Hong
Zhang, Dan Jong Kim, Ram Ramesh
Management
Science & Systems
School
of Management
State
University of New York at Buffalo
Abstract
Research on ontology is becoming increasingly pervasive
in the computer science and information systems communities. Founded on pragmatics, theories and even empirical
determinations, an ontology basically supports not only the design process
but also the implementation and deployment of information systems. While an
ontology provides guidance on information capturing and representation strategies,
a framework actually realizes it
in a usable form. In general, a framework provides a complete set of generic
applications with representation formalisms that a system designer can customize
or extend to address particular needs.
We are
developing an ontological framework for designing multi-agent systems. Termed
RITA (Role-Infrastructure-Taskflow Agents), the framework provides a
comprehensive archetype for designing multi-agent systems in general. RITA identifies of four basic constructs:
role, infrastructure, taskflow, and agent.
The role construct defines the services and responsibilities of the
roles involved. The infrastructure
construct identifies the internal state and knowledge/resource base of an
agent. The taskflow construct
determines the internal/external environments and interactions in a multi-agent
system. The agent construct specifies
the different agent types. Our objective in this research is to develop a
design tool that designers can use to “stamp out” agents and integrate their
schemas to suit their application needs.
In the paper, we present the basic architecture of the proposed framework.
This work has
been motivated by several reasons. Some of the most important ones are: (1)
the emergence of multi-agent systems as a reality, (2) proliferation of agent
architectures and even some standards which have serious compatibility and
interoperability problems with other objects in a computing environment, (3)
non-existence of viable frameworks for practical and efficient design of agents.
Interestingly, the archetypal components of RITA essentially capture most
of the pragmatics and theories underlying agent systems, and thus rendering
them universal. This work is founded on and extends the following
research streams developed by us over the years: enterprise computing frameworks, object-oriented formalisms, collaboration
systems and database theory.