This bi-conference workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from the Information Systems and Agents communities who will be shaping the future of information systems engineering.

Topics of Interest   Workshop Format   Special Track   Submission   Program Committee

Important Dates

Workshop Description

Agent-Orientation is emerging as a powerful new paradigm in computing. Concepts and techniques from the agents paradigm could well be the foundations for the next generation of mainstream information systems.

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations today. In almost every sector - manufacturing, education, health care, government, and businesses large and small - information systems are relied upon for everyday work, communication, information gathering, and decision-making. Yet the inflexibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities, and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are flexible, robust, and responsive to rapid and unexpected change.

Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of information systems. They offer higher level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, perception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive workflows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other, their rich representational capabilities allow more faithful and flexible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more effective requirements analysis, and architectural/detailed design. The workshop will focus on how agent concepts and techniques will contribute to meeting information systems needs today and tomorrow.

Topics of Interest

The workshop encourages submissions on all topics related to AOIS, including (but not limited to) the following:

• agent-oriented modeling and design methods
• models and architectures for agent-oriented information systems
• novel information system technologies based on software agents
• agent-oriented requirements engineering
• agents and knowledge management
• agent-oriented approaches to data integration
• agent-based workflow modeling
• agent orientation and e-services/web services
• agent orientation in web information systems
• agent-oriented enterprise and business process modeling
• agent communication languages for business communication
• ontologies and agents
• managing trust and reputation
• automated business-to-business interaction (including negotiation and contracting)

Special Track: Agent-Oriented Methodologies — Commonalities and Distinctions

The growth of interest in software agents and multi-agent systems has recently led to the development of new methodologies based on agent concepts. Methodologies (such as, Gaia, AAII, MaSE, AUML, Message/UML, and Tropos, among others) have become the focal point of attention in the emerging area of agent-oriented software engineering. These methodologies propose different approaches in using agent concepts and techniques at various stages during the software development lifecycle.

To promote deeper understanding among and to foster synergy across research efforts in the various methodologies, this special track solicits research contributions that will identify, analyze, and illustrate the commonalities and distinctions across different methodologies. Methodologies may differ in their objectives and underlying premises, the way they deal with issues such as openness, uncertainty, security, and autonomy, the extent of coverage over the different phases of software engineering, the way they stress the evolution, maintenance, and other non-functional qualities, and eventually with respect to the tools and technologies that can support them. Methodologies may also differ in generality, some focusing on specialized application domains, or specific implementation technologies. A clarification of the similarities and differences among methodologies is needed to guide the practitioner in choosing which methodology to adopt for what applications and circumstances. A clearer understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies, their compatibilities and divergences, will also be crucial for further advancements in the development of methodologies.

Submissions to this special track are encouraged to present their methodology using a case study from an information system application area. The case study is intended to be representative of the kinds of challenges faced by real-world information systems today and tomorrow, but also to be useful to show weaknesses and strengths of the presented methodology. After the workshop we would like to define a "challenge problem" taking contributions from all the participants and use it as a "benchmark example" for comparison in the future workshops.

Submissions must have agent orientation as a central feature. They could include (but are not limited to) papers that:

• contain a detailed exposition of one methodology using a case study and explaining what stages the methodology covers, possibly with direct comparisons to at least one other methodology;
• focus on selected technical issues (e.g., evolution and maintenance, coordination and protocols, validation and verification), analyzing how one or more methodologies deal with those issues, using a case study as much as possible to illustrate;
• analyze and illustrate how selected agent concepts (e.g., roles, responsibilities, capabilities, intentionality, autonomy, dependency networks and trust) are used in different methodologies, and the consequences of those different approaches;
• describe the decisions and commitments supported by one methodology in the development process, possibly showing what kinds of analyses are used to support these decisions;
• compare a methodology to other agent-based methodologies as well as other non-agent-based methodologies (for instance, object-oriented, component-based, etc.);
• present from practical experience the methodological difficulties and challenges a methodology may face, possibly proposing requirements and evolution criteria for evaluating methodologies from practical prospective;
• present a concept and methodology for a multiagent system to effectively process and change massive data with a business, government, or military organization. .

