History of

Preface

This history was compiled by stefan Poslad, Queen Mary, University of London, based on text from many authors, taken in part from various FIPA documents such as the resolutions documents for each FIPA meeting. Email FIPA-ROFS-Chair@ieee.org to report corrections or comments.

The article is oriented to a general readership. It focuses on the history of the technical work undertaken by FIPA, rather than on the organisational changes that occurred, during the decade 1995-2005. That said, a little overview of the FIPA organisation may help to understand some of the details of the technical work. FIPA was initially setup to complete and mature the work of specifying aspects of multi-agent systems within 5 years - so it originally had a 5 year mandate to do this (this got extended indefinitely in 2001). It was governed on behalf of the members by an administrative FIPA Board (of  Directors), elected by its members. The technical works was done in Technical Committees or TCs that were created and dissolved when work was completed or abandoned. Other technical groups, such as Work Groups (WGs) were formed to do the ground work that would enable them eventually to turn into a technical committee to produce specifications. A Special Interest Group or SIG was formed to discuss related work that was not intended to lead to the generation of specifications. Lastly, a technical management board, called the FIPA Architecture Board or FAB became created in order to oversee the management of the life-cycle of specifications that were proposed in work-plans.

Document Organisation

• Short History of FIPA
• Important FIPA Achievements
• The Core technical Ideas and how they evolved
• Meetings List
• Longer History of FIPA: given as a meeting by meeting account. Note that the technical progress reported is a little patchy in placed because some TCs / WG/ SIGs gave more detail than others. Where TCs / WG/ SIGs met but no technical progress was reported, these meeting parts were omitted.

This document was last updated on 20th December 2005.

Short History of FIPA

FIPA was established in 1996 as an international non-profit association of companies that agreed to share efforts to produce standard specifications of generic agent technologies that were: produced in a timely fashion, internationally agreed and usable across a large number of applications so that a high level of interoperability across applications is achieved. Since then, FIPA has counted more than 60 members from more than 20 different countries-worldwide and generated a set of specifications that went through 3 cycles of review: FIPA97, FIPA98, FIPA 2000. Several distinct agent platforms, applications, and collaborative projects have been, and are continuing to be, based upon the FIPA specifications; the core set of the specifications have been used for a number of years and they are robust and effective enough to be promoted to Standard. The X2S TC was created at the 24th FIPA meeting in Lausanne, Feb. 2002, to drive standards to standard status, harmonize, ensure coherency, correctness. It went through 3 iterations of accepting comments from the membership and improving the specifications. At the end of 2002, the FAB believed that these specifications were now stable, mature, well understood and ready for commercial implementation and deployment.

1995: The idea of FIPA was born in the second half of December 1995. At the root of FIPA were a the following: Agent technologies provide a new paradigm to solve old and new problems; Some agent technologies have reached a considerable degree of maturity; To be of use some agent technologies require standardisation; Standardisation of generic technologies has been shown to be possible and to provide effective results by other standardisation fora (MPEG and DAVIC).

1996: FIPA established its 1st Call for Proposals. This was used to identify different application areas of interest. 4 were retained by consensus: Personal Assistant, Personal Travel Assistance, Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting Network Provisioning and Management.

1997: FIPA adopts as the basis of the agent communication language the proposal by France Télécom for the ARCOL the Agent Communication Language (this is often referred to as FIPA-ACL or sometimes just ACL) and its associated semantic definition. This was the result of an intense and controversial debate between the merits of FIPA vs. KQML. N.B. ARCOL became the basis for the FIPA-ACL rather than KQML because the former had defined formal semantics to underpin it, whereas the latter did not.
The 1st set of FIPA (FIPA-'97) specification in 7 parts were produced. The first three parts would be of "normative" type, i.e. they would specify the agent technologies (agent management, agent communication, agent/software interaction), while the remaining 4 parts (Personal Assistant, Personal Travel Assistance, Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting Network Provisioning and Management) would be of "informative" type, i.e. they would explain how to use the technologies specified in parts 1-3 to implement the 4 selected applications.

1998-9: core specifications revised and some new specifications developed, e.g., for mobile agents and agent security. In 1999, the first open source FIPA compliant toolkit was released (FIPA-OS from Nortel Networks, later ownership of this passed to Emorphia).

2000-2: FIPA adopts an overall architecture model with less fragile abstractions that: doesn’t break as technology changes; mappings to commonly used technologies (CORBA, JINI etc); support alternate mechanisms, e.g., transports, content encodings and explicit definition of implicitly used agent terms; new life-cycle model for standards adopted. Successful interoperability trials for FIPA agents built with heterogeneous FIPA toolkit implementations of the specifications was undertaken. 25 specs standardised in 2002.

2003-4: New activities started in the areas of Semantics, adhoc, Security, Services, Modelling, Methodologies.

2005: FIPA no longer autonomous becomes 11th IEEE SA (standards activity). IEEE-FIPA is oriented around technical activities that move things to a standards stream..

FIPA Achievements

The main achievements include:

• Set of standard specifications massively deployed architecture to support agent-to-agent communication and middleware services.
• Communication languages (FIPA ACL) Interaction protocols: from single messages to complex transactions.
• Open source & commercial agent tool-kits, e.g., FIPA-OS, JADE + many plug-ins, e.g., Protégé Beans.
• Many projects, e.g., Agentcities global network of FIPA compliant platforms and services, etc.
• Java Community Process (JCP) specification for agents: JAS, Java Agent Services (JSR00087)
• Agent extension of Unified Modelling Language (AUML)  standard- this originated in FIPA Modelling TC
• JADE-Board – 5 telecom companies set up a forum to promote the JADE FIPA toolkit for mobile telecoms applications
•  Reuse of other standards: XML, HTTP transport, RDF etc

The Core Ideas and How They Evolved

There are many agent related ideas proposed and specified within FIPA. This is illustrated by the topics of the different technical committees and work-groups during FIPA's existence see Figure 1. But of these, one main idea and two associated ideas matured and reached standard status: agent communication languages, agent message and agent management / agent architecture.

Figure 1: The main activities of FIPA during its history in terms of its technical work groups. The bold activities are the ones that led to specifications. The dotted outline activity was intended to produce informative documents not specifications.

The core idea at the heart of the FIPA specifications is that FIPA agents in multi-agent systems communicate using a  communication protocol defined by an Agent Communication Language (ACL). This is based on speech act theory: messages are actions, or communicative acts (also called speech acts or performatives), as they are intended to perform some action by virtue of being sent, e.g., "I now declare you as Man and Wife" when issued by an authorative agent such as a priest, in a licensed premise such as a church agency, acts to change the status of both man and wife to be married. The FIPA-ACL was based on a particular specification of communicative acts, as proposed in 1997 by France Télécom, called ARCOL. Every communicative act is described using both a narrative form and a formal semantics based on modal (BDI or Belief ,Desire, Intention) logic that specifies the effects of sending the message on the mental attitudes of the sender and receiver agents -

The FIPA-ACL consists of a set of 22 message types called communicative acts (CA) or speech acts such as request, agree, inform, not understood, and refuse.  It is said that the most basic FIPA agent must be able to receive any  FIPA-ACL communicative act message and if a response is needed and it can't handle or understand the received message, the agent must be able to reply with a not-understood message.

This FIPA-ACL specification includes guidance to users who are already familiar with another popular ACL called KQML (Knowledge Query Meta Language) in order to facilitate migration of KQML applications to use the FIPA ACL instead.  The FIPA-ACL specification has gone through a number of revisions since 1997 and was standardised in 2002, as the FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification SC00037, available from here.

Additional specifications are based on the AC.   For the example, individual CA messages are often used during interactions consisting of sequences of individual CAs. FIPA has defined predefined set of high-level interaction protocols, including requesting an action, contract net and several kinds of auctions. 9 Interaction protocols have been standardised in 2002, see here.

Other specifications associated with the ACL are an associated Content expression Language or CL that provides  computation constructs for the communicative acts to use. Here are some examples: a request communication action requires a sub-action, e.g.1, Agent X requests to register service description Y in directory Z, e.g.2, a query-if communication action requires a preposition. Agent X queries agent Y if preposition Z is true; a query-ref communication action requires a variable or identifying expression, e.g.3, Agent X queries agent Y for data that matches expression Z. Several CLs have been proposed such as FIPA-SL (FIPA Semantic Language), KIF and RDF but of these only FIPA-SL reached standard status as FIPA Specification SC0008, see here.

Further developments of the ACL were initiated but did not lead to standard specifications:

• Semantics (to define a semantics that was oriented away from sender / receiver BDI  model (towards institutions and more general linguistics)
•  Ontologies (to structure relations in  message and its content and to link-up with the Semantic Web).
• Additional Interaction protocols, e.g.,  to support multi-party agreements such as voting.

ACL Message exchange requires the ACL message structure to be defined in terms of message header fields such as the type of communicative act, receiver address and the sender address and the message content (instances of content expressions) see here for the SC00061 FIPA ACL Message Structure Specification  The ACL message structure can be encoded using multiple representations such as XML, String and  a bit compression format, see here for specifications SC00071, SC00070 and SC00069 respectively. In addition, encoded ACL messages use a TCP/IP transport protocol such as IIOP or HTTP, see here for specifications SC00075 and SC00084 respectively.

In 1997: A normative framework within which FIPA compliant agents can exist, operate and be managed, was proposed. An agent platform reference model contained such capabilities as white and yellow pages, message routing (N.B. message transport was first modelled as part of agent management in 1997 but later became a separate specification) and life-cycle management is defined. Initially, in 1997, the  white and yellow pages, message routing capabilities were modelled as intelligent agents, as the Agent Management  System (AMS), Directory Facilitator (DF) and Message transport agents with specific ACL interfaces. These agents were defined formally using  the communicative acts and an associated management ontology and content expressions allows agents to discover each other’s capabilities in the agent management specification. Initially the capabilities of an agent name service (ANS) and agent life-cycle management service (AMS) were defined separately but these became merged into a single AMS agent. Later, for reasons to do with performance and the need to reuse and embed agent systems in non-agent infrastructures, message transport and yellow pages were specified as non-agent services in the SC00023 FIPA Agent Management Specification, see here.

In addition in 2000-2002, a more abstract model of an agent architecture was proposed and standardised as the SC00001, FIPA Abstract Architecture Specification, see here. This specifies the ACL message and message transport as mandatory services and allows the yellow page, white page, agent management services to be optional.  Further developments of the abstract architecture to support the following abstractions were initiated but did not lead to standard specifications:

• Abstract Content Representations (seems plausible to support the abstract ACL representation in this model);
• Policies and Domains (to help support a third-party, rather than just private sender-receiver ACL semantics)
• Service Directory Service
• Agent Configuration Management aimed  to define dependencies between agents to allow automatic configuration and deployment of agents (typically thousands). The work focused initially on expanding the management capabilities of the AMS. It was also deemed to be dependent on, to proceed from, specifying the policies and domains.

Meetings List

(No., Place, Month-Year, Host)

1. London, 04-1996, Imperial College
2. New York, 06-1996, IBM,
3. Tokyo, 10-1996, NTT
4. Torino, Italy 01-1997, CSELT
5. Reston/VA, 04-1997 BT North America
6. Cheju Is., Korea 06-1997 ETRI and KAIST
7. Munich, Germany 10-1997, Siemens
8. Palo Alto, USA 01-1998, HP
9. Osaka, 04-1998, Matsushita
10. Dublin 07-1998, Broadcom
11. Durham / NC, 10-1998, DARPA, IBM, Nortel Networks etc.
12. Seoul, 01-1999, KAIST
13. Nice, France 04-1999, France Telecom
14. San Francisco, 07-1999, Fujitsu
15. Kawasaki, Japan 10-1999, Hitachi
16. London 01-2000, BT
17. Lisbon 04-2000, ADDETTI
18. Baltimore 07-2000, UMBC
19. Sydney 10-2000 Motorola
20. Phoenix 01-2001 Intel
21. London 04-2001, Imperial College
22. Sendai 07-2001, Communication Technologies
23. Pleasanton 10-2001 Sandia Labs
24. Lausanne 02-2002 EPFL
25. Vancouver 05-2002, University of Calgary, co-hosted with GAIN 2002
26. Helsinki 07-2002 Sonera (now Telia-Sonera)
27. Pensacola 10-2002 IHMC
28. Palermo 02-2003 ???
29. Banff 08-2003 ???

30. London 11-2003, Co-hosted with OMG Meeting

31. Meeting Barcelona 03-2004 UAB
32. Rockville 07-2004 Intelligent Automation
    IEEE-FIPA Launch at Utrech 07-2005, co-hosted with AAMAS-2005 Conference
33. Budapest, 09-2005, cohosted with CEMAS-2005 Conference

Longer History of FIPA

The Origins of FIPA

The idea of FIPA was born in the second half of December 1995. At the root of FIPA are a set of facts:

1. Agent technologies provide a new paradigm to solve old and new problems;
2. Some agent technologies have reached a considerable degree of maturity;
3. To be of use some agent technologies require standardisation;
4. Standardisation of generic technologies has been shown to be possible and to provide effective results by other standardisation fora (MPEG and DAVIC).

In the months January to March 1996 a set of documents about its Rationale and Scope were circulated to a selected number of individuals who contributed to the refinement of the basic ideas.

1st meeting, April 1996, London

On 18 and 19 April 1996 a group of interested people met at the Imperial College, London. The meeting was by invitation but anybody who requested to join was accepted. The group reached agreement on several points:

1. Desirability to establish FIPA, an international organisation with the purpose of developing generic agent standards based on the participation of all players in the field;
2. The basic principles of generic agent standardisation;
3. Openness to collaboration with other bodies active in the field;
4. A workplan calling for a first set of agent technologies specification at the end of 1997;
5. A first list of basic agent capabilities candidate for 1997 standardisation;
6. Draft Statutes, set of resolutions and a press release
7. Holding a second meeting in June in the form of a workshop with the goal of
   • refining the list of items candidate for 1997 specification and
   • achieving a first identification of those items to be actually specified in that time frame.

2nd meeting, June 1996, New York

The second FIPA meeting was widely announced and due notice was given along with the FIPA Opening Forum program. A considerable number of participants gathered at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, NY on 24-26 June 1996. The first two meeting days were used to hear and discuss some 35 presentations addressing a wide range of agent-base applications and agent-enabled technologies.

On the third day (26 June) three basic documents were produced: a framework document for FIPA activities a first draft of FIPA application document a first draft of FIPA requirements document along with a list of agent technologies candidate for 1997 specification. The rest of the third day was used to deal with administrative issues such as confirmation of the FIPA workplan; decision to publish the First FIPA Call for Proposals at the third meeting in October 1996; decision to request interested parties to submit descriptions of applications at the third meeting, with reference to list of 1997 standardisation items; decision to proceed with the formal establishment of FIPA as a non-profit association in Switzerland. All the decisions were duly recorded in a set of resolutions.

The establishment of FIPA

On 5 September 1996 five individuals representing five companies met in the office of Me. Jean-Pierre Jacquemoud in Geneva and signed the papers establishing FIPA as a not-for-profit association under Swiss Civil Law. The five representatives elected Messrs. Leonardo Chiariglione (CSELT), Richard Nicol (BT Labs) and Peter Schirling (IBM) as Directors of the Association.

The yearly membership fees were set at 3,500 Swiss Francs (about 2,500 US$) for Full Members but the fee was halved for Associated Members, i.e. members with no voting rights.

