agentlink newsletter article on agents and the grid
For info, the article I wrote on agents and the grid has just appeared in AgentLink news issue 17 (page 18-19) - see http://www.agentlink.org/newsletter/ -- Dave
Hello The 1st International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and Grid (SKG2005) will be held in Beijing, November 28-29, 2005, organised by the China Knowledge Grid Research Group. The conference web site is http://kg.ict.ac.cn/SKG2005/ A flyer is available for distribution (please advertise!), on http://www.semanticgrid.org/docs/SKG2005-CFP-Flyer.pdf The CFP is reproduced below for info. Thanks -- Dave 1st International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and Grid (SKG 2005) November 28-29, 2005, Beijing, China Topics (include but not limited to) * Semantics and Semantic Grid. Semantic Normalization, Semantic Computing; Semantic Interoperability; Semantic-based Virtual Organizations; Semantic Capture; Automatic Semantic Annotation; Semantic Web; Semantic Web Services; Theory and Model of Semantic Grid. * Knowledge and Knowledge Grid. Internet-based Knowledge Mining, Representation and Reasoning; Theory and Model of Knowledge Grid; Large-Scale Distributed Knowledge Management; Information/Knowledge/Service Integration; Ontology; Knowledge Flow; Knowledge Discovery; Internet-based Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering. * Advanced Computing Model. Internet-based Multi-agent Systems; Nature-Inspired Computing; Autonomous Computing; Internet-based Intelligence and Applications; P2P Computing; Grid Computing; Self-Organized Intelligence; Semantic-based Interface. * Systems, Tools and Applications. On e-Science; e-Business; e-Learning and e-Government. Conference Co-Chairs Hai Zhuge, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China David De Roure, University of Southampton, UK Program Co-Chairs Jie Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Geoffrey C. Fox, Indiana University, USA Important Dates August 20, 2005 Deadline for submission of papers September 20, 2005 Notification of acceptance October 10, 2005 Final copy due November 28-29, 2005 Conference Submissions All submitted papers will be reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and clarity. Please email manuscripts in PDF format to sg@ict.ac.cn. Publication Accepted papers will be printed in pre-conference proceedings. Selected papers will be published as special issues/sections in the following international journals (SCI Indexed) after extension and re-review: Journal of Systems and Software (Elsevier); Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience (Wiley); Journal of Computer Science and Technology (Springer). Organizer: China Knowledge Grid Research Group http://kg.ict.ac.cn Sponsor: China National Basic Research and Development Program's Semantic Grid Project Conference Web Page: http://www.knowledgegrid.net/SKG2005; http://kg.ict.ac.cn/SKG2005
Hello Reminder - GGF14 - The Fourteenth Global Grid Forum - will be held June 27-30, 2005 in Chicago. The new Grid communities program track includes a session on Semantic Grids and the Agents Community, currently scheduled on the Tuesday (prior to the Communities Panel), 6:30-7:15pm. This session will feature presentations by myself (on behalf of the grid community) and Jonathan Dale (from Fujitsu, as a member of the agents community) - and an opportunity for discussion. It follows up the discussions at GGF13. PS While I'm here, GGF15 will be 3-6 October in Boston. Thanks -- Dave
Hello Just a reminder that SKG2005 - the 1st International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and the Grid - has its paper deadline on August 20th. See http://kg.ict.ac.cn/SKG2005/ Also, the Journal of Web Semantics Special Issue on Semantic Grid has submission deadline September 15. See http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/semanticgrid/ Thanks - happy writing! -- Dave
Hello A reminder to those of you about to attend GGF14 in Chicago - there will be a session on "Semantic Grids and the Agents Community" on Wednesday June 29, 9:00 - 9:45, organised by the Semantic Grid Research Group. The objectives of this session are: 1. To discuss grid problems which may be addressed by technologies developed in the agent based computing community 2. Specifically to consider the role of agents in the context of the large number of grid services anticipated in the future 3. To suggest next steps in engagement between these communities See http://www.ggf.org/GGF14/ggf_events_next_schedule_Semantic.htm I look forward to seeing some of you there - and for everyone else I'll post the slides on this web site after the event. Thanks -- Dave
Hello again For those in Europe (but perhaps also of general interest that this is happening), the European Commission's Information Society and Media DG has published a call for tenders for a study on 'the Semantic Grid: technologies and standardisation'. I quote: "The study will provide a critical analysis of current European involvement in, and contributions to, standardisation initiatives relevant to the Semantic Grid, while identifying future needs of the Semantic Grid in terms of standardisation. Additionally, the study will identify the future needs of industry and business in terms of technologies and standardisation for semantic developments of the 'Next Generation Grid'. From the analyses undertaken, recommendations (including a 'road map') will be formulated and proposed to the European Semantic Grid constituency that will enable it to maximise its impact in international standardisation activities." See http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&S... Thanks -- Dave
To GGF14 attendees The following panel at GGF14 will also be relevant to Semantic Grid (if only because I'm on the panel and just might mention it ;-) "HASS-RG panel - WUN Cultural Computing Grid" Tuesday June 28 2.30-4pm in Windsor More details below. Also don't forget the Semantic Grid and agents session on Wednesday - please come along... "Semantic Grids and the Agents Community" Wednesday June 29 9-9.45am in Governor's Suite I'm here at the event till Thursday if anyone wants to touch base on any Semantic Grid things. Thanks -- Dave The WUN Cultural Computing Grid Tuesday, June 28 2:30 - 4:00 Windsor Room This panel will discuss the creation of a WUN Cultural Computing Grid. With the creation of the Cultural Computing Grid, we seek to establish a knowledge base and technology infrastructure for on-demand-access to digitized cultural artifacts. This nontraditional grid would provide access to materials, support tools for individuals and communities from populations who wish to access what may be a rich archive of heritage and cultural materials available in various locations throughout the world . but which for reasons of geography and/or access are not easily obtained. The discussion will include the technical as well as the sociological elements (social motivation and