Agility Craig Thompson Steve Ford Tom Bannon Paul

Agility Craig Thompson, Steve Ford, Tom Bannon, Paul Pazandak, David Wells Object Services and Consulting, Inc. (OBJS) Main Idea - agents for the masses - scaling and pervasiveness Approach - piggyback agent capabilities on already pervasive technologies • • e. Gents - agents send messages over email Web. Trader/Deep. Search - trader discovers ads for resources via search engines Agent. Gram - menu-based natural language interface wrappers for resources Smart Data Channels - information supply chain grids on the web Grid - implications for the grid This presentation: http: //www. objs. com/agility/ Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 1 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

e. Gents: Agents over Email Problem Steve Ford • Dynamic military situations are often disconnected and asynchronous. • Need a scalable way to deliver agent messages to 1000’s of platforms. • Agent systems are often closed and require a lot of specialized agent technology. Approach • Thesis: Integration of agent technology with pervasive Web-ORB-Email backplanes is a route to making agent technology open, pervasive and robust. • e. Gents are agents which communicate over email. e. Gents use FIPA or KQML Agent Communication Language (ACL) encoded in XML. No ACL parser needed. • Status: Prototype, NEO demo, gridified, on wireless Palm. • In progress: packaging and various extensions Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 Impact • Anyone with email can create an agent service that anyone else can use. • e. Gents leverages pervasive, robust email infrastructure, inherits support for disconnected operations, message queueing, mobile users, firewalls, filtering, logging, and security. • e. Gents spec submitted to FIPA standards group. e. Gents Inside Neo Evacuees Command Post Medevac Liaison Family Member In one e. Gents application, each NEO evacuee has a Personal Status Monitor, which measures location, vital signs, etc. The PSM contains an e. Gent which intermittently communicates to subscribing entities using email protocols. p. 2 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Problem. Most agent systems monolithic and standalone and work in small, closed worlds. The idea of the agent grid is to construct a large-scale, open and potentially global agent infrastructure. How can we rapidly scale agent technology to become pervasive? Motivation. The e. Gent prototype was motivated by the Co. ABS objective to quickly tie distributed software components together. An example problem was to set up interactions in a virtual office or command post and automate routine office tasks like schedule meetings, set up videoconferences, collect timesheets, etc. A second technical motivation was to determine how to make agent technology pervasive, which it is not today. Objective. The core idea behind the e. Gents prototype is to send agent messages over email. Email is pervasive and already provides many functions an agent system would otherwise have to develop - message queuing, encryption, filtering, firewall traversal, support for mobile users. Approach. The e. Gent prototype is a lightweight agent platform. e. Gents supports the metaphor of “messages as documents. ” We built a wrapper language that allows easy wrapping of Java components that can communicate using agent communication language (ACL). The ACL is encoded in XML so no special ACL parser is needed. Email is used as the transport. Each e. Gent platform has an email address. Egents are addressed by e. Gent-platform/ egent-name. e. Gents’ pervasiveness claim is that anyone on the Web can create a service that anyone else can use. We perceive agent computations as starting off as “human-in-the-loop” and being progressively automated, which e. Gents encourages since either humans or other e. Gents can send or receive e. Gents messages. Recent Progress: (a) We ported e. Gents to the wireless Palm using Sun's newly released Java for devices, KVM, a troublesome port because of KVM's bleeding-edge nature, lack of tools, and because most Java code will not run under KVM, including most of Sun's Java class libraries, and all of the third party code on which e. Gents depended. The result runs, but is slow. The main benefit is it should port easily to other devices (set top boxes, smart phones). (b) We built the e. Gent. Grid. Agent proxy which extends the grid by demonstrating interoperability of Grid. Agents with agents that are less "connected". We could have just made a proxy for the PSM demo, but spent a little more time coming up with a generic proxy. We didn't want the e. Gents platform or an individual e. Gent to know anything about the Grid, or vice versa. The only component of the system that knows anything about both is the e. Gent. Grid. Agent, which is just an e. Gent to e. Gents and is just a Grid. Agent to the Grid. We wanted to keep the protocol situation simple. We didn't want an e. Gent to have to know LAN protocols, like Jini or HTTP or RMI or anything that made the e. Gent less mobile, disconnected, and asynchronous. So, an e. Gent can be "on the Grid" without knowing anything about the Grid. Another alternative for integrating egents and the grid would be to extend the grid to provide multiple native communication protocols. Demonstrations. The initial e. Gents demonstration was a mundane back office application technical report subscription service. For the Science Fair, we developed an e. Gents demo for a NEO-like scenario. We assume that NEO evacuees have Personal Status Monitors (PSMs) that monitor location, medical status, threats, etc. These PSMs contain e. Gent platforms and periodically exchange status updates with subscribers, e. g. , command posts, medevac units, state department monitors. Plans. (a) clean up, package and release the code. (b) speed up e. Gents on the Palm under KVM, if possible, else port to C++. (c) integration with Web. Trader, Agent. Gram. (d) augment ACL coverage. (e) demonstrate no-effort download-and-install to make e. Gents easy to distribute. (f) determine how to leverage services (e. g. , security) and make e. Gents’ policies like security easier for the user to understand trust (HCI issues). (g) Use e. Gents to study grid control schemes, for instance, how application e. Gents can be monitored and controlled by system e. Gents in the face of threats to the grid (e. g. , how to implement and assure a policy to not send e. Gent mail while in a threat area). Technology Transition. We developed an application demonstration involving NEO evacuee status monitoring for the Science Fair, since ported to the Palm. OS. The encoding of FIPA ACL in XML and the Java. Mail/MAPI are candidates for standards, and so we submitted these to the FIPA-99 Call for Proposals. System Requirements. (a) e. Gents runs on any Java platform - tested on NT/95. Needs: Sun's Java JDK 1. 2. 2, 6 MB of free disk space, an email (SMTP/POP 3) account for each machine on which the e. Gents platform will run, IBM's XML parser libraries (xml 4 j. jar), IBM's POP 3 Bean libraries (pop 3. protocol. jar, pop 3. ui. jar, pop 3. decoder. jar), Sun's Java. Mail 1. 0 libraries (mail. jar, mbox. jar), Sun's Java. Beans Activation Framework (activation. jar). (b) Egents also runs on KVM (J 2 ME CLDC 1. 0 FCS) on the Palm Vx, the Palm. OS Emulator 3. 0 a 5, or under Windows. Wireless communications from the Palm is currently via the Novatel Minstrel V wireless modem, Omnisky's wireless Internet access, and AT&T's CDPD digital cellular network. (c) optional: Co. ABS Grid v 1. 5. 0 beta Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 3 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