Information on the formal establishment of FIPA was largely distributed with an invitation to join. This was done both by mail, electronic mail and using the FIPA Web site established immediately after the Yorktown meeting.

3rd meeting, October 1996, NHK, Tokyo

The third meeting, hosted by NHK in Tokyo on 07-11 October 1996, was the first formal meeting of the Association, but was still open to anybody interested. It was a challengingly complex meeting to manage.

The Call for contributions, widely disseminated by mail and email, had requested contributions proposing applications and the corresponding technologies to enable drafting of a Call for Proposals of agent technologies to be used for the development of FIPA '97 specification.

The dedication and competence of the experts attending the meeting enabled FIPA to produce a high-quality Call for Proposals through the following sequence of steps:

The submissions were used to identify 12 different application areas of interest. Out of the 12 applications 4 were retained by consensus:

• Personal Assistant
• Personal Travel Assistance
• Audio-Visual Entertainment and
• Broadcasting Network Provisioning and Management.

The list of agent technologies needed by the 4 applications were identified. A subset of the technologies that the meeting considered specifiable in 1997 was produced. The applications made possible by FIPA '97 specification were described. The Call for Proposals was drafted and approved.

The meeting appointed K. Enami (NHK) as 4th FIPA Director and decided that, starting from the 4th meeting, attendance would be limited to FIPA members. The exception for the following meeting was for those who would submit a contribution in response to CFP1.

4th meeting, January 1997, CSELT, Torino

As for past information regarding the 1st FIPA Call for Proposals (CFP1) was widely disseminated by email. The html version of CFP1 was also posted on the FIPA home page and received over 1,500 hits in 3 months. The meeting, hosted by CSELT (now TILabs) in Torino, Italy on 20-24 January 1997, was duly announced to FIPA members but information was also posted on the FIPA home page, because those who made a submission in response to CFP1 were invited to attend, irrespective of their membership. The Responses to CFP1 provided most of the basic technology needed to develop FIPA '97 specification capable of supporting the four selected applications.

First the decision was made to subdivide the FIPA '97 specification in 7 parts. The first three parts would be of "normative" type (i.e. they would specify the agent technologies), while the remaining 4 parts would be of "informative" type (i.e. they would explain how to use the technologies specified in parts 1-3 to implement the 4 selected applications. The table below gives the title of the 7 specifications.

The meeting established 3 Technical Committees (TCs) to develop the first three parts and appointed Paul O'Brien (BT Labs), Donald Steiner (Siemens) and Yeun-Bae Kim (NHK) as the corresponding Chairmen. The TCs produced a baseline draft specification for part 1, 2 and 3. These were posted on the FIPA home page and in the 45 days, received more than 700 hits. The meeting also succeeded in drafting a baseline draft specification of part 4. Lastly the meeting produced a Call for Proposal (CFP2) for the purpose of obtaining the few items of agent technologies that had not been obtained from CFP1.

FIPA adopted the proposal by France Télécom for the ARCOL the Agent Communication Language (this is referred to as FIPA-ACL or sometimes just ACL) and its associated semantic definition as the basis of its agent communication language. This was the result of intense controversial debate between the merits of FIPA vs. KQML. N.B. ARCOL became the basis for the FIPA-ACL rather than KQML because the former had defined formal semantics to underpin it whereas the latter did not. FIPA adopt the content language SL, also from France Télécom, as an informative standard for the content language of messages. FIPA adopts the cooperativeness protocols, also from France Télécom, as a possible basis for cooperative behaviour (cooperativity contracts).

FIPA 1997 technologies did not well support Human/Agent Interaction, aside from the underlying model of speech acts. It was suggested that Human/Agent Technology Group be formed for special focus, assuming the same underlying dialog model now established by the combined Human-Agent/Agent-Agent Technology Group. (Review SGML and other proposals at next meeting? Additional CFP?)

5th meeting, April 1997, Reston/Va

This Made clear the distinction between normative and informative, in particular between the model of agent communication and the incorporation of a given theory of agency in the agent implementation.

• Make the intended use of the primitive communicative acts more understandable to the agent developer.
• Suggest a set of composite communicative acts to be defined in ACL.
• Suggest a set of interaction protocols useful for the FIPA’97 target application areas.
• Incorporate basic requirements on a content language to be used in ACL.
• Facilitate the use of ACL by KQML-based agents, in particular, with respect to message syntax and base performatives, and by suggesting the mapping from an adapted subset of the KQML performatives to ACL.

Revision of the Agent / Software interaction scenario to broader types of interaction and also to align with the draft standards emerging from TC1 such as Agent Resource Broker (ARB).

• Elimination in FIPA’97 of the distinction between internal and external software systems. For FIPA’97 only the attachment of external software systems are considered.
• Introduction of a distinction between common software resource of an agent domain as represented by the Agent Resource Broker (ARB) and independently controlled external software systems.
• Specification that the interaction (as represented by the reference model and management, connection and wrapper sets of communicative acts) with the ARB is normative.
• Identification of the need for the ARB to support a taxonomy of software systems. To this end we have identified a mandatory minimal software description which all registered software systems must support.
• Introduction of three new communicative acts to allow agents to add, modify and remove software type definitions, these are in addition to the existing management-related communicative acts which allow agents to add, modify and remove software descriptions.
• Re-definition of the connection at the agent-boundary level to external software to the informative section of the specification in line with points 2 and 3 above. This section describes the Agent Software Interface which suggests re-using the brokering methods introduced in the normative section for the purpose of interacting with independent external software. This is merely suggestive.

FIPA 97 version 1.0 produced, All technical issues settled, Plan for 1998 trials produced

FIPA developed and approved the draft FIPA 97 specification version 2.0, parts 1 to 7 and proposed to extend these in 1998 as follows:

To illustrate some of the issues, the Agent Management , has agreed to adopt the following resolutions :

• To propose FIPA7611 (Draft version 2) to FIPA as the latest draft version of the Agent Management Specification, the main improvements being the :
• removal of ARB from reference model and clarification of TC3 – TC1 scopes.
• definition of an Agent Platform which consists of the ANS, ACC, AMS, DF. This supports both inter- and intra- platform interoperability based on IIOP as a default protocol.
• the distinction between the DF domain and the agent platform
• initial definition of an agent management content language including the key agent management operations (e.g. register) and content (e.g. agent description).

7th Meeting October 1997, Munich

FIPA 1997 specifications were published as a book with a limited circulation.

Agent Management TC, TC1, proposed that  FIPA adopt the adoption of the Agent Management Specification (fipa7a11 v1.0). This  incorporated the following major changes :

• the merging of the Agent name service (ANS) and agent life-cycle management service (AMS) capability sets into a single AMS entity;
• the further definition and completion of the FIPA Agent Management Ontology;
• the further explanation of the adoption of IIOP for FIPA compliant AP’s . This essentially defined a baseline transport protocol that all agent platforms must adopt to ease boot-strapping and interoperability.

Agent Communication  TC,TC2, proposed that FIPA adoption of a first version of fipa7a12.doc as Part 2, Agent Communication Language, to the FIPA 97 Specification (Version 1.0), the main improvements over fipa7612.doc (Cheju draft version) being:

• the introduction of SL content language and its related profiles
• examples
• defining a relationship to KQML.

Agent Software Integration  TC, TC3, proposed that FIPA approves FIPA 97 version. 1.0, Part 3 - Agent/Software Integration:

• Wrapper and ARB services are provided by agents. ·
• Adoption of SL (profile 2) as the content language. ·
• Selection of all necessary communicative acts, an interaction protocol, and two Ontologies (consisting of actions and predicates to support Wrapper and ARB services
• Approval of CFP 98 for “Agent/Software Integration technologies”.

Personal Travel Assistance, TC4, proposes that FIPA adopt the document fipa7a14.doc, FIPA 97 Draft Specification: Part 4 Personal Travel Assistance is declared complete for the needs of FIPA 97 initial publication. Two areas are suggested as the primary new focus of Personal Travel Assistance in FIPA 98: A more complete and applicable ontology for travel is suggested to serve as a test of a FIPA initiative in ontology definition and management;  Elaboration of the mobile agent scenarios is suggested as well to serve the possible technical development of how mobile agent platforms are integrated with FIPA standards (platform, communications, and software access for mobile agents).

Personal Assistant TC5 proposed to submit fipa7a15.doc as Part 5, Personal Assistant, to the FIPA 97 Specification (Version 1.0), the main improvements being the: · adoption of vCalendar for representation of meetings · rewriting and reformatting of the document.

Audio-Visual Entertaining and Broadcasting TC6 proposed that FIPA approve the FIPA 97 part 6.

Network Management and Provisioning TC7 proposed that FIPA adopt FIPA7A17 Version 1 for approval as the specification for FIPA TC7 on Network Management and Provisioning.

8th Meeting, January 1998, Palo Alto

Field trials were planned for 1998 to test the specifications.

Agent Management TC1 proposes that FIPA adopt a revised Agent Management Mandate which reads : “To define a detailed normative framework within which FIPA agents can exist and operate, including reference, life-cycle, security and mobility models, agent management tool specifications, and an informative annex. To adopt an external view of an agent, ensuring that developers retain the maximum freedom in the development of an agent system. Similarly, to provide flexibility in the organisation and configuration of agent systems.”.TC1 also started to pursued the specification of  Security Management : fipa811a : (Marius Tesselar : KPN)  and Agent Management Support for Mobility : fipa810b (Bernard Burg : Motorola).

Agent Communication TC2, aims were to:

• study how to exploit the current ANSI Top level Ontology for the FIPA goals 3 Before FIPA
• Produce a first draft of a structured vocabulary with all the terms in FIPA 97 (part 1,2,3)
•  Present OKBC API and Ontolingua protocol. Even if these protocol and API are at a level lower than the FIPA98 specs, they provide a good example of the ontology service that FIPA98 intends to specify
• Update the part 1997 spec on agent Communication

Human/Agent Interaction TC8, proposed that FIPA adopt the following recommendations : Approval of the first draft of FIPA 98 “Human/Agent Interaction” (fipa8118) as follows: ·

• Creation of human-agent interaction reference model including User Model Representation Service (UMRS), Generic Learning Service (GLS), Translation to/from User Formats of User Interfaces.
• Identification and description of technology items to be standardized: Interface to UMRS;. Interface to GLS; ACL-compatible end user formats / real world interface.
• Use of an additional CfP 98 for “Human/Agent Interaction” technologies for ACL compatible end user formats / real world interface.

Agent Manufacturing TC9 proposed that Product Design and Manufacturing will be added the application areas for FIPA98. A technical committee will develop an informative application specification as part of FIPA98. The scope of work will include Manufacturing and Telecommunication interests (as well as Banking) to satisfy the general interest of FIPA members and to demonstrate the multi-vendor, multi-industry, multinational scope of the application.

A new technical committee, support of FIPA 97, TC 10 was started to address the support of FIPA 97. The inputs to TC10 were all comments on FIPA 97. The main outputs from TC10 will be: FIPA 97 v2.0  and a User Guide to FIPA 97.

9th Meeting, April 1998, Osaka

Agent Management TC1 proposed:

• FIPA  issue the following draft specifications: FIPA8414 ( FIPA98 Part 10 Security Management, v.0.1), FIPA8415 (FIPA98, Part 11, Agent Management Support for Mobility, v.0.3), FIPA8411  (FIPA98 Part 1,  Agent Management, v.0.1),  FIPA8421 (FIPA97 Part 1, Agent Management, v.1.1).

To continue its Work-plan for Mobility Management to:

• Define protocols to support different types of mobility (e.g. cloning )
• Consolidate AM Ontology definition (e.g. agent platform profile)
• Define mapping to MASIF.

To continue its Work-plan for Agent Management revision (FIPA98) to:

• Define subscribe action.
• Produce more detailed specification on the FIPA message transport mechanism (asynch)
• Produce section on facilities for device mobility
• Relate to agent mobility & security specifications
• GUID Revision.

To continue its work-plan for Security Management to:

• Extend / refine the ontology, Refine the normative references Dublin
• Explain the use of :envelope parameter for transport level security
• Develop concrete examples for the use of transport level security, e.g. CORBA security services or SSL.
• Provide agent security management object descriptions
• Investigate the use of the agent management platform profile for security purposes
• Mobility: specify security ontology including operations for mobility.

Agent communication TC2:

• TC2 adopts the OKBC knowledge model. Therefore, it requests SIG to make a liaison with the HPKB DARPA program and to check any legal issue (IPR/copyright) dealing with the usage of this part of the OKBC specifications;
• TC2 requests TC1 to enhance the DF functionality to allow querying the DF for the list of Ontologies supported by an agent;
• TC2 requests TC10 to clarify usage of ACL about how to transfer data between agents;
•  TC2 approves version 0.1 of Part 12 of FIPA98 specifications;

TC2 approves the following list of action points to be delivered at next FIPA meeting:

• Edit the section “Naming and Referring to Ontologies”
• Edit scenarios illustrating the features offered by the usage of the Ontology Agent: scenario 3 scenario 4 scenario 5 new scenario on ontology equivalence
•  Edit the section on the interaction protocol to agree on a shared ontology and represent the protocol by using the Unified Modelling Language.
•  Registration of a new ontology with the ARB All Translation of expressions between Ontologies.

Human/Agent Interaction TC 8 adopts:

• the use of modified reference model by generalizing user interface as a functionality called UDMS (User Dialog Management Service).
• the inclusion of End User Form translation to informative part
• the identification of HAI relevant agent-type and service-type to be registered via fipa-man-df-agent-description: · fipa-hai-agent · fipa-udms (User Dialog Management Service) · fipa-umrs (User Model Representation Service) · fipa-umls (User Model Learning Service)
• the identification of security and privacy issues to be specified in FIPA 98 Part 8 based on Part 10 where authentication of agents and secured messaging protocol are specified. ·
• the specification of user modelling ontology based on Ontology Service TC.
• inclusion of learning service actions proposed by IBM to normative part. ·
• inclusion of W3C's P3P specification as informative reference and continuous considerations to the next version of P3P specification to be published in May, 1998.

The Support of FIPA 97 TC10 proposes that the Plenary accept: Version 1.1 of FIPA 97 Part 1,  Version 1.1 of FIPA 97 Part 2, Version 0.2 of the FIPA 97 Developer’s Guide (including the FIPA 97 FAQ).

