environment to execute and share real workprocesses and their artifacts, applicable on a variety of electronic devices (from big servers to small PDAs).

• G3) Disseminating results to colleagues, students, companies, and community at large.


MOWAHS approach, iterative (3)

• Design a flexible work environment for virtual organizations using heterogeneous devices, with support for processes and their artifacts and transactions.

• Implement a testbed for process/transaction support for virtual organizations, using XML-based and mobile agents.

• Use real rqmts/scenarios to evaluate the above, e.g. on software development and net-based education. 25% on empirical work.


MOWAHS results (4)• R1) A XML-formalism to describe/execute

federated and heterogeneous processes and coop. Workspaces/transactions (G2).

• R2) A simple set of tools to support the above, based on agent technology (G2).

• R3) A set of scenarios with defined work models, using above formalisms/tools (G1).

• R4) A body of experiences from empirical studies of such technologies (G1).

• R5) Presentation material, courses (G3).


MOWAHS: Problem context (5)• Distributed and heterogeneous environments

• Manage people working:– Different places– Different times– Different tools– Different processes and data

• Organisations divided into autonomous sub-organisations

• Plus the new IT opportunities ...

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 11Slide 11

MOWAHS Technical Motivation (6)• Problems with traditional process / workflow /

groupware architectures:– Too centralized

– Too homogenous models

– Hard to change tools and models

– Need open-ended spectrum of cooperative process tools

– No integration of data access and process support

– Traditional transaction models / data accessing too stiff

• Solution 1: Agent-based architectures.

• Solution 2: Novel transaction models.

• Solution 3: Use XML, Java, ...


Ex. CAGIS Multi-Agent Architecture for Cooperative Software Engineering

Workspace 1

ExperienceRepository

Workspace 2

LocalProcessModel

LocalProcessModel

AgentMeeting Place

Coordination agent

Negotiation agent

Monitor agent

Mediation agent

Local agent


Ex. CAGIS Process Support


Ex. CAGIS nested transactions

WS: Programmer-1/

WS:Programmer-2/PDA/

WS: Programmer-1/Laptop/

WS:Programmer-2/

WS:Manager

Desktop Server

Desktop

Laptop computer

PDA

Location:Trondheim

Location:Bergen/

Anywhere

Artifacts:L1.cc, L1.h




Artifacts:M.cc, M.h,

L1.cc, L1.h,L2.cc, L2.h

Process models

Processmodels

Processmodels

Processmodels

Processmodels

Laptop computer

AgentMeeting

Place

Repository

AgentManager

AgentProgrammer-2

AgentProgrammer-1


Agent• Piece of autonomous software

• System agents

• Local agents

• Interaction agents– Communication agents– Negotiation agents– Coordination agents– Mediation agents, ...


Ex. Multi-Agent Architecture

• Network of problem solvers (agents)

• Advantages:– Decentralisation– Reuse of previous components– Cooperative work support– Flexibility

• Agents coupled to cooperation spaces: – Workspaces: for artifacts (files, documents)– Agent meeting places: for negotiation / coop.


Workspace

• Human and software agents access shared data and tools

• Private and shared workspaces

• Shared workspaces used for grouping people


Agent Meeting Place

• Place for software agent interaction

• Trading of information and services

• Facilities for:– Inter-agent communication

• Provide a predefined set of conversation types

• Specify a common syntax

• Specify a common semantics

• Specify pragmatics for agents

– Inter-agent negotiation


Process activity in a process fragment, i.e. in a local workflow system

• Process: sum of process fragments• Process fragment: in a local workspace,

coupled to role/person and tools -- in a PDA/PC.• Simple activities in fragments, with links• Ex. Activities in fragments / workspaces:

Workspace 1 Workspace 2

Activity 1 Activity 2Activity 3

Activity 4

Activity 5


Ex. Process model schema, in DTD/XML

<!XML encoding=“UTF-9”?>

<!ELEMENT process (name,

(processfragment)+>

<!ELEMENT processfragment(name,

(workspace),

(activity)+)>

<!ELEMENT activity (name,

(workspace),

(prelink)*,

(postlink)*,

(state),

(due)?,

(feedback)?,

(description),

(code)*)>


Ex. Process (activity) model in XML

<Activity>

<Name>compile</Name>

<Workspace>Kramer</Workspace>

<Prelink>Elaine/code</Prelink>

<Prelink>Elaine/read document</Prelink>

<Postlink>George/build</Postlink>

…

</Activity>

Workspace: George

build

Workspace: Elaine

code

read document

Workspace: Kramer

compile


Interconnection of components

• Agents: created by people

• Agents: grouped mainly as people

• Agent interaction: via agent meeting places

• Agent interaction: also via workspaces, taking data from/to traditional repositories

• Within a process fragment / workspace: simple, local process models -- in any format

• Between process fragments: also GlueServer to “federate” local fragments and support coop.


Ex. GlueServer, to connect local process fragments that need to cooperate


Process Support Tools• Process Server

– Process engine (local)

– GlueServer (central)

– Registration and un-registration of activities

– Moving process fragments

• Process Modeller (simple text editor)

• Agenda Manager

– Agenda browser

– Activity browser

• Process Monitor

– Monitor progress and state of process

– Change process state information


Ex. The Modeller and Agenda tools


Ex. The Activity and Monitor tools


Need flexible transaction support• Serializable (“ACID”) transactions insufficient for creative,

cooperative work:

– Need structured, not flat transactions: hierarchy, networks

– Data sharing levels: private, group, project, global

– Long-lived activities: days, not seconds

– Flexible locking schemes, may break locks

– Precommit (“sneak preview”) of temporary data versions

– User-defined consistency rules

– No forced aborts -- partial recovery schemes

– Coupling to versioning and merging

– Awareness: triggers / notifiers

– Part of flexible workspace support, incl. process


CAGISTrans

• Offer flexible transaction models, user-tailorable

• Nested transactions

• Can relax all of ACID properties in a controlled way

• Sophisticated locking and awareness schemes

• Specification in XML of:– Transaction characteristics (static)

– Execution rules (dynamic)

• Associated editors and interpreters

• Integrated in workspace support, p.t. using simple files


CAGIS Transaction Management System


Ex. Scenario: CAGIS applied on Conference Paper Review


MOWAHS challenges• Move to mobile, not just distributed setting.

• Allow different process / groupware formalisms/tools locally, i.e. federation.

• Couple transaction support to e.g. UML data model.

• Try out on realistic scenarios:– Network-based education, the mobile student

– Virtual teams in sw.eng. (ourselves, students, industry?)

• => Cooperate with others on solutions and applications!!


Possibilities for joint activities• MUNIN:

– Offer method support for developing multimedia / mobile applications wrt. process / transaction support.

– Test out on students / developers.

• PATT/Parlay: similar, both for applications and platforms.

• HiA’s “The mobile student”: similar + applying such technologies/applications on own students.

• INCO: Use MOWAHS as testbed.

mowahs motivation (1) -- virtual organizations with mobile and distributed actors:

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