Organizational intelligence and negotiation based DAI systems – theoretical foundations and experimental results

A steadily increasing number of researchers believes that so-called ’organizational’ multi agent systems are a key technology to support information and knowledge processing activities in cooperative, networked organizations. This, in turn, necessitates their integration with the underlying human-centred organization.The concept of an ’organization’ has emerged as central to the structuring of activities of both decentralized industrial and commercial conglomerates and collections of intelligent problem solvers within Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) systems. Of late a new discipline has begun to emerge, that of Organizational Intelligence (OI). Organizational Intelligence demands a greater synthesis between the principles of Organization Theory (OT) and DAI, by the explicit incorporation of theories of both organizations and DAI into the field of OI. This paper concentrates on two rather important features of OI, namely organizational memory and learning capabilities. It will first discuss the theoretical foundations. Then it will be shown how the contract net approach can be extended to meet these demands. Finally, it will be proved by some experimental results that the increased "intellectual" capabilities of the extended contract net will substantially contribute to the performance as well as the quality of solution processes.<br/

Optimistic concurrency control revisited

Several years ago optimistic concurrency control gained much attention in the database community. However, two-phase locking was already well established, especially in the relational database market. Concerning traditional database systems most developers felt that pessimistic concurrency control might not be the best solution for concurrency control, but, a well-known and accepted one. With the work on new generation database systems, however, there has been a revival of optimistic concurrency control (at least a partial one). This paper will reconsider optimistic concurrency control. It will lay bare the shortcomings of the original approach and present some major improvements. Moreover, several techniques will be presented which especially support read transactions with the consequence that the number of backups can be decreased substantially. Finally, a general solution for the starvation problem is presented. The solution is perfectly consistent with the underlying optimistic approach

Semantics-based locking:from isolation to cooperation

'Advanced database applications', such as CAD/CAM, CASE, large AI applications or imageand voice processing, place demands on transaction management which differ substantially from those of traditional database applications. In particular, there is a need to support 'enriched' data models (which include, for example, complex objects or version and configuration management), 'synergistic' cooperative work, and application- or user-supported consistency. This paper deals with a subset of these problems. It develops a methodology for implementing semantics-based concurrency control on the basis of ordinary locking. More specifically, it will be shown how conventional locking can step by step be improved and refined to finally reach our initial goal, namely a comprehensive support of synergistic cooperative work by the exploitation of application-specific semantics. In addition to the 'conventional' binding of locks to transactions we consider the binding of locks to objects (object related) and subjects (subject related locks). Object related locks can define persistent and adaptable access restrictions on objects. This permits, among others, the modeling of different types of version models (time versions, version graphs) as well as library (standard) objects. Subject related locks are bound to subjects (user, application, etc.) and can be used among others to supervise or direct the transfer of objects between transactions.<br/

Workflow Management mit kooperativen Softwaresystemen:State of the Art und Problemabriß

Ausgehend von den Forderungen nach Markt- und Kundenorientierung, organisatorischer Reaktionsschnelligkeit, Flexibilität und Anpassungsfähigkeit wird derzeit in Wissenschaft und Praxis mit Hochdruck an der Entwicklung neuer organisatorischer Konzepte gearbeitet.In diesem Zusammenhang ist auch häufig von Workflow-Management-Systemen die Rede. Diese sind angetreten, um Geschäftsprozesse in einer Organisation aktiv und durch den Einsatz von Rechnertechnologie zu unterstützen. In dieser Arbeit wird zunächst der aktuelle Stand der Kunst zur Modellierung von Geschäftsprozessen einer kritischen Betrachtung unterzogen. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Strukturierbarkeit von Aufgaben und die Komplexität der Vorgangserzeugung zwei für den Entwurf von Workflow-Management-Systemen wesentliche, diesen jedoch in unterschiedlicher Weise beeinflussende Kriterien sind. Betrachtet man nun allerdings moderne dezentralisierte Organisationen, dann stellt man rasch fest, daß die dort gegebenen Anforderungen insbesondere an die Modellierung und Steuerung von Geschäftsprozessen weit über das hinausgehen, was Workflow-Management-Systeme konventioneller Technologie leisten können. Hier bieten jedoch die in der Verteilten Künstlichen Intelligenz entwickelten Konzepte erfolgversprechende Lösungsansätze. Die Arbeit zeigt auf, wie diese zur Koordination von Geschäftsprozessen genutzt und so zur Flexibilisierung der informationstechnischen Unterstützung von Geschäftsprozessen eingesetzt werden können.<br