10th Meeting, July 1998, Dublin

Agent Management TC1

• Issued the following draft specifications : FIPA8714 : FIPA98 Part 10 : Security Management (v.0.2) FIPA8715 : FIPA98 Part 11 : Agent Management Support for Mobility (v.0.5) FIPA8711 : FIPA98 Part 01 : Agent Management (v.0.2) FIPA8721 : FIPA97 Part 01 : Agent Management (v.1.3) 2)

To agree to the following TC1 action points and work-plan

• Review Agent Management document
• Device mobility section needs moving from FIPA97 and updating
• Security additions to Agent Management object descriptions need defining (see fipa8711 7/9/98 4.
• AMS section incorporate and update
• DF section incorporate and update
• Incorporate agreed Revisions and restructuring from FIPA97 part 1 to FIPA8711 and issue revision for input to
• ACL message envelope for ACC (sender, receiver, message) – encryption, authentication, etc.
• Update FIPA97 on subject of addressing and search in DF
• Revise mobility specification
• Security issues - Add parameter for specifying communication protocol Produce input on : - Additions to AP and code profile - Identify implications of mobility on ACC, DF and AMS Jonathan NC Security Revise the agent management security specification A
• TC2 requests TC10 to extend FIPA97 Part 2 to consider the ontology extensions. The document fipa8704 clarifies this need.
• TC2 requests TC10 to clarify a standard mechanism to transfer streams between agents. For this purpose, a proposal has been presented to TC10 on behalf of TC2. ·
• TC2 believes that its specifications would benefit from including chapter 2 of OKBC document. It then requests to FIPA to check any legal issue (IPR/copyright) with the HPKB DARPA program. ·

TC2 approves the following list of action points:

• Review scenario 2 & 3
•  Produce scenario 6 which shows the need for fetching & Storing an ontology
• Check final position with OKBC copyright issues and, based on that,
• review section 6.2 (FIPA-meta-ontology)
• Check if Fipa-Ontol-service-Ontology must be separate from FIPA meta- ontology or not
•  Naming Ontologies
• Check if there is a need for the specifications of the two predicates ASSERTABLE and RETRACTABLE
• A lot of editing work needs still to be done to bring the document to Clair a well readable form Edit section “Responsibilities of the OA”
•  “Interaction Protocol to agree on a shared ontology”
• Edit annex B “Guidelines to define a new ontology”
•  Review Annex A “Reference Model for an Ontology”

Human/Agent Interaction TC8 proposed to

• Merge of User Model Representation Service (UMRS) and User Model Learning Service (UMLS) into User Personalization Service (UPS). · Approval of focusing on two sections, User Dialog Management Service (UDMS) and UPS. in UDMS section ·
• Adoption of the idea to define modality (I, O, and I/O mode) for a mandatory service description.
• Addition of two actions to control conversation between user and UDMS agent and definition of interaction protocol for user conversation. · Definition of mandatory and optional parameters of actions.
• Adoption of the idea to request actions in stead of using ACL CA because of the necessity to distinguish UDMA and the user.
• Refined the specification of UDMS. in UPS section
• Adoption of the commercially relevant term “personalization”: User Personalization Service (UPS)
• Adoption of several ideas of the P3P activity of the W3C.
• Partial integration of the comments and proposals of the EU IST FP4 funded KIMSAC project.
• Developed an open and flexible way of dealing with user profile content and structure.
• Agreed on the actions and protocols a UPS supports · Many detail questions raised and (most of them) answered in a satisfactory way, resulting in a sound and overall consistent reference model.
• Refined the specification of the learning part of a UPA.

Agent Manufacturing TC9 issues:

The existence of this application specification continues to be of interest to current members, has already recruited new members, and is part of the decision process for possible new members. · Its activity has proceeded slowly- this is problematic. However, a number of focusing items and intentions are resolved to address this.

TC9's  primary agenda will be to explore FIPA98 (not include FIPA97 details). In particular Ontology and Human Interaction Learning Service have been made a primary focus of scenarios. Security is then the next most important specification to apply. Mobility should and can be included, after these other items are better established.

Scenarios have been well identified. They will include new virtual enterprise member registration (ontology registration), buyer selection of vendor (Learning/Reputation Service), and design interest user profiling and notification (User Profiling, and Ontology-mediation between companies). Security within the cross-company firewall notification will be added. Agent mobility within this security framework will then be shown as an improvement.

Support of FIPA 97 TC10 proposed that:

• The Plenary accept: · Version 0.3 of the FIPA 97 Developer’s Guide (including the FIPA 97 FAQ).
• An update of the FIPA 97 Issue Tracker (html format) TC10 invites FIPA members to: · Read the Developer’s Guide and contribute sections where appropriate · Read the FIPA 97 FAQ and participate by answering (and asking) questions
• The Plenary acknowledge the following actions: · Very minor changes to FIPA 97 Parts 1 & 2, not to be made public until the next meeting (together with the resolution of bigger issues: addressing, DF Search, etc.).

11th Meeting, October 1998, Durham/NC

General resolutions concerned:

• The setting up of a FIPA 97 interoperability experiment at the next Seoul meeting. Donald Steiner will lead the discussions  with the purpose of defining the conditions of the experiment and the way of carrying it out. The following members have declared an interest in joining this experiments: ADETTI, Broadcom, Comtec, CSELT, Fujitsu, IBM, Nortel, Siemens. ·
• The need to speed up the validation of FIPA specifications and to create a showcase of agent-based applications to be presented to the industry at large. Discussions were held with Dr. Doug Dyer, the Manager of the DARPA CoABS program. The group shall, within the shortest possible time seek: to identify a FIPA agent-based application covering a large geographical area; define the time line for a possible implementation and to make proposals to the membership and  to act to promote acceptance of FIPA results by industry.

• FIPA approves its Fifth Call for Proposals for FIPA 99 applications and technologies.

Agent Management TC1 proposed:

•  that FIPA adopt and issue the following specifications : FIPA98 Part 10 : Security Management (v.1.0) FIPA98 :Part 11 : Agent Management Support for Mobility (v.1.0) FIPA98 Part 1 : Agent Management (v.1.0) FIPA97 Part 1 : Agent Management (v.2.0 2)
• To finish editing FIPA98 parts 1, 10 and 11 for a month (till 30th November 98). This will allow TC members to reformat the specifications using the ISO template, correct typos, rectify inconsistencies between the 3 agent management specifications, and clarify expressions.
• To acknowledge the consistent and dedicated work of all those who contributed to the production of the 3 specifications in TC1 during 1998, in particular: Fabio Bellafemine, Phil Buckle, Bernard Burg, Jonathan Dale, Wayne Jansen, Rob Hadingham, Tom Karygiannis, Kari Koivuniemi, Frank Macabe, Donnie O’Sullivan, Marius Tesselar, Steve Willmott, Tianning Zhang.
• To thank Major Doug Dyer who, as a representative of DARPA, permitted FIPA to include chapter 2 of OKBC version 2.0.3 specifications as a box in its Fipa98 Part 12, Ontology Service, specification. The following note has been added: “For an accurate understanding of this knowledge model, the reader should directly refer to [3]. However, for quick reference and to simplify the reading of this document, the following box is an integral reproduction of the 3 Chapter 2 of the OKBC specifications, version 2.0.3. This has been added to the specification for the convenience of the reader." TC2 thanks Asuncion Gomez-Perez who permitted FIPA to use large parts of her paper in the Annex B of Fipa98 Part 12 specifications.TC2 approves its version 1.0 of Part 12 of FIPA 98 specifications and asks FIPA 1 month to solve minor editorial issues.
• Communication with TC10 - TC2 requests TC10 to extend FIPA97 Part 2 specification to consider the ontology extension. In addition, TC2 requests TC10 to consider performance issues by, possibly, specifying a defaulting mechanism for Ontology extension within a conversation.TC2 requests TC10 to clarify the semantics of the result predicate in Fipa97 Part 2. TC2 requests TC10 to clarify the usage of the error handling messages, i.e. not-understood, failure, and refuse, within the Fipa97 part 2 document and to define a standard set of error propositions.

Human-Agent Interaction TC 8

• TC 8 asks FIPA to approve its specifications as FIPA 98, part 8.
• TC 8 encourages TC 2 to develop means for specifying interaction protocols.
• TC 8 appreciates feedback on its specifications and encourages FIPA99 applications to develop human-agent interaction systems that can be used to validate the FIPA98, part 8.

Product Design and Manufacturing TC9

The Product Design and Manufacturing TC9  specification will not be published as Part of FIPA 98, due to its insufficient development at this point in time. However, there is sufficient interest and new leadership (Berry and Ivezic) now driving this effort and wishing to use a completed document for driving this industry with FIPA standards.

Fundamental problems about the size of this domain and the complexities of the expertise required are being addressed. 2) Divide and conquer. A grid of areas of responsibility (industry and FIPA agent dimensions) has been established and a list of volunteers so far (and potential recruits) to address particular areas has been drafted.

A new CFP will not be issued, but this current FIPA98 work will be extended into 1999. As a precedent to now follow, all application specifications will be finalized in April of each year. Product Design and Manufacturing will be published April 1999 as a first case. A FIPA-manufacturing reflector has been established and will be used for work outside FIPA meetings. This will be open to a select list of other critical industry experts to help in this work.

Support of FIPA 97 TC10 proposes that:

• The Plenary accept Version 0.4 of the FIPA 97 Developer’s Guide (including the FIPA 97 FAQ).
• Sample implementation (similar to FIPA 97 Part 5)
• Example of negotiation of transport protocol
• Example of failure/refuse messages
• Example (informative) use of RDF as a content language

A final version of the Developer's Guide (minor editorial updates only) will be provided as Version 1.0 to the Secretariat by November 20th 1998. Members and TC Chairs in particular are requested to provide comments.

TC10 noted that Changes to FIPA 97 Parts 1 & 2 have been made during 1998, in particular:

• Addition of DF search mechanisms
• Resolution of addressing inconsistencies between Parts 1 & 2
• Clarification of device mobility issues.

FIPA approves the current portfolio of FIPA specifications (FIPA Spec ID, Title)

• Spec 1 - 1998 Agent Management
• Spec 2 - 1998 Agent Communication Language
• Spec 3 - 1997 Agent/Software Integration
• Spec 4 - 1997 Personal Travel Assistance
• Spec 5 - 1997 Personal Assistant
• Spec 6 - 1997 Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting
• Spec 7 - 1997 Network Management and Provisioning
• Spec 8 - 1998 Human/Agent Interaction
• Spec 10 - 1998 Agent Security
• Spec 11 - 1998 Agent Mobility FIPA
• Spec 12 - 1998 Ontology Service
• Spec 13 - 1998 FIPA 97 Developers' Guide

For 1999 the active TCs are as follows (TC ID, TC name, Chair)

• TC A Architecture, Frank McCabe
• TC B Management, Bernard Burg
• TC C Agent Communication, Donald Steiner
•  TC D Interop, Hiroki Suguri
• TC E Nomadic Application Support, Heimo Laamanen

01-1990 TC D conducted the first interoperability trials and the public demonstration successfully. See "Result of first interoperability trials" (fipa9113.doc) for details.

1999 TC activities planned for  04-1999 (FIPA Spec ID, Title, TC)

• FIPA Spec 0 - 1999 Architectural Principles, TC A
• FIPA Spec 1 - 1999 Agent Management, TC B
• FIPA Spec 2 - 1999 Agent Communication Language TC C
• FIPA Spec 13 - 1999 FIPA Developers' Guide TC D
• FIPA Spec 14 - 1999 Nomadic Application Support E
• FIPA Spec 15 - 1999 Agent Configuration Management, TC B
• FIPA Spec 16 - 1999 Agent Message Transport, TC B
• FIPA Spec 17 - 1999 Agent Naming. TC B
• FIPA Spec 18 - 1999 Content languages TC C

FIPA approves the Call for Offers 1 (CfO 1) soliciting offers to develop showcase software implementing a meeting scheduler by the time of the October 1999 meeting.

Architecture TC A requests that FIPA issue a Call for Information related to the creation of one or more FIPA standards for Agent Frameworks. Here a framework refers to an instantiation of the FIPA abstract architecture based upon a particular collection of technologies. Examples of such frameworks are:

• A C++/POSIX/CORBA Framework
• A Java/JavaBeans Framework
• An April Framework
• A Prolog Framework.

Management TC B approves: a roadmap with additional milestones to the completion of the specifications allocated to it above.

Agent Communication Language TC C

• updated the proposed Agent Unified Modelling Language (AUML) for specifying and representing Interaction Protocols. AUML will be presented to OMG’s Object Design and Analysis Task Force (ADTF) for consideration as a profile of UML.
• Introduced Knowledge Interchange Format (ANSI NCITS.T2/98-004) as a content language (FIPA-KIF)

Interop TC D

Interoperability trials TC D conducted the first interoperability trials and the public demonstration successfully. See “Result of first interoperability trials” (fipa9113.pdf) for details. 3. TC D approves the document “Field trials by members” (fipa9107.pdf) and the document “Software by members” (fipa9108.pdf).

TC D establishes the following policy regarding the verification and maintenance of the specifications: The role of this TC is mainly to act as a source of request for changes. During each FIPA meeting all the needed changes, and possible solutions, will be collected in one document per each TC. This document will be then discussed in the appropriate TC with a representative of TC D. Therefore, each TC continues to be the custodian of their FIPA specs and each TC will be responsible for maintaining an updated version of the specs. The process to maintain the comments will be basically the same of the last year. Each member who is aware of FIPA-related software should notify TC D by e-mail.

TC D would like to acknowledge the support of 1. the European project FACTS, ACTS AC317 within whose framework part of the implementation of JADE, the CSELT Agent Platform, and of ASL FIPA gateway, the Broadcom Agent Platform has been carried out and the Information-Promotion Agency of Japan that funded the implementation of Metamedia, the Comtec Agent Platform.

Nomadic Application Support TC E

TC E decided that it will facilitate activities of TC A, TC B, and TC C by providing Nomadic Application Support requirements and expertise on / for the specifications appropriate to each TC. 3.

TC E decides to submit Call for Proposal (FIPA's 6th) to get more input in the topics: - architecture of nomadic application support, - monitoring QoS and controlling/selecting transport mechanisms, - encoding / compression of ACL and content languages, and - Ontologies for profile management and mobile device capabilities.

13th Meeting, April 1999, Nice

FIPA approves the following version. 0.1 draft specifications FIPA Draft ID Title Doc# Publication FIPA Draft 0 - 1999 Architectural Principles fipa9410 Restricted FIPA Draft 1 - 1999 Agent Management fipa9411 Yes FIPA Draft 2 - 1999 Agent Communication Language fipa9412 Yes FIPA Draft 14 - 1999 Nomadic Application Support fipa9414 Yes FIPA Draft 16 - 1999 Agent Message Transport fipa9416 Yes FIPA Draft 17 - 1999 Agent Naming fipa9417 Yes FIPA Draft 18 - 1999 Content languages fipa9418 Yes

David Levine will co-ordinate the draft response to the RFI from OMG on Agents and the Object Management Architecture (drafting, comments etc.), and its timely arrival at OMG.

FIPA approves its Seventh Call for Proposals (fipa9419).

FIPA approves the Call for Offers 1 (CfO 1) soliciting offers to develop software implementing a meeting scheduler by the time of the October 1999 meeting (fipa9407).

TC A issued an interim draft of the document Architecture Overview,

TC B proposed  a roadmap with additional milestones to the completion of the specifications mentioned in the previous meeting and started work on it.

TC C approves:

• Version 0.1 of FIPA Spec 2 – 1999, Agent Communication Language, including the following changes to previous versions of ACL
• The concrete string-based ACL message syntax as described in Section 6.4, Message syntax of the previous specifications has been moved to the document FIPA Spec 16 – 1999, Agent Message Transport.
• FIPA Spec 2 – 1999 will provide an abstract syntax of ACL, which may be translated into a variety of concrete message syntaxes, as described in FIPA Spec 16 – 1999.
• The specification of the content languages SL, SL0, SL1 and SL2 as suggested by previous specifications has been moved to the document FIPA Spec 18 – 1999, FIPA Content Languages 3
• A proposed extension to the Unified Modelling Language (UML) for specifying and representing Interaction Protocols is specified and applied to some of the current FIPA interaction protocols
• A proposal for handling brokerage is incorporated. This involves the introduction of two new (composite) communicative acts, proxy and propagate as well as interaction protocols using these CAs.
• More attention will be devoted to the use and meaning of Interaction Protocols. In particular, the issue of adherence of the formal semantics of CAs in the context of the IPs will continue to be examined.

