Comparative study of design: application to Engineering Design

A recent exploratory study examines design processes across domains and compares them. This is achieved through a series of interdisciplinary, participative workshops. A systematic framework is used to collect data from expert witnesses who are practising designers across domains from engineering through architecture to product design and fashion, including film production, pharmaceutical drugs, food, packaging, graphics and multimedia and software. Similarities and differences across domains are described which indicate the types of comparative analysis we have been able to do from our data. The paper goes further and speculates on possible lessons for selected areas of engineering design which can be drawn from comparison with processes in other domains. As such this comparative design study offers the potential for improving engineering design processes. More generally it is a first step in creating a discipline of comparative design which aims to provide a new rich picture of design processes

Automated Negotiation for Provisioning Virtual Private Networks Using FIPA-Compliant Agents

This paper describes the design and implementation of negotiating agents for the task of provisioning virtual private networks. The agents and their interactions comply with the FIPA specification and they are implemented using the FIPA-OS agent framework. Particular attention is focused on the design and implementation of the negotiation algorithms

Model Based Development of Quality-Aware Software Services

Modelling languages and development frameworks give support for functional and structural description of software architectures. But quality-aware applications require languages which allow expressing QoS as a first-class concept during architecture design and service composition, and to extend existing tools and infrastructures adding support for modelling, evaluating, managing and monitoring QoS aspects. In addition to its functional behaviour and internal structure, the developer of each service must consider the fulfilment of its quality requirements. If the service is flexible, the output quality depends both on input quality and available resources (e.g., amounts of CPU execution time and memory). From the software engineering point of view, modelling of quality-aware requirements and architectures require modelling support for the description of quality concepts, support for the analysis of quality properties (e.g. model checking and consistencies of quality constraints, assembly of quality), tool support for the transition from quality requirements to quality-aware architectures, and from quality-aware architecture to service run-time infrastructures. Quality management in run-time service infrastructures must give support for handling quality concepts dynamically. QoS-aware modeling frameworks and QoS-aware runtime management infrastructures require a common evolution to get their integration

Using ontologies to support and critique decisions

Supporting decision making in the working environment has long being pursued by practitioners across a variety of fields, ranging from sociology and operational research to cognitive and computer scientists. A number of computer-supported systems and various technologies have been used over the years, but as we move into more global and flexible organisational structures, new technologies and challenges arise. In this paper, I argue for an ontology-based solution and present some of the early prototypes we have been developing, assess their impact on the decision making process and elaborate on the costs involved

Introducing risk management into the grid

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are explicit statements about all expectations and obligations in the business partnership between customers and providers. They have been introduced in Grid computing to overcome the best effort approach, making the Grid more interesting for commercial applications. However, decisions on negotiation and system management still rely on static approaches, not reflecting the risk linked with decisions. The EC-funded project "AssessGrid" aims at introducing risk assessment and management as a novel decision paradigm into Grid computing. This paper gives a general motivation for risk management and presents the envisaged architecture of a "risk-aware" Grid middleware and Grid fabric, highlighting its functionality by means of three showcase scenarios

Negotiation processes within inter-organizational alliances

This paper describesthe negotiation component of E-Alliance, a software infrastructure defined for supporting negotiation activities in concurrent inter-organizational alliances. The E-Alliance’s main intent is to preserve the autonomy of organizations grouped in an alliance. The purpose of this work is to offer support for small and medium enterprises which cannot or do not want to fulfill a big contract alone. This approach is illustrated by a sample scenario where partners are printshops grouped into an alliance to better accomplish customers’ demands.negotiation, middleware, virtual enterprises, multi-agent systems, interaction protocol