Zur Verbundintelligenz integrierter Mensch-Computer-Teams:ein organisationstheoretischer Ansatz

Der Beitrag führt zunächst in neuere organisationstheoretische Arbeiten zur "Organisatorischen Intelligenz" ein. Diese setzen u.a. voraus, kognitive menschliche und maschinelle Arbeit durch entsprechenden Einsatz informationstechnischer Maßnahmen organisatorisch zu integrieren. Die Berücksichtigung aktueller Anforderungen an die Führungsorganisation (Dezentralisierung und Delegation, Kooperation statt zentraler Vorgaben, Erweiterung der Bereichsautonomie) führt zu dem auf den Kooperationsparadigmen der Informatik basierenden Vorschlag einer föderativen Informationssystemarchitektur. Diese enthält als einen wesentlichen Bestandteil ein wissensbasiertes Koordinationsmanagement, welches die Arbeit integrierter Mensch-Computer-Teams wirkungsvoll unterstützt und das Verhalten kooperativ-intelligenter Informationssysteme an den Zielen der Organisatorischen Intelligenz auszurichten erlaubt

TOPAZ:a tool kit for the assembly of transaction managers for non-standard applications

'Advanced database applications', such as CAD/CAM, CASE, large AI applications or image and voice processing, place demands on transaction management which differ substantially from those in traditional database applications. In particular, there is a need to support 'enriched' data models (which include, for example, complex objects or version and configuration management), 'synergistic' cooperative work, and application- or user-supported consistency. Unfortunately, the demands are not only sophisticated but also diversified, which means that different application areas might even place contradictory demands on transaction management. This paper deals with these problems and offers a solution by introducing a flexible and adaptable tool kit approach for transaction management

Controlling cooperation and recovery in nested transactions

Recovery is a hard problem in environments where transactions perform work in a cooperative style (e.g., design environments). We propose concepts to control cooperation and recovery within nested transaction hierarchies. By allowing different nodes to run different protocols, we can build so-called recovery spheres with well-defined properties. We characterize those properties and illustrate them by examples from design environments.<br/

AEGIS:Agent oriEnted orGanISations

Today's enterprises are faced with highly dynamic, sometimes even hostile environments. This paper dicovers that the two most prominent organizational strategies addressing these challenges, namely that of widespread decentralization and of business process orientation, are inherently conflicting. We argue that cooperative knowledge processing technology can contribute to dissolve this conflict. For this purpose, we introduce the reader into the field of Distributed Artificial Intelligence. On that basis we then develop the concept of Agent oriEnted orGanISations (AEGIS), in order to support the flexible modeling and management of business processes in decentralized organizational settings. Applying to methods of Distributed Planning a set of process modeling and process interaction operators is defined. These operators also permit to automatically create and customize computerized configurations of business processes. The concepts are presented in the context of an application in private banking, namely that of a Credit Advisory System.<br

Multi-agent systems and their role in future energy grids

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 14181 “Multi-agent systems and their role in future energy grids”. A number of recent events (e. g. Fukushima, Japan, and the largest blackout in history, India) have once again increased global attention on climate change and resource depletion. The evaluation of the feasibility of current approaches for future energy generation, distribution, transportation, and consumption has become an important requirement for most countries. There is a general consensus on the need for a fundamental transformation of future energy grids. The development of an information and communication technology (ICT) support infrastructure was identified as the key challenge in the design of an end-to-end smart grid. A multiagent system, with agents located at th