FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT
PHYSICAL AGENTS
FIPA Propagate Communicative Act Specification
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Document title |
FIPA Propagate Communicative Act Specification |
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Document number |
DC00050A |
Document source |
FIPA TC C |
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Document status |
Deprecated |
Date of this status |
2000/10/16 |
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Supersedes |
None |
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Contact |
fab@fipa.org |
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Change history |
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2000/10/16 |
Deprecated by FIPA00037 |
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© 2000 Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - http://www.fipa.org/
Geneva, Switzerland
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Notice |
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Use of the technologies described in this specification may infringe
patents, copyrights or other intellectual property rights of FIPA Members and
non-members. Nothing in this specification should be construed as granting
permission to use any of the technologies described. Anyone planning to make
use of technology covered by the intellectual property rights of others
should first obtain permission from the holder(s) of the rights. FIPA
strongly encourages anyone implementing
any part of this specification to determine first whether part(s)
sought to be implemented are covered by the intellectual property of others,
and, if so, to obtain appropriate licenses or other permission from the
holder(s) of such intellectual property prior to implementation. This
specification is subject to change without notice. Neither FIPA nor any of
its Members accept any responsibility whatsoever for damages or liability,
direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this specification. |
Foreword
The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
(FIPA) is an international organization that is dedicated to promoting the
industry of intelligent agents by openly developing specifications supporting
interoperability among agents and agent-based applications. This occurs through
open collaboration among its member organizations, which are companies and
universities that are active in the field of agents. FIPA makes the results of
its activities available to all interested parties and intends to contribute
its results to the appropriate formal standards bodies.
The members of FIPA are individually and
collectively committed to open competition in the development of agent-based
applications, services and equipment. Membership in FIPA is open to any
corporation and individual firm, partnership, governmental body or
international organization without restriction. In particular, members are not
bound to implement or use specific agent-based standards, recommendations and
FIPA specifications by virtue of their participation in FIPA.
The FIPA specifications are developed through
direct involvement of the FIPA membership. The status of a specification can be
either Preliminary, Experimental, Standard, Deprecated or Obsolete. More detail about the process of
specification may be found in the FIPA Procedures for Technical Work. A
complete overview of the FIPA specifications and their current status may be
found in the FIPA List of Specifications. A list of terms and abbreviations
used in the FIPA specifications may be found in the FIPA Glossary.
FIPA is a non-profit association registered in
Geneva, Switzerland. As of January 2000, the 56 members of FIPA represented 17 countries worldwide. Further
information about FIPA as an organization, membership information, FIPA
specifications and upcoming meetings may be found at http://www.fipa.org/.
Contents
This document specifies
the Propagate communicative act which is compliant to [FIPA00037] requirements.
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Summary |
The sender intends that the receiver treat the embedded message as sent directly to the receiver, and wants the receiver to identify the agents denoted by the given descriptor and send the received propagate message to them. |
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Content |
A tuple of a descriptor, that is, a referential expression, denoting an agent or agents to be forwarded the propagate message, an embedded ACL communicative act, that is, an ACL message, performed by the sender to the receiver of the propagate message and a constraint condition for propagation, for example, timeout. |
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Description |
This is a compound action of the following two actions. First, the sending agent requests the recipient to treat the embedded message in the received propagate message as if it is directly sent from the sender that is, as if the sender performed the embedded communicative act directly to the receiver. Second, the sender wants the receiver to identify agents denoted by the given descriptor and to send a modified version of the received propagate message to them, as described below. On forwarding, the :receiver parameter of the forwarded propagate message is set to the denoted agent(s) and the :sender parameter is set to the receiver of the received propagate message. The sender of the embedded communicative act of the forwarded propagate message is also set to the same agent as the propagate message’s sender. This communicative act is designed for
delivering messages through federated agents by creating a chain (or tree) of
propagate messages. An example of
this is instantaneous brokerage requests using a proxy message (see [FIPA00052]) or persistent requests by a request-when message (see [FIPA00058]) embedding a proxy message. |
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Formal
Model |
<i,
propagate(j, Ref x d(x),
<i, cact>, f)> º
<i, cact(j)>;
<i, inform(j, Ii(($y) (Bj (Ref x d(x)
= y) Ù Done(<j, propagate(y, Ref
x d(x), <j, cact>, f)>, Bj f))))>
FP: FP(cact) Ù Bi a Ù ØBi
(Bifj a Ú Uifj a) Where: a= Ii(($y) (Bj (Ref x d(x)
= y) Ù Done(<j,
propagate(y, Ref x d(x), <j, cact>, f)>, Bj f))) Agent i performs the embedded communicative act to j: <i, cact(j)> and i wants j to send the propagate message to the denoted agent(s) by Ref x d(x). Note: <i,cact> in the propagate message is the ACL communicative act.
that is, the ACL message, without a :receiver prarmeter. Ref x d(x) is one of the referential expressions: ix d(x), any x d(x) or all x d(x). |
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Example |
Agent i requests agent j and its federating other brokerage agents to do brokering a video-on-demand server
agent to obtain "SF" programs. (propagate
:sender i
:receiver j
((iota ?x
(registered
(:agent-description
(:service-description
:content ((iota ?y (registered (:agent-description (:service-description
:content (action (send-program |
[FIPA00037] FIPA Communicative
Act Library Specification. Foundation for Intelligent
Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00037/
[FIPA00052] FIPA Proxy Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00052/
[FIPA00058] FIPA Request When Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00058/