TC D approves:

•  the document “FIPA Field Trial Plans by Members” (fipa9405.doc). 3. TC D approves the document “FIPA-related Software Developed by Members and Non- Members” (fipa9406.doc).
•  the document “Call for Offers for the Meeting Scheduling Application” (fipa9407.doc).
• its work plan for 1999.

TC E

• TC E approves the Call for Proposal to get more information in the topic of FIPA message Transport Service over low throughput, unreliable data communications. 2.
• TC E will continue the specification work and drafting the specification of TC E . TC E will include in its specification the bit-efficient representation of ACL and SL. And TC E decided to support TC B to specify how to select the representation of ACL and content language. TC E will support TC B in the effort of specifying the selection of FIPA message Transport Service.
• TC E approves the version 0.1 of FIPA Spec 14 - Nomadic Application Support.

14th Meeting, July 1999, San Francisco

FIPA member Nortel Networks announced the availability of the first open-source FIPA-compliant Agent Platform called FIPA-OS available from Source forge (N.B. development activity seem to discontinue in the latter half of 2003).

TC A Resolutions

• TC-A will issue the current draft of the Architecture Overview on July 9th, 1999. TC-A will accept comments from FIPA members through July 22nd 1999.
• The liaison representatives of FIPA and the OMG Agents Working Group are requested to explore the possibility of future collaboration between the two organizations.
• TC-A requests that FIPA issue a Call for Information related to the creation of one or more FIPA standards for Agent Frameworks. Here a framework refers to an instantiation of the FIPA abstract architecture based upon a particular collection of technologies. Examples of such frameworks are: · A C++/POSIX/CORBA Framework · A Java/JavaBeans Framework, An April Framework, A Prolog Framework. The information requested includes, but is not limited to, the requirements on such a framework; APIs, protocols and object models; methods for the creation, deployment and management of systems based on the framework; interoperability consideration; message encodings; and examples of existing systems employing some or all of the relevant technologies.

TC B

TC B approves of the following specifications

• Agent Naming FIPA spec 17 –1999 Agent Naming Version 0.2
• Agent Message Transport FIPA spec 16 –1999 Agent Message Transport Version 0.2

TC B approves the transmission of the following specifications to OMG

• FIPA spec 17 –1999 Agent Naming Version 0.2
• FIPA spec 16 –1999 Agent Message Transport Version 0.2

TC C

TC C  approves Version 0.2 of FIPA Spec 2 – 1999, Agent Communication Language, including the following changes to Version 0.1:

• An update to the proposed Agent Unified Modelling Language (AUML) for specifying and representing Interaction Protocols.
• An update to the CAs and IPs for handling brokerage. The incorporation of the new parameter :reply-to in messages was reaffirmed as requiring no change in the formal semantics of ACL. It may however have implications on how agents follow interaction protocols.
• The action forward, which enables an agent to forward messages to another designated agent, initially specified as an action of the ACC service, is recommended for supporting brokerage and proxy services. The corresponding content languages used in brokering should support this action.
• Requirement 6 specifying the minimal expressive power of FIPA content languages has been weakened to allow FIPA compliant content languages to be applicable only to a subset of communicative acts (i.e. not necessarily express all of objects, actions and propositions).

AUML will be presented to OMG’s Object Design and Analysis Task Force (ADTF) for consideration as a profile of UML.

It was reaffirmed that message encoding is to be handled by TC B (in FIPA Spec 16) where TC C supplies the abstract message components to be encoded. The requests of TC B for removing the :envelope parameter and adding user-defined parameters to ACL messages will be considered in detail at the next meeting.

The TC approves Version 0.2 of FIPA Spec 18 – 1999, FIPA Content Languages, including the following changes to Version 0.1:

• Update to the SL grammar (and its profiles SL0, SL1 and SL 2) to allow for the tuples required by the communicative acts. The users of SL2 (e.g. Luciano Serafini) should re-examine the issue of SL2 decidability.
• Update to, including semantics of, the constraint-based content language (FIPA-CSP) · Introduction of Knowledge Interchange Format (ANSI NCITS.T2/98-004) as a content language (FIPA-KIF) making use of the KIF prefix notation and full KIF system. Mechanisms for dealing with other KIF encoding schemes and profiles to be discussed.·

TC D

TC D thanks the Intelligent Agent Society of Japan for translating the FIPA specifications into Japanese.

TC D approves the documents

•  “FIPA Field Trial Plans and Results” (fipa9705.doc).
• “FIPA-related Software Developed by Members and Non- Members” (fipa9706.doc).
•  “FIPA 99 Spec 13 Version 0.2: Developer’s Guide” (fipa9713.doc).

TC E

TC E adopt the following resolutions:

• To select Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) developed by WAP Forum to be the wireless Message Transport Protocol.
• To establish a workgroup (WAP WG) to explore all the technical issues related to the usage of WAP as FIPA wireless Message Transport Protocol.
•  To accept the version 0.2 of FIPA Spec 1999 14 - Nomadic Application Support.

FIPA should respond in a timely fashion to the OMG RFI # cc/99-02-03 This response will be based on the following current drafts of: Architecture overview (draft) FIPA'97 parts 2, 3 FIPA'98 parts 1, 8, 11, 12 FIPA'99 Naming, Message transport A covering letter will accompany this submission highlighting the relationships and current status of above specifications. Frank McCabe will assemble an executive summary taken from the introduction of the FIPA specification being transmitted. 4. Approval of FIPA 1999 version. 0.2 specifications

FIPA approves the following version. 0.2 draft specifications (FIPA Draft ID, Title Doc, Publication)

• FIPA Draft 0 - 1999 Architectural Overview fipa9710 Yes 7
• FIPA Draft 1 - 1999 Agent Management fipa9711 Yes
• FIPA Draft 2 - 1999 Agent Communication Language fipa9712 Yes
• FIPA Draft 13 - 1999 "FIPA Developers' Guide" fipa9713 Yes
• FIPA Draft 14 - 1999 Nomadic Application Support fipa9714 Yes
• FIPA Draft 16 - 1999 Agent Message Transport fipa9716 Yes
• FIPA Draft 17 - 1999 Agent Naming fipa9717 Yes
• FIPA Draft 18 - 1999 Content languages fipa9718 Yes 5.

SIG on Product Design and Manufacturing proposes to

• Change in Product Design and Mfg. chair to Nina Berry, since Sandia National Labs.
• Pursue liaison activities with other manufacturing related organizations: OMG mfg. group,  NIST mfg. task bed, CIRP 
• Promote Product Design and Mfg. SIG outside of FIPA at related workshops for manufacturing, E-commerce, etc.

15th Meeting, October 1999, Kawasaki

FIPA adopts a three phase approach to releasing specifications to ensure their long-term stability:

• Consistent within and approved by TC (‘preliminary’)
• Consistent among TCs and approved by FIPA (‘experimental’)
• Consistent with real world implementations, providing demonstrated interoperability and approved 2 by FIPA (‘released’)

FIPA thanks the following individuals for providing demonstrations of FIPA implementations (Title Name Affiliation)

•  Meeting Scheduling Application Denis Pierre ÆGIS
• Implementation of FIPA Spec 12: Ontology Service Hiroki Suguri Comtec
• Constraint Choice Language Monique Calisti EPFL
• The AMASE project and its applications Hong-Yon Lach Motorola
• Interoperable project scheduling application based on FIPA 99

TC A Releases a further draft of Abstract Architecture Specification.

TC B proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions · Current Status Approval of the following specifications for diffusion with ‘preliminary’: ·

• FIPA spec 16 –1999 Agent Message Transport Version 1.0
•  FIPA spec 1 – 1999 Agent Management Version 1.0. Note: the Agent Naming specification (FIPA spec 17 –1999 ..) is incorporated into the Agent Management Specification as the first chapter.

TC B expects to upgrade the following specifications to experimental status in January 2000:

• Agent Message Transport Agent Management

The work on Agent Configuration Management (Editor J. Dale, FIPA spec 15 - 1999) continues.

TC C accepts the following proposed changes to the Agent Communication Language for FIPA 99:

• An update to the language mechanisms for handling brokerage and recruiting. We have approved updates to the propagate and proxy CAs, and to the FIPA-Brokering and FIPA-Recruiting IPs. We note that these mechanisms are designed to conform to the strong brokering semantics described in San Francisco. We anticipate further work on CAs and IPs for weak brokering. ·
• Increasing the number of required components of an ACL message, to include the sender, receiver, performative name, and content expression. This strengthening will apply only to the outermost ACL message in cases where ACL messages are embedded. Embedded ACL messages have all components optional.
• Deletion of the request-whomever CA as obsolete (and erroneously specified anyway). In addition, various members of TC C have reviewed proposed changes to the following elements of the Agent Communication Language:
• An improvement to the existing scheme for describing the abstract components, syntax and ontology of an ACL message. We have patterned our approach after that of TC B, as well as employed ASN.1 notation. We look forward to continued interaction with TC A and TC B and other interested parties on this important issue.
• An update to the proposed Agent Unified Modelling Language (AUML) for specifying and representing Interaction Protocols.

The TC approves Version 1 of FIPA Spec 18 – 1999, FIPA Content Languages, including the following changes to Version 0.2:

• At the request of TC B, update to the SL grammar (and its profiles SL0, SL1 and SL 2) to:
• Add special syntax to refer to sets, sequences, and agent descriptors. This involves no change to the semantics of SL.
•  Change the STRING terminal to include quoted space-containing strings.
• Fix a bug in the floating point representation.
• Update to the constraint-based content language and change its name from FIPA-CSP to FIPA-CCL.
• Update to the Knowledge Interchange Format specification (FIPA-KIF), including examples of the use of FIPA-KIF with ACL.
• Update to the FIPA-RDF content language specification.
• Change of the name of the SL to FIPA-SL, for consistency with other names in the FIPA Content Language Library.

TC C’s anticipated FIPA 2000 workplan includes further work on brokerage, Ontologies, AUML, Content Language, document structure, ACL semantics, interaction protocols, and abstract ACL syntax. ·

TC D approves the ‘preliminary’ status of the specification FIPA Developer’s Guide. It is expected to evolve towards ‘experimental’ status as soon as the standard FIPA foreword, preface and introduction is available. ·

 TC E proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions: · TC E accepts the document FIPA Spec 14 – 1999 - 1.0 – Nomadic Application Support with ‘preliminary’ status. Future work TC E endeavours to work on the following topics: Use of gateways in the environment of Nomadic Application Support; Mobile device ontology  and Support for application agents in the nomadic application environment.

New specification development process was adopted for the new FIPA process, the three major phases of specifications: PRELIMINARY, EXPERIMENTAL, STANDARD, as well as OBSOLETE, DEPRECATED.

FIPA creates the Architecture Board  to

• To ensure that FIPA specifications exhibit: consistency, coherence, integrity and merit.

• To approve the advancement of FIPA specifications through the standard's life cycle.

• To oversee the technical direction of FIPA and influence it where necessary.

• To maintain a registry of FIPA specifications and work plans.

FIPA creates the Interop SIG, to be chaired by Hiroki Suguri (Comtec), with the following scope: The purpose of the Interop SIG is to promote the interoperability trials, open source movement and application development and deployment.

FIPA issues a new mission statement "To promote technologies and interoperability specifications that facilitate the end-to-end inter networking of intelligent agent systems in modern commercial and industrial settings".

FIPA's focus is on:

Two new specifications proposed:

• No. 84 "FIPA Agent Message Transport Protocol for HTTP"

• No. 85 "FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in XML Specification"

New scenarios have arisen:

• Electronic commerce
• Business-to-business
• Market making
• Data mining/knowledge management
• Inter-organizational integration
• Service provision
• Smart business processes

The way forward

• Develop higher-level constructs for agreements, policies, interactions
• Adopt or develop a strong content language
• Develop one or two application scenarios
• Abstract away `plumbing'
• Develop a strong marketing position
• Is industry ready- Informally yes, for intelligence no but appreciation of logic increasing
• Is FIPA ready?
• Too much focus on plumbing
• Long-term use of ACL – 50 year agent
• Focus on potential applications: e-commerce, b-to-b (4X size of b-to-customer market), market making, data mining / knowledge management, virtual heterogeneous organisations and collaborations (drivers include company acquisition), service provision, smart business processes.

2000 Technical committees and Work-groups

• TC Architecture,
• TC Agreement Mgt
• TC Gateways
• TC C
• Transport WG
• AgentCities WG
• DPMG WG
• JCP WG
• Security WG

FIPA competition Launched: FIPA has launched a competition of applications utilizing FIPA agents. The competition is open to FIPA members as well as non-members. FIPA will award a prize of up to $10,000 (US) to the developer of the most interesting and complete demonstration as judged by the FIPA members.

17th Meeting, April 2000, Lisbon

The FIPA competition of applications utilizing FIPA agents was judged by FIPA members and placed the top free entrants as follows (Title Name, Organisation, related Project):

1. New-generation TV entertainment system Fabio Bellifemine, CSELT (FACTS-A1)
2. Dynamic and Competitive Service provisioning, Phil Buckle Nortel Networks & Alcatel (FACTS project )
3. Cybs: The Intelligent Agents Community Platform based on FIPA Communication Technology, Tianning Zhang, Stefan Covaci, PopNet AgentScape AG

Other unplaced competitors include:

• Personalised eCommerce Service Jeremy Pitt, Phil Buckle, Imperial College & Nortel Networks (MAPPA Project)
• FATe – FIPA AgentTemplates Frank Noe, Institut fuer neue Medien
• Agent Mobility in FIPA-OS Milla Makelainen Nottingham Trent University
• MONITORix, a video based traffic surveillance multi-agent system, Maria Jose, Trigueiros, Luis Botelho, ADETTI (MODEST project)

The FIPA Architecture Board (FAB) proposes that FIPA

• Approve workplan template and request that the membership use it.
• Reject the initially submitted work plans because of lack of content and lack of direction from the FAB.
• Recognise the receipt of two new work plans on Gateways and ACL Specification Maintenance.
• Recommend that TC C recomposes the Communicative Act Libraries into one document. ·

TC A proposes:

• that FIPA specification PC00001 be submitted to the Architecture Board for approval as an experimental specification by 2000/05/01. ·
• To submit to the AB a workplan entitled ‘Policies and Domains Workplan’ for consideration for future FIPA activities by 2000/04/30.

TC B proposed:

• Specifications of Agent Management and Message Transport are ready to be proposed for experimental stage after an editorial delay.
• TC B fulfilled its mission, and TCB proposes to be dissolved. TC B thanks FAB and other TCs for fruitful exchanges and co-operation as well as to all contributors on TC B reflector, and past TC B members:

 TC C  has formulated a revised workplan, addressing the maintenance of the ACL specification documents, and submitted it to the FAB. Highlights of this workplan include: Recasting the FIPA 99 ACL specification into a set of independently managed libraries for communicative acts, ACL message parameters, content languages, and interaction protocols. ·

TC C has reviewed the FIPA ACL Interaction Protocol documents, and has agreed on the following changes:

•  Modifying AUML to delete bidirectional decision elements, and only supporting unidirectional decision elements
•  Limitations to the power of the algorithms underlying the AUML control constructs to those that depend only on externally-observable events or conditions
• Linkages to other UML elements, such as collaboration diagrams and agent class diagrams ·

Some miscellaneous revisions: Submitted protocols must include examples of the protocol in action. Submitted protocols must include evidence that the protocol has been successfully implemented (for the protocol to have Standard status).