For authors that do not have a case study we suggest using one of the following available at the IS World Net (http://www.isworld.org/):

• Juul Møller Bokhandel A/S Describes the trials and tribulations of a small struggling bookstore, when confronted with rapidly expanding Internet-based book retailers such as Amazon.com. Written by Espen Andersen (Norwegian School of Management), 1997.
• Customer-Centric Reengineering at the Colorado Department of Revenue Presents an innovative, customer-centric approach to reengineering using three projects at a state agency. Projects examined include licensing of casino employees, ports of entry processing, and individual income tax processing. Written by Anol Bhattacherjee (Arizona State University), 1999.
• U S West Global Village Examines the design, justification, and implementation of a corporate intranet at a large U.S. telecommunications company. Written by Anol Bhattacherjee (Arizona State University), 1997.

Workshop Format

The technical program will include invited talks by leading experts in the field, one or more panel discussions, and contributed papers. Poster sessions are also being planned.  Authors of accepted papers who present their paper at one location will also be invited to present their papers as a poster in the other location.

To mitigate the geographic and temporal separation of the two parts of the workshop, electronic discussion will be strongly encouraged. Accepted papers will be posted on the workshop website.  There will be designated discussants for each paper. Discussants' comments will also be posted on the website.

Publication of selected papers from the workshop in a special issue of a journal is being planned.

Format for the Special Track on "Agent-Oriented Methodologies — Commonalities and Distinctions"

To encourage more face-to-face interaction on this special focus, this Special Track will be take place primarily at AOIS@CAiSE. All papers submitted to the special track will be discussed by designated discussants and panels at the CAiSE workshop. Authors for the special track are expected to present their papers at the CAiSE workshop, and be discussants for other papers. Those unable to participate at the CAiSE workshop will have the opportunity to present at the other workshop location. Other activities associated with the special track may also be organized at the other location.

Submission of Papers

To submit a regular paper as a postscript or pdf file, authors should either send it by email (or place it on a web server and send its URL) to pgiorgini@science.unitn.it either by February 22 (for AOIS@CAiSE'02) or by April 22 (for AOIS@AAMAS-02). A separate message with the title, author names, affiliations, contact information and an abstract has to be sent by February 20 or April 20, respectively. Papers must be of reasonable size (not exceeding 15 pages).

Position papers can be submitted at any time by email to pgiorgini@science.unitn.it in ps or pdf format. Please have a look at our list of research questions.
 

 AOIS-2002 Workshop Chairs

Preliminary AOIS-2002 Program Committee

H.-D. Burkhard (Humboldt Univ., DE)
F. Dignum (Univ. of Utrecht, NL)
I.A. Ferguson (B2B Machines, USA)
T. Finin  (UMBC, USA)
A. Gal (Rutgers Univ., USA)
U. Garimella (Andra Pradesh Govt., MSIT, India)
A.K. Ghose (Univ. of Wollongong, AU)
M. Huhns (Univ. S. Carolina, USA)
G. Karakoulas (CIBC and Univ. Toronto, CA)
K. Karlapalem (Indian Inst. of Information Technology, India)
D. Kinny (Univ. of Melbourne, AU)
S. Kirn (Techn. Univ. Ilmenau, DE)
G. Lakemeyer (RWTH Aachen, DE)
D.E. O'Leary (Univ. of Southern California, USA)
F. Lin (Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology, HK)
J.P. Mueller (Siemens, DE)
M. Norrie (Institute for Information Systems, ETH Zentrum Zurich, CH)
J. Odell (James Odell Associates, USA)
M. Schroeder (City Univ. London, UK)
T.A. Wagner (Univ. of Maine, USA)
C. Woo (Univ. British Columbia, CA)
B. Yu (North Carolina State University, USA)
F. Zambonelli (Univ. di Modena e Reggio Emilia, IT)

This web page at  http://www.AOIS.org  was last updated on 4-Mar-2002.