Resolving Conflicts in Highly Reactive Teams

In distributed cooperation frameworks for completely autonomous agents, conflicts between the involved agents can occur due to inconsistent data available to the agents. In highly dynamic domains, such as RoboCup, it is often neccessary to accept a certain level of conflicts in order to decrease reaction time of single agents, instead of relying on error-free, but extensive communication. However, this may lead to situations in which unresolved conflicts linger and cause cooperation to break down completely. In our cooperation framework, ALICA, we designed and implemented a simple but effective approach to detect these cases and resolve them quickly through a bully algorithm

Self-Management – Potentiale, Probleme, Perspektiven

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Gordon Moores Gesetz vom exponentiellen Wachstum der Transistordichte pro Quadrat-Zoll hat seit 1965 die IT-Industrie geprägt. Mit der damit einhergehenden Explosion der Rechnerleistung wurde die Software immer leistungsfähiger, und man ist dazu übergegangen, Rechnersysteme zu vernetzen und Anwendungen zu verteilen. Eine Folge dieser Entwicklungen ist die rapide zunehmende Komplexität der modernen Informationstechnologie. 40 Jahre nach Moores Entdeckung droht eben diese Tatsache, dem bisherigen exponentiellen Wachstum natürliche Grenzen zu setzen. Moderne, vernetzte Rechnersysteme, wie sie in der Industrie weit verbreitet sind, sind schon heute zu komplex als dass sie auf manuellem Wege, d.h., durch menschliche Administratoren, in einem optimalen Betriebszustand gehalten werden können. Die Folgen sind eine unzureichende Ausnutzung vorhandener Ressourcen, wiederkehrende Fehlerzustände und Lücken in der Absicherung gegen mutwillige Angriffe auf die System-Integrität. Dies führt zu erheblichen finanziellen Mehraufwendungen bzw. Verlusten. Ein permanent überfordertes Administrationspersonal, trägt durch eigene Fehler ein Übriges bei.Schenkt man den jüngst aufkeimenden Initiativen von IT-Giganten wie IBM, Microsoft und Sun Glauben, so heißt die Lösung dieser Misere automatisiertes Management. Vernetzte Rechnersysteme sollen sich auf lange Sicht selbst verwalten. Man erhofft sich hiervon ein effektiveres Management und eine Freistellung von Personal, welches sich dann um wichtigere Aufgaben kümmern kann.In diesem Beitrag beleuchten wir den aktuellen Stand und die Perspektiven im Bereich des Self-Managements. Des Weiteren diskutieren wir offene Fragen, welche auf dem Weg zu selbstverwaltenden Systemen zu lösen sind

The Web Service Challenge - A review on Semantic Web Service Composition

Every year, contesters submit contributions to the Web Service Challenge (WSC) in order to determine which service composition system is the most efficient one. In this challenge, semantic composition tasks must be solved and the results delivered by the composers are checked for correctness. The time needed for the composition process is another important competition criterion. After we had participated with great success in the 2006 and 2007 WSC, we were asked to manage the Web Service Challenge 2008. In this paper, we present the challenge task, the challenge rules, the document format used, and the results of this competition. We provide a summary over the past challenges and give first previews on the future developments planned for the Web Service Challenges to come

QoS-based Self-Management for Business Processes

Business processes are commonly implemented as compositions of Web Services, using the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) as an orchestration specification. Business processes do not only require an appropriate setup but also need to be monitored throughout their runtime, especially when Quality-of-service (QoS) constraints have to be met. Monitoring results may be used for the automated reconfiguration and optimization of business processes. We show how we achieve self-management based on QoS constraints within our system. The BPRules Language that we set up can be used to improve the QoS behavior of business processes by triggering appropriate management actions on the process. Also we propose a service selection strategy for the dynamic selection and replacement of services within business processes

VENUS meets SEMAT : How do they compare?

SEMAT (Software Engineering Methods And Theory) is an initiative to define a generic foundation for software engineering as a rigorous discipline. The so-called SEMAT kernel provides a thinking framework for software engineers that is not constrained to certain methods and processes but aims to encompass all kinds of proven principles and best practices. Our own interdisciplinary VENUS development method is designed to achieve similar generality and compatibility objectives, although the chosen application domain in VENUS has a much narrower scope. In this paper we compare the VENUS development method with SEMAT. The main contributions are positioning the VENUS development concepts within the SEMAT conceptual framework, and investigating whether SEMAT is an appropriate framework for dealing with inherently interdisciplinary development processes. In the end we present suggestions for the improvement of both approaches.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

VENUS meets SEMAT : How do they compare?

SEMAT (Software Engineering Methods And Theory) is an initiative to define a generic foundation for software engineering as a rigorous discipline. The so-called SEMAT kernel provides a thinking framework for software engineers that is not constrained to certain methods and processes but aims to encompass all kinds of proven principles and best practices. Our own interdisciplinary VENUS development method is designed to achieve similar generality and compatibility objectives, although the chosen application domain in VENUS has a much narrower scope. In this paper we compare the VENUS development method with SEMAT. The main contributions are positioning the VENUS development concepts within the SEMAT conceptual framework, and investigating whether SEMAT is an appropriate framework for dealing with inherently interdisciplinary development processes. In the end we present suggestions for the improvement of both approaches.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Kommunikation zwischen autonomen Agenten

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Softwareagenten sind Programme, die einen Auftrag autonom und weitgehend selbständig ausführen. Man spricht von mobilen Agenten, wenn diese Programme selbstbestimmt ihre Ausführungsumgebung in einem Netzwerk wechseln können. Die Mobilität der Software impliziert ein neues Programmierparadigma für verteilte Systeme, das die bekannten Interaktionskonzepte herkömmlicher Verteilungsplattformen erweitert. Anwendungen mit mobilen Agenten finden sich in ganz unterschiedlichen Bereichen, wie Netz- und Systemmanagement, elektronische Marktplätze und Logistik

Different Approaches to Semantic Web Service Composition

Thisdocument is a preview version and not necessarily identical with the original

09201 Abstracts Collection -- Self-Healing and Self-Adaptive Systems

From May 10th 2009 to May 15th 2009 the Dagstuhl Seminar 09201 ``Self-Healing and Self-Adaptive Systems\u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar are put together in this paper. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available. A description of the seminar topics, goals and results in general can be found in a separate document ``Executive Summary\u27\u27