Specific protocols: TC C discussed the Request-Cancellable interaction protocol (submitted by BT), and will prepare a response outlining some issues. · Cancellable versions of the existing protocols will be defined by Bernhard and submitted as Preliminary for the July meeting. TC C will take action on FIPA-Propose and FIPA-Subscribe before the next meeting and expects certain existing IPs will be promoted from Preliminary status to Experimental status by the July FIPA meeting.

TC C continues to acknowledge the need for a document to introduce the FIPA ACL and the associated semantic framework. TC C currently prioritizes the writing of this document below the production of the communicative act, interaction protocols, content language, and FIPA ACL message parameter libraries.

TC C has reviewed the FIPA ACL Communicative Act Library, with the following results: ·

• TC C discussed several changes to the definition of the not-understood communicative act, including clarifying that the semantics of not-understood and related CAs do not include a reference to the triggering message or event. ·
• TC C noted the need for clarification to the piece of the document that describes what it means for an agent to implement a communicative act.

TC C has reviewed the FIPA ACL Message Element Library, with the following results:

• TC C approves the incorporation of the communicative act or performative as a required element, and approves the deletion of required status from receiver, sender, and content. ·
• TC C took no action at this meeting on the proposal of Luis Botelho concerning the addition of new standard message elements, and notes that the continued use of these parameters within a FIPA ACL message is legal.

 TC C has reviewed the submissions of Fabio Bellifemine and Luis Botelho concerning the FIPA-SL content language (and its derivative dialects), with the following results:

• TC C approves the addition of the requirement that named parameters start with a colon (“:”) in the FIPA-SL encoding, and the corresponding changes to the FIPA-SL grammar.
• TC C approves the addition to SL of two new object reference operators: any and all. The TC also approves a change to the semantics of iota to make clear that iota returns the unique object satisfying the associated expression. The TC also notes that this change will require changes in the semantic models of several communicative acts.
• TC C approves the addition of a standard set of operators for common functions, such as greater than, less-than, union, and so forth. · TC C approves a set of miscellaneous fixes to various parts of the SL specification, including the use of ACLCommunicativeAct as a terminal in the FIPA-SL grammar, and the modification of the first argument for iota, any, and all to be an SLTerm.
• TC C disapproves the specific proposal for representing uncertainty in FIPA-SL. However, the TC recognizes that language support for uncertainty is important to many applications of FIPA-SL, and encourages further submissions in this area. 4
• TC C has coordinated with TC B on the treatment of slots, and on this basis agrees that the proposed slot keyword is not necessary.
• TC C took no action at this meeting on the proposal for the addition of pattern-matching variables to FIPA-SL. Details of these descriptions can be found in the appropriate content language definition documents. Because these changes entail modifications to previously compliant FIPA-SL parsers.

TC C encourages the FIPA membership to formulate a workplan addressing issues in ontology specification frameworks and ontology management, including: Maintenance of the FIPA 98 Part 12 Ontology Service; Creation of a library of ontology frameworks, including OKBC; Possibly also including a library of specific application Ontologies.

TC C encourages the FIPA membership to formulate work plans (including calls for proposals) addressing new directions for FIPA’s agent communication framework, including

• Non-BDI semantics for agent communication
• Frameworks for verifiable interaction protocol specification
• A definition framework for supporting policy-based interaction, including specification communication-relevant policies, such as security policies, conversation management policies, termination policies, and so forth
• Language support for representing and reasoning about uncertainty

TC C thanks Bernhard Bauer and Jim Odell for their work in submitting the AUML specification to the OMG Analysis and Design Task Force. ·

 TC E accepts the following work plans: · TC E’s workplan and · the ‘Gateway’ workplan (issued by BT, EPFL, Nokia, Siemens, Sonera, and UH). TC E will carry out the work related to the ‘gateway’ workplan, e.g., administer the Call For Technology  until FIPA Board nominates a TC to carry on the work, then TC E will discontinue.

Liaison SIG

• produced a first edition of the FIPA inform! newsletter and encourages wide distribution of the newsletter. Further editions are planned.
• FIPA notes that a Java Community Process (JCP) on a Java reification of the FIPA abstract architecture will be proposed under the leadership of Fujitsu. All FIPA members are invited to join.
• OMG, The Agent Group focuses its efforts on education and information on Agent Technology.
• Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) is a worldwide consortium, with about 50 member organisations. Fabio Bellifemine gave a presentation of FIPA. HMS are interested in liaison with the FIPA product design & manufacturing SIG and in particular the use of FIPA interaction protocols. FIPA will contact them and follow-up.
• MPEG21 is a follow-up to MPEG7. Objective: put together a chain from content creator to consumer, including agents. Ballots will be submitted at the end of this month. If approved, MPEG will produce a tech report end 2000, and international

18th Meeting July 2000, Baltimore

FAB promotes to Experimental status the following specifications:

• FIPA00008 FIPA SL Content Language Specification
• FIPA00014 Nomadic Application Support Specification (FIPA00062 Monitor Agent, FIPA00063 Control Agent, FIPA00065 Nomadic Application Support Ontology, FIPA00066 Nomadic Application Support Overview: recombine into one document with structure and form similar to the Agent Management Specifications) ·
• FIPA00023 Agent Management Specification
• FIPA00061 ACL Parameters Specification
• FIPA00069 ACL Representation in Bit-Efficient Encoding Specification (with minor comments to incorporate, but no further review is necessary).
• FIPA00070 ACL Message Representation in String Specification (with minor comments to incorporate, but no further review is necessary).
• FIPA00075 Agent Message Transport Protocol for IIOP Specification

TC Architecture resolves to update the abstract architecture specification to:

• Remove the FIPA-entity as a mandatory element of the Abstract Architecture ·
• Add operational semantics to service ·

This TC  will issue a revised specification (PC00001B) in the near future and Intends to hold on issuing an experimental specification until at least one concrete architecture has been derived from the Abstract Architecture. ·

TC ACL / TC C has reviewed the preliminary Message Elements specification, and recommends it be promoted to Experimental status. The following changes have been made: ·

• The name of the language-encoding element was changed to encoding, for consistency with the other element names. ·
• The name of the document was changed to Message Structure.
• The Frame/Ontology table structure was clarified. · Minor editorial changes were made surrounding the control of conversation elements. ·

TC ACL has reviewed the Content Language Library, and recommends that all component documents of the library be promoted to Experimental status.

The following changes have been made to the FIPA-SL specification:

•  The ACL Communicative Act non-terminal was removed from the concrete encoding of SL, and
• communicative acts will be treated as generic actions.

TC C has reformulated and reviewed the Communicative Act Library, and recommends that it be promoted to Experimental status. The following changes were made: ·

• The individual communicative act definition documents were recombined into a single document, at the request of the FAB.
• A annex addressing the formal basis of SL (based on the FIPA 97 documents) was added to the library administration document.

TC C has reviewed the Interaction Protocol Library. TC C recommends that the individual elements of this library (the protocols) remain at Preliminary status, but be made public. TC C also recommends that the Interaction Protocol Library Administration document, containing the AUML definition, be promoted to Experimental status.

TC Agreement Management will produce three closely related specifications: Agent Configuration Management, Specification Agreements Specification,  Service Description Ontology Specification 

TC Gateway: will  combine preliminary versions of the component and profile documents produced by TC E (PC00062, PC00063, PC00065, PC00066) by 1 August 2000. 

The Transport WG, TWG,  approves the new version of the specifications FIPA00075 "Agent Message Transport Protocol for IIOP Specification " where the IDL interface has been fixed and submits this specification to FAB for promotion to experimental. · TWG approves the deprecation of the specifications FIPA00073 "Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in String Specification". They are made deprecated by the new specifications FIPA00075 "Agent Message Transport Protocol for IIOP Specification ".

TWG  proposes following new specifications:

• FIPA00084 "FIPA Agent Message Transport Protocol for HTTP Specification"
• FIPA00085 "FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in XML Specification" 

In the following specifications with the following changes were made:

• FIPA00067 "FIPA Agent Message Transport Service Specification ": replace 'contentLength and contentEncoding' with 'payloadLength and payloadEncoding'.
• FIPA00069 "FIPA ACL Message Representation in Bit Efficient Encoding Specification ": remove relative time and keep only absolute time.
• FIPA00070 "FIPA ACL Message Representation in String Specification ": remove relative time and keep only absolute time.
• FIPA00071 "FIPA ACL Message Representation in XML Specification": a) remove the user-defined parameters from the AID structure; b) split the DTD by creating two new DTD for representing AID and Date.
• FIPA00076 "FIPA Agent Message Transport Protocol for WAP Specification": a) replace the usage of the String envelope specifications with the XML one; b) remove the footnote about the inconsistency between IIOP transport and bit-efficient encoding.·

 TWG requests TC C to remove the notion of relative time from the ACL specs, in particular for the value of the :reply-by parameter, in order to have a uniform notion of time in SL, ACL and envelope.

TWG approves the obsolescence of the following preliminary specifications:FIPA00077 Agent Message Transport Profile Alpha Specification · FIPA00078 Agent Message Transport Profile Beta Specification.

19th Meeting, October 2000, Sydney

TC Architecture proposes to submit PC00001x to the FAB as an eXperimental specification; To encourage the development of a workplan to develop a service model architecture.

TC Agreements Management continued work on the Agent Configuration Management Specification,  the Service Level Agreements Specification  and the Service Description Ontology Specification.

TC Gateways proposes that: FIPA Accept the bit efficient concrete envelope syntax submission, jointly produced by Sonera and University of Helsinki, as the basis of the preliminary version of 'FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in Bit-Efficient Encoding Specification'; Issue a revised Call For Technology.

TC C has reviewed the FIPA Communicative Act Library (PC00037), and recommends that it be promoted to Experimental status. The following changes were made:

• Many of the examples were updated to reflect the current syntax of FIPA-SL.
• The description of the CfP CA was clarified to make clear that this version of CfP is applicable only to single-parameter proposals.
• The description of the not-understood CA was clarified to include the use of the error message as a SL term.

A significant error in the description of the cancel CA was corrected. The interpretation given in the existing formal model was judged by TC C to be the correct one. This error made several of the cancellable IPs problematic (see below).
Numerous editorial changes were made.

TC C has reviewed the Interaction Protocol Library. TC C recommends that the individual elements of this library (the interaction protocols) be promoted to Experimental Status, with the exception of FIPA-Subscribe.
TC C has reviewed the AUML specification. TC C believes that this specification will still require substantial work before being promoted to Standard; nevertheless, we believe that it is appropriate for Experimental Status.

TC C has removed the cancellable versions of the various protocols. TC C believes that substantial elaboration on each IP will be necessary in order to specify all cases that might occur in an actual agent interaction. Real world issues of cancelling actions, asynchrony, abnormal or unexpected protocol termination, nested protocols, and the like, are explicitly not addressed in the current IP specifications. Implementers are invited to specify more complete and robust interaction patterns, and submit them to FIPA for inclusion in the interaction protocol library. TC C requests that TC Gateways consider the impact of the (newly-revised) definition of the cancel CA on the information flow in FIPA-Subscribe.

Upon acceptance of the specifications as Experimental, TC C would like to transfer responsibility for the FIPA Message Structure Specification, the FIPA Communicative Acts Specification, the FIPA Content Language Library, and the FIPA Interaction Protocol Library to the FAB. TC recommends that TC C be dissolved. TC C also anticipates the formation of a new working group to explore advanced issues in FIPA ACL semantics and protocols.

TC C gratefully acknowledges the work of Thierry Bouron, Monique Calisti, Stephen Cranefield, Mark Greaves, Marcus Huber, Hiroki Iciki, Frank McCabe, Makoto Okada, Jeremy Pitt, Martin Purvis, and Donald Steiner.
AgentCities WG resolutions

The AgentCities WG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

• To complete the point-to-point connections between existing Agentcities platforms (by meeting 20).
• To complete federation of DFs between platforms (by meeting 20).
• To develop an AgentCities Agent weather service as a test-case Agentcities service
• To move to XML/RDF end to end (ACL, Content) as primary encoding (6 month timeframe for evaluation / transition).
• To investigate on-line ontology/content for domains being addressed by Agentcities (6 month timeframe for evaluation)

FIPA Architecture Board Resolutions

• Approve the TC-Gateway Call for Technology on mobile gateways (f-out-000063)
• Assign TC-Gateway's Bit Efficient Envelope specification the number PC00088 for preliminary status.
• Accept the TC-Communications Interaction Protocol (PC0000???) and Communicative Acts (PC00037E) libraries for review for experimental status
• Accept the TC-Architecture Abstract Architecture PC00001G for review for experimental status.
• Accept the Security SIG's Call For Information, f-out-000065 for review, preliminary to issuance.

Rejects the work plans (due to lack of support by the active membership):

• f-in-00011 Query And Inform DF/AMs
• f-in-00012 Information Agent Workplan

Ontology SIG proposes that FIPA establish a new email reflector  for the purposes of discussing a workplan and subsequent work

Security SIG: During this FIPA meeting, the Security SIG has reviewed a range of security-related issues that are related to the work of FIPA. It has identified the scope of work for a future security work-plan, and is drafting a Request For Information (f-out-00065). It intends to use the results of this call to develop a security work plan.
Liaison SIG

• The status of the following external activities were discussed: OMG, FIPA-OS, HMS, PtP, JCP, GRID Forum, DAML, OIL, UDDI, IEEE Upper Ontology.
• The OMG Agent Working Group has dissolved, and a more formal group started: the OMG Agent SIG.
  FIPA-OS has had in excess of 5000 downloads in the last 5 months.
• Intel’s Peer-to-Peer Working Group (PtP) initiative has issued a CFP for Peer-to-Peer Architectures.
• The Java Agent Services (JAS) process has formally been approved by the JAVA Community Process (JCP) committee, and will use an open source license.
• DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) uses XML/RDF/OIL.
• The IEEE Upper Ontology Initiative is a candidate for a FIPA ontology framework.

Peer to Peer (PtP) SIG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions: To submit a proposal to the Peer-to-Peer Working Group’s Request for Proposals for a Peer-to-Peer Architecture. The proposal will consist of at least a detailed cover letter with our positioning and contributions as well as the Abstract Architecture, PC00001x.

20th Meeting Phoenix-01-2001

TC Architecture proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

• Resolve to adopt PC00089 (Policies and Domains) as a preliminary specification
• Resolve to request the FAB to issue a call for information about policy use, policy languages and policy mechanisms
• Resolve to examine the extension of the Abstract Architecture to include the notion of resources, their descriptions and discovery

TC Agreement expects to submit a Workplan concerning ACL extensions and/or an alternate semantic framework to FAB soon.

TC Gateways Submitted the preliminary version of 'FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in Bit-Efficient Encoding Specification', jointly produced by Sonera and University of Helsinki, to the FAB for transition to Experimental status. It will· provide feedback to the authors of the following submissions:

• device ontology (Sonera);
• message buffering (Sonera, University of Helsinki & KDD);
• message transport behaviour (Sonera & University of Helsinki);
• transport interoperability (Sonera & University of Helsinki);
• disconnected mode support (KDD R&D Labs);

Begin discussions with the FAB re the wider issues arising from the above submissions, namely:

• Ownership of the message transport behaviour proposals;
• Our requirement for a multi-valued Transport-behaviour envelope parameter (see FIPA 00067);
• Perceived inconsistency between MTS reference model and Abstract Architecture re insertion of a FIPA-addressable entity between two ACLs;

Seek guidance from appropriate FIPA members re the following:

• Potential impact of selective message delivery on inter-platform communication;
• Utility of ACL semantics with respect to disconnected mode support;
• The fipa-subscribe protocol

The AgentCities WG proposes to produce a draft XML-based Content Language syntax which may be used within the Agentcities network; to continue discussions on:

• XML-based Content Language syntax
• Weather services
• Service Ontologies and an ontology of services
• Security threats to Agentcities platforms

Product Design & Manufacturing WG encourages FIPA to continue to pursue potential liaison relationship with the holonic-manufacturing consortium HMC. The PD&M WG will investigate how we can support the testing of AUML as a modelling technique for designing agent-based manufacturing applications. The PD&M WG will release an informative document of manufacturing scenarios on the usage of FIPA technology for these applications. We would like to thank the holonic-manufacturing consortium for permitting us to utilize some of their real scenarios for this document.