e. Gents platform on the Palm • uses J 2 ME CLDC 1. 0 FCS (KVM), that is, Java for devices • runs on a "wireless" palm over the CDPD digital cellular network Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 4 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998

e. Gents interoperating with each other and with an e. Gent-grid proxy Might be on machine 2 or anywhere on LAN or on grid-connected LAN PSM client grid agent other e. Gents inform PSM server e. Gent subscribe Machine 1 installed on evacuee Grid e. Gents platform* e. Gent grid agent proxy Machine 3 perhaps installed at medevac unit PSM client e. Gent other e. Gents platform** bs cri be inform subscribe info * KVM-based ** Java-based Machine 2 perhaps installed at command post Email Server other e. Gents platform rm o inf ibe cr bs su All e. Gents can share one Email server or they can each have their own or anything in between Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 6 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

e. Gent DEMO Purpose • e. Gent. Grid. Agent proxy is used to connect (wireless) e. Gents in the field to grid-accessible agents on a LAN Demo scenario • PSMs on troops updated with latest status information (geographic, health, threat, …) • other parties (PSM clients like command post or medevac) subscribe and receive inform messages in response to changes Displays • PSM Server is displayed in one Java window • DOS windows show activity of the e. Gent. Grid. Agent proxy and Grid's log agent • PSM Grid Client is displayed in another Java window • Netscape Messenger shows the log of e. Gent messages Demo step-through shows • registering the PSM Server e. Gent with the e. Gent. Grid. Agent proxy which then registers it with the Grid • switching to the PSM Client agent, which subscribes to the PSM Server by sending a lookup message to the Grid Registry, which finds the proxy, which the client thinks is the PSM Server, and then sends a subscribe grid message to the proxy, which passes it along to the PSM Server • then PSM Server sends back an inform message containing the subscribed values (and sends updates later if any values change) • the messages thread their way back through the system to eventually be displayed on the client. • If you modify a value on the server, you can watch the update propagated back to the client • You can view the e. Gent message log with Netscape Messenger. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 7 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Web. Trader: Agent Discovery Problem Tom Bannon • If grid applications are to be assembled when needed, the parts must be found somewhere and probably not all will come from the local environment. • How can we find building block resources (e. g. , agents, services, channels, components, data sources) when we need them? • Today, traders (matchmakers) are used for this purpose but these traders generally know only about closed worlds of resources of limited types (e. g. , IDL). Impact • Anyone on the Web can advertise a resource (e. g. , agent, service, data source) that anyone else can discover. • Advertised resources can be located at runtime to dynamically extend the knowledge and/or capabilities of the client, as well as enable intelligent on-the-fly assembly and reconfiguration of distributed systems. Services / Datasources Approach Agent World • Web. Trader is a matchmaking service that locates XML-based advertisements for resources embedded in web pages indexed by industrial-strength search engines. • Web. Trader supports type-specific matcher algorithms, trader federation, and can access multiple search engines. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 White Pages Geo. Coder Agent Grid 7 Ariadne (ISI) 2 Open Agent Architecture (SRI) 6 1 Web World 3 Web. Trader Agent page 5 4 page AD AD page p. 8 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop AD AD page Search Engine Web. Trader was used in the NEO TIE to locate evacuees and to find a geocoder. page AD page AD © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Problem. Most agent systems contain some sort of trader (matchmaker or yellow pages) that they use to locate agents by description. This provides late binding of agents to some service provider but does not scale outside of the closed agent system. Also, the trader itself is usually an integral part of agent system implementations and not available separately. Objective. Build a scalable robust trader component architected for the global grid. Approach. Web. Trader is a scalable trader that locates advertisements (represented in XML) stored on web pages that have been indexed by search engines. Query results allow clients to connect to the most suitable service. Advertisement types include agents, components, data sources, search engines, MBNLI grammars, other traders, channels, and other types. Web. Trader leverages industrial strength Web search engines so it is scalable, lightweight, portable, and robust. Web. Trader is extensible -- recent changes to Web. Trader support adding specialized matchers for ads of specific types. Deep. Search is an application of Web. Trader that recursively searches other search engines and traders (using a federation design pattern). This makes specialized Web pages (not indexed by many search engines) accessible to Deep. Search. Also keeps a search history. Demonstrations. Web. Trader is used in the Science Fair NEO application to locate data sources for the location of evacuees and to