Cooperation in Industrial Systems

ARCHON is an ongoing ESPRIT II project (P-2256) which is approximately half way through its five year duration. It is concerned with defining and applying techniques from the area of Distributed Artificial Intelligence to the development of real-size industrial applications. Such techniques enable multiple problem solvers (e.g. expert systems, databases and conventional numerical software systems) to communicate and cooperate with each other to improve both their individual problem solving behavior and the behavior of the community as a whole. This paper outlines the niche of ARCHON in the Distributed AI world and provides an overview of the philosophy and architecture of our approach the essence of which is to be both general (applicable to the domain of industrial process control) and powerful enough to handle real-world problems

Towards a new vision of Information System Engineering.

Information Technologies bear the potential of new uses. These uses provoke a new organization which induces a new vision of software engineering. Under the influence of globalization, and the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that modify radically our relationship with space and time, the hierarchical company locked up on its local borders becomes an Extended Company, without borders, opened and adaptable. In this context, this paper proposes a shift in the way the design of information systems is viewed, so that the digital information system and potential user are in harmony right from the design stage of the system. The goal is to help to design systems that are useful. It will therefore be a matter of distributed intelligence of the situation in terms of interactions and cooperative partners rather than in terms of a more passive user. This means putting at the disposal of the user, seen as a "partner", a system that will help him or her think more efficiently about a situation. The approach adopted is a global philosophy based on business process management within the framework of all the methodological principles. The research described here is therefore a contribution to the software engineering.User; Software Engineering; Information System; Business Process Management; Extended Company; Digital Information System;

A survey of agent-oriented methodologies

This article introduces the current agent-oriented methodologies. It discusses what approaches have been followed (mainly extending existing object oriented and knowledge engineering methodologies), the suitability of these approaches for agent modelling, and some conclusions drawn from the survey