The FAB proposes Promotion of Experimental specifications:

• XC00001 FIPA Abstract Architecture Specification
• XC00025 FIPA Interaction Protocol Library Specification
• XC00026 FIPA Request Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00027 FIPA Query Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00028 FIPA Request When Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00029 FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00030 FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00031 FIPA English Auction Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00032 FIPA Dutch Auction Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00033 FIPA Brokering Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00034 FIPA Recruiting Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00036 FIPA Propose Interaction Protocol Specification
• XC00037 FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification

The Ontology SIG proposes to develop a workplan to:

• Examine FIPA00086 (Ontology Services)
• Incorporate Agent Description Ontology

21st Meeting  April 2001, London

TC Architecture proposes to continue progress on architectural elements to support policies; To incorporate a service model into the Abstract Architecture To encourage the development of an abstract content representation language T

TC Agreement Management proposes to

• submit Service Level Agreement Workplan
• Re-express the FIPA ACL and the interaction protocols in terms of an explicit model of joint commitments
• Within the context of a particular interaction protocol and society (with its conventions), define what types of agreements are being formed, either implicitly or explicitly.
• Create specifications for agent agreements that are sufficiently flexible to capture the various forms of agreements and obligations that may be established among agents
• To publish draft specifications PC00090A on the website.

TC Gateways proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

• To submit the preliminary version of 'FIPA Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in Bit-Efficient Encoding Specification', to the FAB for transition to Experimental status
• Update the MTS specification to provide buffering, transformation and transport-behaviour capabilities (by FIPA 22).
•  Move the Device Ontology submission to Preliminary status (with immediate effect)
•  Capture the requirements addressed by the Disconnected Mode Support proposal, and seek ways of satisfying them via existing specifications (by start of FIPA 22).

AgentCities WG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:

• Support the proposal for a workplan on compliance testing currently being drafted ·
• Submit the draft Agentcities test suite document as an input document to FIPA representing a first contribution to the compliance testing work.
• Put discussion of an XML based content language on hold until various content language solutions (DAML, RDF, XML etc) have been further investigated / tested.

The Product Design and Manufacturing WG proposes to continue the new task of defining a FIPA abstract architecture for collaborative holonic enterprise as per the ideas and plan developed at the next meeting; to investigate how we can support the testing of AUML as a modelling technique for designing agent-based manufacturing applications. ·

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

• To approve the Security Workplan and to promote the Security SIG to a Working Group
• To issue a request for proposals and feedback for a process of managing future FIPA bake-offs; To issue a request for proposals and feedback for developing conformance test suites · To alter the FAB working principles document to state that advancement to Standard status requires an approved conformance test for that specification

 Ontology SIG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions: · to encourage the formation of a workplan on handling ontology Security SIG resolutions

Security SIG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions: · That the Call For Information be refocused and re-issued. · That an interim meeting and, or workshop be considered as a vehicle to engage further active participation from interested parties in the area of Multi-Agent Security. · That a FIPA white-paper on agent security (informational output document) be completed and submitted for discussion at the 22nd meeting.

The Liaison SIG  reported (proposes (f-out-00085.doc) on the status of external activities of interest to FIPA. The following implementations were reported: APRIL, Comtec, FIPA-OS, JADE, JAS, LEAP, TIIERA, Tryllian, Zeus. The following activities were also discussed: Holonic Enterprise, P2P, GRID, DAML, AgentCities (Europe), and ‘UDDI, OASIS, BMPI and other related Standards supporting Web Services and Collaborative Commerce’.

Interoperability trials (called a bake-off) were conducted between 4 main agent platforms:

• JADE agent toolkit (TILab)
• FIPA-OS agent toolkit (Emorphia)
• ZEUS agent toolkit (BT)
• HTTP-MTP agent transport system (EPFL)

The specifications tests used the Agent Management specification,  Message Transport Service (for IIOP  and HTTP),  Agent Communication Language ACL Encodings  (String and Bit-efficient ACL), content language (FIPA-SLO)  and Interactions protocols (FIPA-Request Interaction Protocol, FIPA-Query Interaction Protocol).

General conclusions from the bake-off:

• The FIPA specs that have been tested in these 5 days are mature and allow commercial exploitation of multi-agent systems
• the Agent Platforms that have participated are also mature
• Bugs have been found, and in most cases, fixed on the agent platforms
• Bugs have been found, and solutions have been proposed, on the FIPA specs  - they are minor bugs, easy to fix both from the FIPA specs point of view and from the implementation point of view
• These tests have proved that FIPA specs enables interoperability between agent platforms but, in no way, they have proved compliance of the platforms to FIPA specs!

22nd Meeting, July 2001, Sendai

TC Architecture proposes:

•  To suspend work on Policies and Domains ·
•  To wait for and incorporate feedback from the Semantics & Ontologies work, when it becomes available. ·
• Service Directory Service · To submit a revised workplan to the FAB.
• To submit revisions to the Abstract Architecture Spec. to the FAB.
• Abstract Content Representation. · Work-plan awaiting approval by FAB.

 TC Agreement Management: The goal of this TC was to define dependencies between agents to allow automatic configuration and deployment of agents (typically thousands). The work focused initially on expanding the management capabilities of the AMS, but: It is not capturing the essential nature of industrial-strength management There is no agreement on dependencies specifications. The TC goals cannot be successfully achieved without first specifying the policies and domains. Therefore, TC Agreement Management proposes to dissolve the TC Agreement Management. The need for standardisation in the area of management across platforms remains valid, but it does not need to be agent-specific. When the Domains and Policies work is completed, the Agent Configuration Management activity can continue in this new framework and a new workplan will be generated.

TC Gateways proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions.

• To advance the Message Buffering Service proposal (PC00092) to Preliminary status (with immediate effect).
• To advance the Messaging Interoperability Service proposal (PC00093) to Preliminary status (with immediate effect).
• To propose changes to the MTS specification to provide buffering, transformation and transport-behaviour and submit to FAB for approval.
• To propose changes to the NAS removing references to the FIPA-Subscribe Interaction Protocol and submit to FAB for approval.
• To capture the requirements addressed by the Disconnected Mode Support proposal, and seek ways of satisfying them via existing specifications.

The AgentCities WG proposes: To submit the Agentcities test suite document to FIPA as an input document; To request the creation of an Agentcities SIG to replace the Agentcities WG and act as a liaison between Agentcities activities and FIPA; To contribute to the Bake-off/Compliance testing workplan currently being prepared for FIPA.

The Product Design and Manufacturing WG (PD&M WG) proposes focus on 3 internal areas: Holonic Enterprise,  Planning & Scheduling,  Shop floor/ Machine control.

The Security WG proposes a first draft of the Security WG white-paper be circulated to the FIPA membership; That feedback on the RFI responses be given to respondents; That a final draft of the white paper be completed and circulated at least one week before the 23rd FIPA meeting

The FAB proposes

• Ask the FIPA Board to create a TC for Ontologies to deal with f-wp-00012. Ask the submitters of f-in-00028 and f-in-00031 to combine their work plans into one work plan dealing with compliance.
•  Reject the promotion of the specifications suggested by the Bake-off Group at this time since there are comments still outstanding.
• Promotion of FIPA00088 Agent Message Transport Envelope Representation in Bit-Efficient Encoding Specification to Experimental status.
• To note that the FIPA-subscribe Interaction Protocol specification (PC00035) has expired as of (2000/11/21) and is hereby given Deprecated Status.

The Ontology SIG proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions: ·

• To look at the generated use cases on their ·
• Impact on other FIPA specifications · Provision of the ·
• To build a relationship with the Semantic Web activity of the W3C · To request ontology presentations at the 24th meeting

The Liaison SIG discussed PD&M Group (Nina Berry), Digital Cities (Kiyoshi Kogure), OMG (Frank McCabe), JAS (Frank McCabe), ISO for Learning Technologies (Yasuhisa Tamura), P2P activities (Donald Steiner), Agentcities (Jonathan Dale)

The Semantics SIG proposed: To set the scope of the Semantics SIG to provide a semantic framework required to account for CA, IP and agreements, contracts, policies, service models, Ontologies etc.

The semantic framework should take into account

• the externally visible signals
• the intentional exploitation of the conventions governing those signals
• the relationship between external signals and internal states

23rd Meeting Pleasanton 10-2001

The FAB proposes:

• To create an Interoperability Working Group; with a chair to be named. The remit of the Interoperability WG is to set up and run interoperability trials at future meetings, to provide feedback on specifications and to develop and extend interoperability scenarios.
• To create a new Compliance TC to support FIPA’s work in compliance, chaired by Michael Berger and co-chaired by David Levine. The remit of TC compliance is to generate Conformance Profiles for FIPA specifications, a conformance methodology for use by the FIPA community. TC Compliance is expected to work closely with the Interoperability WG.

TC Architecture proposed to:

• Start work on incorporating proposals for service models into PC00094
• Generate a separate specification document describing the Abstract Content Representation or ACR  (PC00095) To accept input from various parties about the structure of the ACR.

TC Semantics proposed  to follow the workplan f-wp-00016 to establish a semantic framework that can account for contracts, conversations, social and other relationships between agents. TC Semantics requests that FIPA issues the call for information contained in FIPA TC Semantics Call for Information, (f-out-00099). ·

The Ontology TC proposed: Comprehensive set of requirements through the use cases; Agreement on the initial white paper and first draft Publish documents FIPA-in-00043 Ontology slides, FIPA-in-00044 Negotiation, FIPA-in-00045 Draft white paper Agreement and completion of a second RFI call which is more precise about the FIPA ontological needs:

• 1. Fundamental requirements for agents and their use of Ontologies. This includes representation languages for Ontologies and the requirements of these languages by agents
• 2. Upper Ontologies which may specifically cover Policies, Conventions, Social and cultural contracts that address accountability between agents, Generic translation between concepts and Matchmaking
• 3. Service ontological modelling requirements and agent use.
• 4. Types of ontological translation services that are needed by agent systems
• 5. What domains specific use of Ontologies impose upon ontology representation language.
• 6. Ontology requirements on agent conversations and communication languages.

The TC Compliance proposed to draft a brainstorming document outlining the dimensions of the following:

• 1. Definition of terms (conformance points, profiles, levels, minimum set, ...)
• 2. Define a strategy (bottom up, top down)
• 3. How to manage the specifications generated by TC Compliance (e.g. concerning the life cycle)?
• 4. Define a framework to influence the specification writing.

TC Gateways proposed:  2nd FIPA TC Gateways CFT (for Ad-hoc FIPA), f-out-00089, to be approved by FAB;· Change proposals to Nomadic Application Support Specification and send to FAB. Work was delayed to FIPA24: · Message Transport Specification change proposals, Message Buffering Service to Experimental status · Messaging Interoperability Service to Experimental status (MIS spec relies on updated MTS).

The FIPA Security WG proposed t hat the current work-plan be modified to extend its final milestone, the delivery of a completed work-plan  and that a final draft of the white paper be completed and circulated at least one week before the 24th FIPA meeting.

FIPA for Business Applications SIG (F4BA) was established with  members: Emorphia, Siemens, Sonera, Tryllian, WebV2, …   The scope is to identify application areas that derive specific benefits from agent technology and FIPA. identify the core benefits that FIPA offers over current industry practice in these areas. identify the main challenges to specify / implement FIPA specifications in these areas. initiate development and alignment of FIPA towards selected application areas. The motivation is to:

1. ensure commercial applicability of FIPA’s results: survey FIPA members as to their targeted application areas and then to give feedback to Board of Directors as input into determining and evaluating FIPA’s vision and strategy.
2. enable the promotion of FIPA’s results to commercial entities: talk with commercial practitioners of application areas (marketing departments) and then to identify application areas & benefits to Image Committee for promotion of FIPA and its benefits to relevant audience.
3. attract increased commercial participation in FIPA: determine how FIPA improves current state of art and then to give feedback to relevant WGs and TCs as to industrial requirements.

 The Product Design & Manufacturing PD&M WG proposed that it be discontinued. PD&M participants wish to continue those PD&M efforts which are currently in progress: Holonic Enterprise, Planning/Scheduling, and Holonic Control Devices. · The Holonic Control Devices area will continue as a liaison relationship with the HMS (Holonic Manufacturing Systems). · The PD&M participants are encouraged to continue their fine PD&M efforts by requesting that SIGs be established for each of the remaining areas: Holonic Enterprise and Planning/Scheduling. 

24th Meeting Lausanne 02-2002

FIPA Board of Directors announcements. The Board intends that FIPA focuses its activities in order to maximize the added value by: promoting a core of existing “FIPA experimental specifications” towards “FIPA standard level”, developing specifications that encourage semantic integration of heterogeneous agents, deploying FIPA’s core benefits by embracing and extending major industry activities such as Web services and ad-hoc networking. Therefore the following TC, WG and SIG came to completion and are terminated: TC Architecture, TC Compliance, TC Gateways, WG interoperability, SIG Agentcities.  And FIPA’s new TC, WG and SIG composition is as follows: TC Ad-hoc,  TC Ontology, TC Semantics, TC X2S (Drive standards to standard status, harmonize, ensure coherency, correctness), WG Security,  SIG FIPA for Business Applications (F4BA),  SIG Planning and Scheduling, SIG Liaison.

FIPA Architecture Board or FAB approves TC X2S (f-wp-00019), TC Ad-Hoc (f-wp-00020). The FAB requests that the members assist TC X2S and carry the following resolutions out: Review Standards you use and which are under consideration for standard status Provide X2S with issues, and if possible proposed solutions Pay special attention to the overall consistency and harmony of the specifications Approach this process with a collegial spirit

TC Architecture proposed to suspend work on ACR to submit the Abstract Architecture specification XC00001JP to FAB to promote XC00001J to experimental specification status.

The TC compliance proposed that FIPA adopt the following resolutions: Identification of two mainstreams: profiles; conformance definition / tests; both are long-term activities No complete conformance specification and tests until July / September 2002 possible TC Compliance will be suspended by end of FIPA24 Restart approximately after FIPA27 Re-submission of workplan with differentiation between compliance and profiles

TC Gateways resolutions  are as follows: Message Buffering Service specification – transition to Experimental status. 2. Submit to FAB by end of March 2002. Messaging Interoperability Service specification – transition to Experimental status. 4. Submit to FAB by end of March 2002. Device Ontology specification – transition to Experimental status. 6. Submit to FAB by end of March 2002. Dissolve TC Gateways, as it has achieved its objectives, with immediate effect.