find a geocoder component. In the demo, ISI Ariadne uses SRI OAA to request Web. Trader. Agent to find these resources. Web. Trader. Agent consults the Grid to find a Web. Trader service and then uses it to discover candidate resources which are returned to Ariadne via OAA. Other demonstrations show trader federation, service rebinding, and Web. Trader used to locate agents that use natural language wrappers. The Deep. Search demonstration shows Web. Trader locating ads for search engines on the web and recursively searching them, opening up parts of the web that are usually beyond the reach of general purpose crawlers. Web. Trader. Query. Tool is a recent hybrid of Web. Trader and Deep. Search that does add matching and better supports application composition. Plans. We are currently hardening Web. Trader and making the design more open. We need to grow Web. Trader ad populations. To do this, we will make it easier to create Web. Trader ads manually using a GUI. Also, we want to try to harvest ads from the web to automate the process of ad synthesis. This is a web-size ontology question. We are also making matching ad type open so specialized search and ranking algorithms can be plugged in. Technology Transition. We are hardening Web. Trader and Deep. Search getting ready for a public experiment. We led effort of OMG Agent WG to review an Agent Resource Description and Discovery Service. We reviewed Agent UML. System Requirements: Web. Trader Agent & Web. Trader Grid Service require: MS Win NT 4. 0 (pure Java programs), Apache (latest) web server, Webinator 2. 5 search engine (from www. thunderstone. com) , Sun JDK 1. 2. 2, Sun XML TR-2 XML parser, GNU Make 3. 75, tcsh. Deep. Search requires all of the above plus Netscape or IE, Active. State Perl 5. Need connection to Internet (licensing quirk of local search engine used). Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 9 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Web. Trader Architecture 4 Query (Client Advertisement) Response 14 5 Web. Trader 6 13 Web Trader Engine 12 10 Matching 11 7 Web. Trader matches and returns candidate advertisements 9 8 Web Search Engine(s) Indexed by 1 3 Web Page Trader Advertisement 2 Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 Locates and returns candidate pages Trading advertisements may be distributed across some part of the Web p. 12 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Web. Trader Demo: Discovery, Rebinding, Federation Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 13 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Web. Trader Demonstration This demonstration of the Web. Trader illustrates • service binding and rebinding • trader federation In the demo, trading ads exist for a variety of components (e. g. , service agents, clients, and Web. Traders). Metadata including color and cost is included in the ads. A Blue client, for example, asks the USA Web. Trader to locate a Blue agent implementing a particular interface and with zero cost, if possible. One is found and bound, and the client makes use of the agent. When the agent unexpectedly dies, the Web. Trader is consulted again by the client, in case the “state of the world” has changed. It gets back a new list of agents, sorts them by cost, and goes down the list trying each agent until it finds one that works. If the Web. Trader fails to respond, the client can fall back on its cached list of previously found agents. When the Yellow client asks the USA Web. Trader for Yellow agents, the Web. Trader’s initial search turns up none, as it only consults a domain that indexes ads of Red, White, or Blue agents. However, it does find an ad for a Web. Trader that knows about Yellow agents, and so passes on the original client query to the Euro Web. Trader, which finds a Yellow agent, passes it back to the USA Web. Trader, which passes it back to the client, which then uses it to connect to the agent. At the right in the figure is shown a service advertisement in XML. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 14 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Web. Trader Application: Deep. Search Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 15 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Web. Trader Application: Deep. Search is an application of the Web. Trader. In this case, the advertisements of interest are service ads for search engines. Many web search engines only index top-level pages leaving the other half of the web unindexed except by these local search engines. So Deep. Search recursively (via federation) locates these local search engines and spawns deeper searches of these. You start out with the main search page (shown on the right). You select your favorite initial search engines (any or all - e. g. , this part just shows metasearching in parallel) and enter a search term like you do for any search engine and hit return. Then the side window pops up with the search results, and as you click on the links, the corresponding pages come up in the main browser window. Local search engines found during searching show up among the links - you can expand them to get the results of their searches, just like you can expand a directory in the Windows File Explorer. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 16 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Natural Language I/F for Agents Paul Pazandak Problem Impact • Dynamic military situations will require people to task and query agents using complex commands. • Unconstrained natural language is still not tractable in many situations. Approach • Humans can task and query agents using complex but understandable commands in constrained natural language. • This technology can mix pervasively into all applications, both on the desktop and the Web. • Thesis: Natural language-enhanced user-to-agent communication will simplify basic human-agent interactions while making it possible for humans to formulate complex agent requests. • Approach: Agents communicate with people and other agents using restricted languages for stating complex queries and commands • How: Agent. Gram extends agents with natural language middleware wrappers, dynamically loads grammars, and uses menu-based natural language to query and task agents. Works over the web with many users, can auto-generate NLI interfaces to DBMS, works with speech, and is on the Co. ABS grid. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 17 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Problem. Agent-based command control systems offer real promise in flexibility and adaptability but it is not yet clear how they can be understood and controlled. It would be desirable if we could just talk to systems of agents - but how? About Menu-based Natural Language Interfaces (MBNLI). Try typing or speaking to a system that has a conventional type-in or speech natural language interface (NLI). Most of your questions and commands will not be understood because they overshoot the capabilities of the NLI system or the underlying application it interfaces to. In addition, you won’t really know about some things you could ask (map or statistical queries? ) so your questions and commands will also undershoot the capabilities of the NLI system. Menu-based Natural Language Interface (MBNLI) technology uses standard NLI technology but in a menu-directed completion-based way to restrict the language and guide the user to just the capabilities of the NLI and underlying system. The technology fills a large unfilled niche in user interface design enabling unskilled users to make complex queries and commands. Objective. The Agent. Gram project addresses human-to-agent communication via agents that understand constrained MBNLI languages. Humans can task and query one or more agents using complex but understandable commands. This technology can mix pervasively into all applications, both on the desktop and the Web, providing NLI capabilities to not just agents but also information sources, services, and generally any accessible resource. Approach. Like other NL technology, MBNLI technology uses attribute grammars and a predictive parser. The difference is in using the grammars to predict legal sentence completions and displaying these using menus. MBNLI, using a client-server parser farm architecture, supports (a) web-based access, (b) multiple users, (c) multiple simultaenous grammars, (d) speech control via Java Speech Markup Language, (e) the ability to generate MBNLI interfaces to DBMS system given the DBMS schema, (f) a partitioning of MBNLI into client and stateless server so a very thin client can be downloaded (with no installation) only requiring Javascript, (g) LL descriptors on the web, discoverable by traders, and (h) techniques for composing MBNLI grammars and interfaces. The Agent. Gram prototype explores the idea of attaching NL wrappers to agents to make it possible for people to query or task them. Sub-grammars of individual agents can be traversed on-the-fly to construct commands or queries which span several agents. The web prototype shows how to make MBNLI technology pervasive on the web. Demonstrations. In the NEO TIE, the MBNLI component is agentized as an SRI OAA user interface agent (part of the SRI Multi-Modal Map) that translates natural language queries to SQL to be executed by an information access agent (ISI Ariadne). In OBJS demos shown at the Science Fair, MBNLI was used to query the DBMS of Enviro Conference attendees and also to visualize the XML-based grid log. The Agent. Gram demo finds MBNLI -enabled agents using Web. Trader and shows how the sub-grammars of one or more agents can be traversed to produce commands and queries. Our Co. ABSGrid demo illustrates one example of how our MBNLIGrid. Agent can be used to integrate MBNLI technology into the grid. In the demo the user is able to interact with the MBNLI web browser interface while the MBNLIGrid. Agent is able to provide current status regarding the interaction. Plans. In the near term, we need to (a) port to IE, (b) re-engineer client-server MBNLI so one parser server can service (now 10 -20, in the future 1001000 simultaneous) MBNLI clients, (c) build grammar translations to FIPA-based Agent Communication Language, (d) interface Agent. Gram to e. Gents and Smart Data Channels. Longer term, (e) we want to interface Agent. Gram to agents and data sources in-the-wild (on the open Web and in Do. D) and (f) add support for roles, dialog and context models. Technology Transition. A MBNLI agent was used in the Science Fair NEO application coupled to SRI OAA and ISI Ariadne. We are starting to look for early adopter Do. D and commercialization partners for this technology: USMTF and Intelink databases appear to be good Do. D targets. System Requirements. MBNLI web client requires Netscape browser; server requires Win. NT, My. SQL, ODBC, a cgi/php-capable web server. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 18 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

1. 2. 3. 4. Register/deregister MBNLIGrid. Agent. Tester on the grid. Lookup available MBNLIGrid. Agents - two are found (interfaces to NEO DAVCO dbms and to grid log). Select one and get a session ID/URL. Launch a (netscape) browser to interact with remote MBNLI (LLWeb) parser farm. At this point, you can get the current state of the LLWeb interaction, whatever it is (state, translation of the state, or the url for the results [if you evaluate the url (in a browser) you will execute the query & the results will be returned. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 20 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

MBNLI Grid Agent Demo Design Parser State. Mgr Store client state Agents retrieve state Grid. Log Enviro. Conf DB MBNLI Grid. Agent Grid. Log DB MBNLI Parser System Enviro Conf DB User. Parser Interaction Co. ABS Grid MBNLI Agent Tester MBNLI Web Interface Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 User spawns p. 21 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop Netscape © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Smart Data Channels David Wells Problem Approach • Smart Data Channels: Standards-based dynamic optimizable Web-based information supply chain where portals are declaratively personalized by type, content, format, data quality, cost, user needs, data source capabilities, and timing specs. • Getting the right information, at the right time, in the right format. WWW = Opportunity. . . • Vast sea of information • Many formats supported • Distributed and decentralized failure tolerant • Independence of source format & rendering • Active and passive data (e. g. , CGI scripts) … + Limitations • Insufficient tools to represent, filter, aggregate, & index • Can’t tell when information change is significant • No user or location-specific parameterization • Platform & bandwidth limitations not handled • Qo. S not handled Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 Impact • Channels automatically deliver information to the point of need. p. 22 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Problem. The World Wide Web has greatly increased the amount of information available on-line, but obtaining the right information at the right time in the right format is still beyond the state of the art, since there is no higher-level Web-wide information model and existing Web tools do not adequately address the problems of filtering, aggregating and disseminating this information. Information must either be accepted "as is" or converted and delivered by manual means or a complex programming process requiring specialized skills. “Portal” or “channel” technology is intended to provide customized information delivery, but current technology has limited modeling and manipulation power, its centralized architecture does not make best use of network computing capabilities, the resultant channels are not resilient to denial of service attacks or component or network failure, and since channel composition is not exposed, collections of channels cannot be optimized to reduce processing and bandwidth costs. Objective. Develop smart data channels (SDC) technology to allow the flexible and efficient creation of information channels through which information flows through the Web from data sources to information consumers. Approach. SDC uses and augments existing Web technology and standards to reach the largest market at the least development cost and risk. In particular, SDC is based on XML and XSLT, with the current implementation being in the Java programming language. Details. In SDC, desired channel content is specified declaratively rather than procedurally. This allows the type of information flowing over the channel to be externally visible, which in turn makes it possible to define new channels in terms of existing channels, to use type matching to determine potential information sources for channels, to switch to alternate sources when primary sources become unavailable, and (ultimately) to optimize collections of channels to reduce processing and/or bandwidth costs. SDC operators move information and allow channels to be combined and tailored to individual needs. Flow control on a channel allows specification of update policies for the delivered pages (i. e. , the conditions under which changed page content is delivered). Profiles allow customization of output and delivery based on the type of the display hardware. Channels can be automatically parameterized based on user characteristics such as location (e. g. , deliver maps for where I am right now). Demonstrations. SDC was initially demonstrated to the Space and Missile Defense Command under a Ballistic Missile Defense Command SBIR Phase I. A substantially improved XML-Java version was demonstrated to the DARPA Co. Abs Program as part of the OBJS Agility project. Grid. Developed mostly under SBIR, SDC is not currently tied to the Co. ABS grid. At present, it represents a different sort of grid/infrastructure implementation, also capable of interoperability with agents, the Co. ABS grid, or DAML. Plans. (a) Improvements: performance and reliability, design and implement better interfaces for channel creation and subscription. (b) Define a more robust SDC algebra for specifying channels. (c) Integrate SDC with Traders to allow channels to be located and matched more effectively. (d) Develop optimization strategies to conserve system resources. (e) Upgrade from XML to DAML. Technology Transition. SDC will be used as a test application for the DARPA DASADA program, possibly also as an architecture description configuration representation. NIMA has shown interest for routing map products through processing stations to Do. D customers. We are also seeking commercial support for further development. System Requirements. SDC makes use of Web standards such as browsers, Traders, Java and Java. Script, XML, XSL, and OBJS XML-to-Java parser, CGI scripts, servlets, and browser plug-ins. Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 23 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Rescue Channel Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 24 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