TC Ontology:

• Requested FIPA to set up an ontology repository;
• Worked on core specifications (SL, ACL, and agent management) and create public Ontologies modelled in DAML+OIL, RDFS, and UM;
• Re-worked the ontology server specification to make in more accessible Into three parts (Guide lines, OKBC, and FIPA specification) Verify (and simplify) FIPA specification ontology model to be consistent with core specifications
• Defined set of core upper Ontologies and domain Ontologies, services, policies, security, agentcities and manufacturing (service model has started)
• Worked on very low level definition of service ontology to determine and abstract key requirements (from for example, CORBA service WSDL service, Robots.txt, DAML+OIL, Service, Transactions models, work flow and process (DAML-S)

TC Semantics proposes to continue the work of examining potential logical frameworks, in particular to pursue some combining of Jones’s and Colombetti’s approach to initiate the drafting of a semantic framework document to edit the use cases output from Pleasanton and submit as a FIPA output document

TC X2S  has  identified the following set of core specifications that will be the subject of its activity: Abstract Architecture (no. 1), Content Language Library (no. 7), SL Content Language (no. 8), Agent Management (no. 23), IP Library (no. 25), Request IP (no. 26), Query IP (no. 27), Contract-Net IP (no. 29), English-Auction IP (no. 31), Dutch-Auction IP (no. 32), Communicative Act Library (no. 37), ACL Message Structure (no. 61), MTS (no. 67), ACL String Encoding (no. 70), IIOP MTP (no. 75), HTTP MTP (no. 84), XML Envelope Encoding (no. 85). The TC intends to collect more information in the future, and endeavours to increase the list of analysed specifications. the TC recommends FIPA to review and clarify the criteria for proposing promotion of ‘experimental’ specification to the ‘standard’ status. A number of alternatives have been identified and reported in the minutes of the meeting. the TC recommends FIPA that the BoD define an official mechanism for the maintenance and the evolution of the standard specifications the TC requests the BoD to clarify the official vote procedure from promotion of the specs from ‘experimental’ to ‘standard’ status. A

The FIPA Security WG proposed to: To comment on the existing FIPA specifications. identified as candidates for standardization by the X2S TC, that have some security context. For example, the security group will propose a minor modification to the encryption field in the MTS [envelope] specification. To liaise with the Agentcities security WG to discuss MAS security issues for FIPA platforms in the Agentcities.net To complete a draft of the Security WG white-paper and hence to complete its current work-plan. The Security WG proposed a new work-plan will be to produce a FIPA specification for a minimal level of security of a FIPA MAS that adheres to the agent management specification / abstract architecture specifications.

FIPA for Business Applications SIG (F4BA) explored a possibility to utilise E-learning as an example application sector to study and highlight the benefits of FIPA specifications to commercial services. F4BA explored a possibility to issue a call for information about “business cases of implementing FIPA specifications”. A CFI will be drafted before FIPA25 and discussed at FIPA25. F4BA decided to write a white paper to describe FIPA technology and to highlight benefits of using FIPA technology in business applications.

25th Meeting Vancouver 05-2002

FIPA creates TC Services

FIPA Architecture Board Resolutions: 1. Accepts and approves the updated Ontology Work plan (f-wp-00012A) 2. Accepts the updated work plan from the Security WG as input for review and anticipates approving Security WG taking ownership of Policy and Domain Specification (PC00089) 3. Part of the Security WG work plan dealing with fixes to existing specs assigned to X2S 4. Requests that Ontology TC and Semantics TC be scheduled for a joint working session during the 26th meeting. 5. Draws attention of the membership to the ongoing X2S work and requests their continued review of the revised specifications.

TC Ad-hoc resolutions: Consideration of three identified issues: platform discovery, service discovery, additional features Decision: handle service discovery at the agent level Write a white paper about relevant technologies for FIPA agents in mobile ad-hoc environments and possible solutions for predefined problem areas as an input paper for FIPA26 including:

• Platform discovery mechanisms: Discussion of relevant platform discovery protocols and FIPA specific adaptations
• Service Discovery mechanisms: Discussion of infrastructure elements needed for ad-hoc support; Discussion on message exchange on agent level; Discussion of service discovery protocols
• Additional features i. Discussion of mechanisms to support policies and security in ad-hoc environments

TC Ontology resolutions Provide input to WebOnt for agent requirements on Ontologies before next meeting Define a second work which supports meta-ontology requirements To work on the white paper, to have a version of the white paper on requirements for the next FIPA meeting Inputs on ontology server and upper Ontologies input (intention to input and what this will be mid June end June).

 TC Semantics resolutions Ad-hoc networking broadcasting issue to be investigated Ad-hoc to be discourages from using ACL to sort out LAN topology Pat Hayes (IHMC) to be asked for input To draft a white paper that: Identifies the form and features of the FIPA Semantic Framework Captures the relevant features of, primarily Andrew Jones, Marek Sergot’s, Marco Colombetti’s semantic framework. Focus on white paper Discussion on weak versus strong typed content languages.

TC Services resolutions Services TC invites the membership to comment on proposed Whitepaper drafts on Web Services bindings, Messaging and  Bootstrapping services / Directory.

The X2S TC recommends FIPA:

• to publish the list of approved changes, and all the modified specifications in the public X2S area of the FIPA Web site for review from the entire community. All membership is invited to carefully consider and review all the approved changes that, in some cases, breaks compatibility of the existing implementation. recommend FIPA members and/or developers to submit more comments for consideration during the next meeting appoint 
• To report at the next X2S meeting in Helsinki about how JINI and DHCP implement the lease-time for yellow-page subscription recommend FIPA members to submit a workplan for finalizing the work on the fipa-subscribe Interaction Protocol recommend FAB
• to produce a guideline document for maintenance of the specifications and publish it on the public area of the Web site (see for instance the doc. no. 61 and doc. no. 37) recommend FIPA
• to publish all the application-related specifications as informative documents, in particular the following documents: Personal Assistant (83), Network Management and Provisioning (82), Audio-visual Entertainment and Broadcasting (81), Personal Travel Assistance (80), part of Nomadic Application Support (14).
• Invite membership to collect information about implementation and usage of FIPA specifications and to recommend FIPA
• to produce and approve a document with the list of all the symbols defined by FIPA and a pointer to the specification number where it has been defined and where it has been used. If FIPA approves that, than X2S will consider to produce it in Helsinki (if there will be enough volunteers to do that!).
• The following specifications have been identified not to be proposed for standard status considered that X2S is not aware of any implementation: spec no. 76, WAP MTP spec no. 92, Message Buffering Service spec no. 93, Message Interoperability Service this decision can be reconsidered if, before the next FIPA meeting, X2S was made aware of any existing implementation or of any FIPA member still wishing to propose them.

The FIPA Security WG proposes the following resolutions: To progress with work on its new work-plan (f-wp-00011): To provide input on security related uses, such as the use of the encryption field in the message transport specification, to the X2S TC; To take interim ownership of the Policies and Domain Specification (PC00089) in order to add some use-cases for trust and security policies; To address the requirements raised in the completed security white-paper. To provide input on trust and security issues into the Adhoc TC’s forthcoming white-paper, F4B TC’s white-paper and the Ontology TC’s white-paper.

26th  meeting Helsinki 07-2002

TC AdHoc proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions

• Consideration of five identified architectural approaches for service discovery.
• Decision for the DF plug-in solution (interface for accessing ad-hoc and P2P implementations by the DF).
• Continuing to write the white paper about relevant technologies for FIPA agents in mobile ad-hoc environments and possible solutions (ad-hoc and P2P technology descriptions, interface definitions, other important issues like security and profiles). Contribute to the white paper over TC ad-hoc reflector.

TC Semantics proposes:

• To adopt an approach based on Jones and Pitt’s semantic approach ·
• To produce a white paper structured around requirements, philosophy and technology as soon as possible ·
• To explore the potential for a content language that is coherent with the Jones and Pitt approach to semantic frameworks that also meets the requirements for efficient representation and utility in web services environments (in particular have a natural expression in XML)

TC Ontology resolutions:

• Multiple reference of Ontologies within content language were noted.
• use of standard URN solution has been proposed.
•  Upper ontology contributions to the white paper have been accepted about ACL model,
•  DAML+OIL inputs approved:

The X2S TC recommends FIPA: to publish the meeting minutes and modified specifications in the public X2S area of the FIPA Web site for review from the entire community; invite membership to collect information about implementations and usage of the FIPA specifications considered that the formal semantics model of the cancel and subscribe communicative acts has been now corrected. X2S recommends FIPA to promote to experimental the specification no. 35, fipa-subscribe Interaction Protocol and to include that specification in the list of documents to be proposed for standard.

The following specifications have been identified not to be proposed for standard because they do not meet the X2S quality criteria: spec no. 31, FIPA English Auction Interaction Protocol Specification spec no. 32, FIPA Dutch Auction Interaction Protocol Specification · this decision can be reconsidered. X2S TC recommend FIPA to register the name fipa in the IETF/IANA name space.

TC Services proposes: To analyse the input from Mitre and Fujitsu; to provide motivations for the service model Input from Fujitsu; Finalise web service and agent service cross-modelling.

Security WG proposes: To progress with work on its new work-plan (f-wp-00011):

• To complete and submit written input on the use of the encryption within the message transport specification to the X2S TC (following discussions with the X2S TC);
• To develop Ontologies / models / specifications for agent message integrity, agent message confidentiality and agent authentication and then circulate them to solicit comments from targeted individuals in the wider agent / security community;
• To develop profiles for combinations of confidentiality, authentication and integrity models for different requirements;
• To encourage the PISA project to submit it’s privacy framework as input into FIPA’s draft security related Ontologies and policies and domains specifications.

27th Meeting Pensacola 10-2002

The FAB (FIPA Architecture Board) recommends FIPA to approve the following resolutions:

• Approve the promotion of document no. 35 FIPA Subscribe Interaction Protocol Specification from the status of Deprecated to the status of eXperimental
• Approve the new document no. 94 FIPA QoS Ontology Specification that contains the subset of document no. 14 with the definition of the QoS ontology
• Approve the promotion to informative status of the following 7 documents as indicated by X2S (see X2S resolutions for the list of documents)
• Approve the demotion to deprecated of the 3 documents as indicated by X2S (see X2S resolutions for the list of documents)
• Approve the promotion to standard status, via a ballot vote of the membership for the entire group of documents, of the following 23 documents as indicated by X2S (see X2S resolutions for the list of documents) with the following motivation:

 FAB invites all the membership to approve the promotion of all the following specifications to the Standard status and spread their use both in business and academic environments. Appoint the FIPA Secretariat as the duly designated delegate to conduct the ballot for promotion to standard according to the process indicated in the FIPA Specification Policy, f-out-00003A. In particular the ballot will be announced and opened on the 4th of November 2002 and it will be closed on the 2nd of December.

The X2S Technical Committee proposes that: X2S has been through 3 iterations of accepting comments from the membership and improving the specifications. X2S now feels that the specifications are stable and ready for release. FAB has approved the specifications and therefore, X2S now asks the membership to approve these specifications for standard. X2S appoints Jonathan Dale to finalize the documents (editorial changes and final ChangeLog table) by the 4th November 2002 for release as the FIPA standards for 2002. The full list of specifications is the following:

Statistics:

Thank all those people who have contributed to the meeting by sending comments or by actively participating to the discussion and, in particular, the editors of the documents: Fabio Bellifemine, Jonathan Dale, Jim Odell, Misty Nodine, Heikki Helin, Hiroki Suguri. The X2S has concluded its mandate and met all the milestones of the workplan approved by FAB, therefore X2S asks the FAB and the BoD to dissolve the X2S TC.

TC Ad-hoc proposes to

• Continue to write the white paper about relevant technologies for FIPA agents in mobile ad-hoc environments and possible solutions (description of relevant ad-hoc and P2P technologies, possible approaches for FIPA, concrete implementations, and other important issues like security and profiles). The focus concerning the relevant ad-hoc and P2P technologies will be on BT-SDP, JXTA, JINI, and UPnP. Contribute to the white paper over TC ad-hoc reflector.
•  Change the status of the group from TC to WG, with approval FIPA board.

The TC Web Services proposes:

• To investigate DAML-S as a suitable meta-service description/modelling language for FIPA services (Margaret Lyell to action).
• To produce the outline/structure of a white paper on requirements for FIPA service

Security WG has completed its current 2nd work-plan and will add an informative output document to the repository. That work-plan had 3 objectives and each of these has been met:

• Objective 1: To examine security issues in the current (2002) FIPA specifications. It has recommended removing the encryption field in The Message Transport Specification (done by X2S) and no changes to the Agent Management Specification to add security – as a security model is needed first.
• Objective 2: To analyse and propose models to address issues raised by its white–paper on MAS security (f-out-000113) the deliverable of its first work-plan. The basis of a new security model has been proposed in an update to the white paper that is to be published in a Springer-Verlag LNAI volume. This new abstract security model is called the Asset Security Model. It is intended that a new work-plan for the security WG will develop a specification for security based on this model.
• Objective 3: To enhance the Policies and Domains Specification (FIPA00089) to support trust, security and privacy policies. The asset security model [POS02] defines the concept of a security profile. A security profile defines a relationship between one or more assets (items of value in the system) in one or more domains, one or more security threats and one more safeguards. This is a starting-point to discussing rules and constraints for the relationship between assets, threats, safeguards and domains. However, the security WG intends not to initially focus on the specification of security policies but rather to first focus on completing the abstract security model. In addition, the policy and domain work will be specialised for security. Although, this could form input into a generalised policies and domain model, the security group will not focus on this. Thus security group thus relinquishes ownership of the Policies and Domains.

It is developing a new work-plan (to be submitted within one month of this meeting) and will produce specification(s) for MAS security so that it will form a new TC called TC “Security, Trust and Privacy”. The work plan will produce:

• A white paper to capture the motivation for MAS security and that analyses the different design choices for ACL security and makes recommendations for specifying ACL and MAS security.
• The specification of abstract security model (the asset model) that can be mapped to a FIPA MAS framework
  The reification of the model in one or more application domains.

28th Meeting Palermo 02-2003

FIPA Architecture Board Resolutions: Approve the following work plans, create the following Technical Committees: Services, Security, Modelling, Methodology, Interaction Protocols,

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, Modelling 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. 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.

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. 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)

The TC Modelling proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions. The TC Modelling 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 Modelling 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.
• The TC Modelling participants have initially identified twelve modelling 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.
•  The TC Modelling 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.

TC Services Resolutions The  meetings had a presentation on DAML-S vs. WSDL from Margaret Lyell and began work on an Abstract Service Model based on input from Jonathan & Margaret. 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

The TC Security proposes the following resolutions: 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.

 TC Ontology Resolutions:

• 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).
• 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.

The TC Methodology proposes 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
• A model notation and guidelines for creating the meta-model of the method fragments
• A notation for describing the procedural aspects of building the specific artefact in a method fragment
• 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, …)

29th Meeting Banff 08-2003

TC Ad-hoc will specify a mechanism for dynamic discovery and interoperability of FIPA agents residing in different platforms on different devices in mobile ad-hoc environments. The TC will produce a whitepaper appointing possible approaches for achieving the scope (further analysis / classification of relevant existing ad-hoc and P2P technologies / mechanisms; investigation in relevant use-case scenarios; overview of possible architectures).

Discussion about the current Agent Discovery Service specification proposal version 1.0.  Decisions taken: ADS will be an independent component / agent and will have an ACL interface and its own ontology (ADS will allow Combination of own and existing ad hoc / P2P discovery mechanisms); Specification will be MTS-like. Open points: Profile for ADS or any DM (discovery middleware) to describe the actual discovery capabilities (agent discovery, platform discovery, …) in order to act accordingly.

TC Modelling did the following during its meetings:

• Discussed the Interaction Diagram document and decided that it was still a work-in progress that requires refinement that should continue between meetings (i.e., it is in generally good shape, and further refinement now requires more involvement from the FIPA membership—and beyond
• Discussed the Class Diagram document and determined that the notions of role, group, environment, and context should be added to this document.
• Spent most of our time working of the formalization of role and other similar notions. TC Modelling proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions:
• The Modelling TC participants agreed to continue the refinement of the FIPA AUML language specifications for Class Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams.
• The Modelling TC participants agreed that the notions of role, group, environment, and context are important notions for modelling agent-based systems. As such, it was agreed that these areas would be explored and defined by this TC.
• The Modelling TC would like to express its appreciation to those participants produced papers for the following modelling areas: 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.
• The Modelling TC would like to express its appreciation to those participants produced summary documentation of the following 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.

The TC Services meetings was a Review of Status of Specifications. Agent and service fundamental tech issues impacting service composition or aggregation Including: Orchestration vs. Co-ordination, Ramifications for Service Description,  FIPA Service Description, Mapping to DAML-S.

TC Semantics. The topic "Enabling Information Exchange with Semantics Concepts" was presented by Everett Sherwood (Motorola Laboratories). • Included in the talk were: o A Review of Low-Level Semantics (word, sentences, categories, and their organizations) o The use of Questions and Answers as a Basis for Exchange.

30th Meeting London, 11-2003

FIPA Architecture Board or FAB informs the entire FIPA membership that the RFC3616 has been approved and published by IETF. It defines the ‘fipa’ URN. At the next meeting, Misty Nodine will make a short tutorial on URNs and a proposal on how FIPA can best exploit this URN. FAB wishes to create a proper software infrastructure that allows accessing (both by humans and by software) and maintaining all the catalogues that FIPA has and is going to define, including glossary of terms and definitions, catalogue of communicative acts, interaction protocols, content languages, Ontologies, specifications, encodings, MTPs, ... FAB calls for proposals from the FIPA community about the requirements and the possible solutions for such an infrastructure.

TC Ad-Hoc had discussions about current specification draft:

• Extend the current FIPA Agent Management specification in order to meet the requirements of yellow page services in ad hoc networks
• Approve the need for a standard way of advertising FIPA agent services in JXTA technology
• Further editing of the FIPA Agent Management specification and fipa00096 is needed
• Open points to discuss at the next meeting: Profile of the DF capabilities; Finalisation of changes to FIPA Agent Management specification; Finalisation of fipa00096

TC Modelling proposed:

• participants reached a basic agreement on an abstract syntax (in the form of a class diagram) that specifies the notions of agent, agent class, role, group for modelling agent-based systems.
• The Modelling TC participants agreed to explore the notions of position, environment, and context.
• It also agreed to begin adding agent properties such as capabilities, goals, and so on.
• The Modelling TC participants agreed to continue the refinement of the FIPA AUML language specifications for Class Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams.

 TC Semantics proposed: A draft of a revised work plan was submitted consideration at the Opening Plenary. The first in a series of presentations: “On Eliciting Requirements for Agent Semantics from Linguistics Concepts" was given by Everett Sherwood (Motorola Laboratories). Included in the first talk were:

• The Need for Semantic Requirements
• A Rationale for Using Linguistics as a Source of Requirements An Overview of Semantic Exchange
• A Description of Low-Level Semantics and their Use in Agent Requirements Various Draft Requirements
• A Presentation on: “An Executable Specification of Open Norm-Governed Computational Systems” by Alexander Artikis, Marek Sergot, and Jeremy Pitt.

TC Security The main achievements at the meeting were discussions related to a discussion of the FIPA f-in-00095 proposal. Need to add:

• Scenarios and requirements
• Clarification of attributes in the frame-based ontology for message security: Which are optional? How to specify list of reserved values extensible? Etc.
• Add technical note for MTP-MTP security vs. Agent-Agent messaging security
• Requirement and syntax for specifying sequences vs. trees vs. nesting of security wrappers
• Use of existing specs. or notation such as PKCS-7 – any others.; Add a technical note to say how this related or our criticism of / differentiators from existing specs?
• Impact on existing specs such as FIPA MTS spec. (FIPA Specification SC00067)
• Namespace for terms
• Discuss specification representation: S-expression, ASN.1,
• Need for an XML syntax
• Discuss how to relate this to a more general abstract security model; Use of an Ontology for terms, or not

The FIPA Security TC proposes the following resolutions: To progress with its work to complete its current work-plan

• Specification (f-in-00095) on a concrete per-message-based security specification
• Abstract security architecture specification
• Analysis of current security review (synchronise this to the completion of a preliminary specification of a per-message based concrete security model as the review gives some of the discussions for designing this in a certain way.

TC Methodology proposed that FIPA adopts the following resolutions:

• The glossary of terms has been approved as an internal document. There will be two different kind of terms in it: a list of terms directly related to the work of this TC and a list of terms coming from common software engineering and agent contexts Having a direct and active contact with the OMG group of SPEM is important for this TC and further actions will be done to strengthen it
• The fragment definition document has been approved as a preliminary specification and will be published on the web site. Members are invited to use and comment the specification. An internal document containing a set of fragments (extracted from already SPEM documented methodologies) will be produced by next March.
• Method base repository specifications has been decided to be based on a textual document complemented by a formal XML representation according to a schema.

The Interaction Protocols TC began with presentations on differing views on Interaction Protocols. These presentations presented alternative perspectives and made clearer some further work that needs to be done on the current AUML interaction diagrams. The Interaction Protocols TC thanks the following presenters:

• Shamima Paurobally from Southampton University for her presentation, “Developing Agent Interaction Protocols Using Graphical and Logical Methodologies”, based on work by herself as well as Jim Cunningham and Hywel Dunn-Davies from Imperial College.
• Juan Manuel Serranofrom University Rey Juan Carlos for his presentation, “Interaction Protocols -- An Organisational State-Based Approach”. · James Odell and Marc-Philippe Huget for their presentation on the representation of existing interaction protocols in UML2-based AUML.

The Interaction Protocols TC agreed that the current workplan is insufficient. As a result of our discussion, we agreed that the workplan would span a period of two years, and include the following:

• Collect usage scenarios from real agent systems and examining the types of interactions that they would use, but do not fit well into the current AUML or conform to any of the existing standard IPs. Examples of these include discussion threads, chats, and voting protocols.
• Collect requirements for modelling and representing interaction protocols.
• Work in conjunction with the TC modelling to develop a model for agent interaction that supports the types of interactions that are derived from the usage scenarios.
• Develop a representation that can be presented (a) to humans so they can understand the interaction protocol, including detailed semantics and the assumptions that the interaction protocol places on the involved agents, (b) to agents in a machine-understandable manner, so the agents can learn the interaction protocols as needed. This representation should also support the validation of the protocols for terminating soundly, being deadlock-free, etc.

31st Meeting Barcelona 03-2004

FIPA Architecture Board FAB proposed:

• Approval of the specifications for Ad-Hoc Networks to be integrated as slight extensions of FIPA Agent Management Specifications
• Recommends the merging of TC Modelling into TC Methodologies
• Recommends the merging of TC Ontologies into TC Semantics
• Specification number 96 is no more used by TC ad-hoc. T
• Approval of the requirement of the Security TC to represent security-related information into the Envelope even if this is expected to break compatibility of the codecs.
• FAB recommends to review the 3 responses from the following individuals/groups that have been received for the call for an infrastructure for exploiting FIPA URN

TC Ad-hoc discussions

• Changes made to Specification 00023 (Agent Management)
• New specification 00095 (Agent Discovery Service) approved as experimental by TC ad hoc ·
• Work on white paper will not be continued, workplan is fulfilled
• TC Ad Hoc remains formally constituted during the call for implementations and follow-on activity.

 TC Methodology proposed that:

w.r.t. existing Fragments evaluation and abstraction level comparison:

We looked at the already defined fragments and argued that some levels of abstractions could be identified and an hierarchical composition of such fragments is possible. This possibility should be pursued during the identification and definition of future fragments

We identified the need of analysing the different level of abstractions that could be useful in fragments description (work definitions, activities and steps) and produce some guidelines about their use in fragments extracted from different methodologies

Method base structure

An initial specification for the method base structure (proposed by A. Garro and L. Sabatucci) has been discussed and several modifications introduced in it. Further work will be done offline interacting in the mailing list with the aim of consolidating an initial model for the next meeting.

MAS meta-model

We analysed the three meta-models of ADELFE, GAIA and PASSI and concluded that they can be seen as an extension of the Modelling TC MAS meta-model. o In order to avoid confusion, specific methodology meta-models will be labelled using the syntax: MAS meta-model

Further studies will be carried on in order to identify commonalities among meta-models that could help in composing a new meta-model reusing the existing ones or eventually unify a core for them · Fragment definition o We analyzed comments from some members and accepted few of them

As a consequence, members are discouraged from using entry 9 of fragment definition (dependency relationships among different fragments) since this information will be more properly located in the method base and therefore further work will be done to express it in the method base structure ·

• Methodology scope and consequences
• We initiated the discussion about the possible approaches in constructing a methodology and specifically dealt with requirements driven and unification driven points of view
• We started a discussion about the identification of a number of disciplines that should be covered by a FIPA methodology.

TC Modelling proposes the following resolutions:

• the meta-model created at this TC represents the link of the agent models with their counterparts in software engineering and should clearly indicate/define what the paradigm contributes to software systems. (i.e. what agents can do better then O-O and when?)
• Methodology specific meta-models should extend/inherit the general meta-model created at the modelling TC. The general meta-model has to able to support all current methodology meta-models. Desire to keep the general meta-model a minimum set.
• The general meta-model will be the basis used to define the new modelling elements required to describe agent systems.
•  Current meta-model core is starting to consolidate, but there are other parts that will be needed, and we can start this in parallel with the remaining efforts in the core
• Start the definition of missing parts and how the combine/compose with core meta-model

TC Security: The main achievements at the meeting were discussions related to the FIPA f-in-00095 document. This is close to being a completed preliminary specification proposal.

Informal advice has been sought from the FAB regarding dealing with the general issue of extending existing current standard specifications, in particular the abstract and concrete envelope specifications) to support the new envelope security extension. Currently, it is proposed that a new extension field be added to the current envelope standard specifications that points to a set of extension headers, one of which is the new security header (another, in the future, could be a possible QoS header). At this time, it is left to the FAB to state more exactly the process for dealing with enhancements to current specifications.

TC Semantics had excellent technical discussions and resolved: to Draft and Circulate: Goal / proof of success; White Paper Outline; White Paper; Establish Awareness of other standards / languages; query languages, conferences, organizations, human contacts (e.g., W3C semantics, AgentCities, AgentLink…).

32nd Meeting Rockville 07-2004

TC Methodology proposes to recognize the importance of guidelines for composition of fragments in a new methodology and decomposition of an existing one in order to obtain useful fragments. The different approaches for composing fragments we identified at this stage are:

• Bottom up approaches (MAS meta-model/architecture driven)
• Top down approaches (process driven)
• Evaluation-driven approaches (methodology metrics/features)
• Mixed approaches

TC Methodology proposes:

• the integration fragments could be necessary for assembling a methodology, but propose that they not be part of a FIPA specification.
• that fragments can be located at the phase or activity level but not at the step level (too fine-grained).
• that fragment classification is used for navigation inside the repository, not for composition
• the introduction of methodology frameworks in the repository structure in order to facilitate the composition of a new methodology.
• that each framework is related to a collection of methodologies with similar features and referring to similar meta-models TC Methodologies gratefully thanks all people attending the meeting and the others contributing offline.

The Modelling TC proposed that:

• the current AUML Superstructure Metamodel is sufficiently stable and adequate to be used as a foundation to now incorporate further, more advanced extensions to agent/role/group. (9-yes, 1-abtain, 0-no votes)
• future work will continue in the areas of agent-based extensions to state machine diagrams, activity diagrams, use case diagrams, dynamic role diagram, class diagrams, component diagrams, interaction diagrams, composite structure diagrams, environment diagram, mobility diagram.
• initial drafts of the following diagrams will be delivered:: state machine diagrams, activity diagrams, use case diagrams, dynamic role diagram, class diagrams, interaction diagrams.
• that initial drafts of the following diagrams will be delivered: component diagrams, interaction diagrams, composite structure diagrams, environment diagram, mobility diagram.
• It would cooperate and work closely with the OMG Agent SIG who will also be working on the AUML drafts.

TC Security: There were discussions related to the FIPA f-in-00095 (secure message envelope) document for consideration by the FAB to be a preliminary spec. This is close to being a completed preliminary specification proposal. Currently, it is proposed that a new extension field to support security should itself be extensible that points to a set of extension headers, one of which is the new security header (another, in the future, could be a possible QoS header). A proposal has been drafted for submission to the FAB. There is a HTTP grounding for the envelope but no IIOP grounding for it. Consider if the current representation of the syntax in terms of a frame-based ontology should be a UML · There were discussions related to creating a more general specification of an agent security model · It was felt that this model should comprise a concept model, profile model, policy model and process model. This TC is still discussing how to define these models. · It is also felt that this model overlaps with work being done in the TC services, TC Modelling and TC semantics. · A paper is being presented by this TC on this model to the SASMAS-2004 work-shop at AAMAS-2004/

TC Semantics had several excellent technical discussions. During this meeting the following was accomplished: ·

• Revised work plan approach · Identified More Use cases ·
• Begin a straw man “Agent Speak”; Use example message from ACL
• Draft Definitions, word nets, sentences structures, Ontologies, episodics.

TC Services proposed to:

• Extend the work on the FIPA Abstract Service Architecture:
• Explore the requirements for Orchestrator Agent
• Explore the  requirements for Service Agent
• Restrict to ‘atomic’ services to simplify early discussion
• Explore the  output of Composer Agent o Delineated different areas of context needed
• Outline efforts for: Specification on FIPA Abstract Service Description; Groundings (may include some conceptual mappings) involving OWL-S and WSDL.

FIPA Architecture Board reports the following activities since the last meeting:

•  The SC00023K specification extends SC00023J by including the subscription mechanism + a clarification that DF is optional + fixes some typos
• The XC000XX document of Michael Berger has the intention of superseding, when standard, the current FIPA00023. This document will go through the normal life cycle of FIPA specs and, when it will become standard, it will make obsolete FIPA00023.

IEEE-FIPA, Launch at Utrech 07-2005

See separate document found here.

33rd Meeting Budapest 09-2005

The IEEE FIPA Standards Committee has two kinds of groups that contribute to the standards process: working groups (WG) and Study Group (SG)

Working Groups are established to carry out standardization projects within the scope of the FIPA SC. Each Working Group shall be responsible for the definitive content of one or more standards projects and for responding to views and objections thereon. A working group is expected to produce its first PAR (Project Authorization Request) within six month of charter acceptance. 

The following working groups have been formed and approved:

• Agents and Web Services Interoperability Working Group (AWSI WG)
• Human-Agent Communications Working Group (HAC WG)
• Mobile Agents Working Group (MA WG)
• P2P Nomadic Agents Working Group (P2PNA WG)

The FIPA SC may form a Study Group for up to 12 months to foster usage standards or the appropriateness of standards or standards development projects.  The SG should have a work plan which include specified deliverables.  Study Groups do not produce standards specifications.

The following study group has been formed and approved:

• Review of FIPA Specification Study Group (ROFS SG)