SDC Channel Management Interface Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 25 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Merged PSM Channel Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 26 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Example SDC Channel Mesh Raw sources PSM 5 PSM 15 PSM 31 PSM 85 Map Server PSM. DTD Make Channel P 5 Make Channel P 15 Make Channel Map. Server. DTD Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 Project Channels X/Y SDC_PSM. DTD Merge Channels P 31 Merge SDC_PSM. DTD P 85 {provides overlay layers, two layers/PSM} Make Channel Map. Server SDC_Map. Server. DTD {provides overlay base} p. 27 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop Merge Channels Rescue © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

Implications for the Grid What we demonstrated - grid was useful in various ways • registration/discovery - Web. Trader and Agent. Gram grid agents • interoperability - e. Gents-grid proxy Grid extensions • each component can be viewed as a generic scalable grid extension • egents adds wireless disconnected agents • Web. Trader adds web-wide agent/resource discovery • Agent. Gram adds general way to MBNLI-enable grid agents using a lightweight interface that operates across the web. • Smart Data Channels adds information flow formalism • at the same time, each is standalone and useful separately Grid implications • several ways to conceptualize the grid - see our earlier paper at www. objs. com to appear in Bradshaw, Handbook of Agent Technology • there might be no minimal agent grid - different subsets of the agent grid are separately useful Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 28 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

OMG Agent Working Group http: //www. objs. com/isig/agents. html • Meeting #11 - Burlingame, CA, September 11 -12, 2000 • Meeting #12 - Orlando, FL, December 11 -15, 2000 Co. ABS/DAML SPEAKERS NEEDED Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 29 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

References • Agility Project Homepage - http: //www. objs. com/agility/index. html • Agility Overview http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/0008 -Co. ABS-Agility-Boston. ppt http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/9910 -Science. Fair. Poster-Agility. ppt • Prototypes • e. Gent: Agents over E-mail http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/9911 -e. Gents. html • Web. Trader: Discovery and Programmed Access to Web-Based Services http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/9904 -Web. Trader. WWW 8 Poster. html • MBNLI sample screens http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/9812 -NLI/MBNLI-Screens. html • Architecture • Characterizing the Agent Grid http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/000304 -characterizing-the-agent-grid. doc • System-wide Grid Properties http: //www. objs. com/aits/9901 -iquos. html • Strawman Agent Architecture http: //www. objs. com/agility/tech-reports/9808 -agent-ref-arch-draft 3. ppt • OMG Agent WG Homepage - http: //www. objs. com/isig/agents. html includes OMG Agent Technology Green Paper, RFI responses, liaison w FIPA, and minutes Craig W. Thompson - thompson@objs. com - www. objs. com/agility - 972 -612 -6998 - August 9, 2000 p. 30 - DARPA Co. ABS Boston Workshop © Copyright 2000 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights

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