the challenges for developing a better social network, the need for education, outreach and training) involved in the creation of the WUN Cultural Computing Grid. Our Objectives are: . To prototype user-defined interfaces to the data-grid that are highly flexible and simple to use for depositing, accessing and analyzing digital artifacts. . To document the process, design, implementation and communications of the team producing the infrastructure and content and the resulting knowledge base for presentation in scholarly journals, personal journals, technology manuals, web blogs and books. Participants: Allison Clark, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Regan Moore, San Diego Supercomputing Center Nosh Contractor, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Kevin Franklin, Humanities Research Institute David DeRoure, University of Southampton Andre Brock, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Panel Organized by HASS-RG Calendar: Windsor Details: The Humanities, Arts and Social Science Research Group Session Leads: Allison Clark, PhD and Kevin Franklin, EdD
A brief summary of my notes from the Cultural Computing Grid panel. Others may wish to add all the salient points I've missed as this simply comes from notes to myself during the panel and is therefore a somewhat singular view! The panel was chaired by Allison Clark (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign) and the panelists were: Reagan Moore, San Diego Supercomputing Center Associate Director Data-Intensive Computing, and the person behind SRB http://www.sdsc.edu/~moore/rmoore.html Nosh Contractor, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Department of Speech Communication, Department of Psychology, Knowledge networks http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/nosh Stephen Beck, Louisiana State University http://www.music.lsu.edu/faculty/beck.html Composer and e.g. responsible for Nemeaux cluster for computational arts David DeRoure, University of Southampton Semantic Grid http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dder Andre Brock, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Community Informatics Reagan gave a demo of traversing the sites of the SRB-based WUN DataGrid (SDSC, Bergen, Manchester, NCSA, Southampton). Due to the speed of the network connection this was an ongoing demo throughout the panel, handing back to the panel in between visits ("...and now back to Reagan for the next visit" :) Actually this made a good point to support the panel discussion, i.e. the issue of ease of use of the Grid infrastructure. Nosh Contractor talked about making it easier to use the Grid by making recommendations to users based on the trails of previous users, touching on social networks. Stephen, who is both user and "technician", made a number of very pereptive points and I hope someone else noted them! He later talked about the recent ruling re Grokster and the significance of this. I told the story of last summer's "E-science in the Arts and Humanities" seminar run by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. In discussing the role of e-Science infrastructure (e.g. Grid) in A&H disciplines, I had noted a substantial need for information discovery and integration technologies - i.e. Semantic Grid requirements (see report of the seminar on http://www.ahrcict.rdg.ac.uk/activities/e_science.pdf) Andre Brock gave a community informatics perspective - community informatics is about enabling communities with ICT. I noted that much of the discussion had been about the A&H community as *users* but that they also had much to offer the Grid community, e.g. in terms of understanding of community informatics, or social shaping, of confidentiality and privacy issues. I later noted that an effective way of articulating the requirements of researchers is to find out what *questions* they want to ask. e.g. in the GGF Semantic Grid charter there are example questions from e-Scientists, and in the course of the panel there had been examples of other questions. In general the panel identified the issues and challenges to achieving a "cultural grid" - and there are many, but with new funding in the UK A&H research community and other initiatives we look forward to making progress. Look out for HASS-RG events at future GGFs! -- Dave On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, David De Roure wrote:
To GGF14 attendees
The following panel at GGF14 will also be relevant to Semantic Grid (if only because I'm on the panel and just might mention it ;-)
"HASS-RG panel - WUN Cultural Computing Grid" Tuesday June 28 2.30-4pm in Windsor
More details below. Also don't forget the Semantic Grid and agents session on Wednesday - please come along...
"Semantic Grids and the Agents Community" Wednesday June 29 9-9.45am in Governor's Suite
I'm here at the event till Thursday if anyone wants to touch base on any Semantic Grid things.
Thanks
-- Dave
The WUN Cultural Computing Grid
Tuesday, June 28 2:30 - 4:00 Windsor Room
This panel will discuss the creation of a WUN Cultural Computing Grid.
With the creation of the Cultural Computing Grid, we seek to establish a knowledge base and technology infrastructure for on-demand-access to digitized cultural artifacts. This nontraditional grid would provide access to materials, support tools for individuals and communities from populations who wish to access what may be a rich archive of heritage and cultural materials available in various locations throughout the world . but which for reasons of geography and/or access are not easily obtained. The discussion will include the technical as well as the sociological elements (social motivation and the challenges for developing a better social network, the need for education, outreach and training) involved in the creation of the WUN Cultural Computing Grid.
Our Objectives are:
. To prototype user-defined interfaces to the data-grid that are highly flexible and simple to use for depositing, accessing and analyzing digital artifacts.
. To document the process, design, implementation and communications of the team producing the infrastructure and content and the resulting knowledge base for presentation in scholarly journals, personal journals, technology manuals, web blogs and books.
Participants:
Allison Clark, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Regan Moore, San Diego Supercomputing Center Nosh Contractor, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Kevin Franklin, Humanities Research Institute David DeRoure, University of Southampton Andre Brock, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Panel Organized by HASS-RG Calendar: Windsor Details: The Humanities, Arts and Social Science Research Group Session Leads: Allison Clark, PhD and Kevin Franklin, EdD
I just came across this interesting article in AlwaysOn advocating OWL and RDF to realise "The Missing Layer: Information Grid" http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=11140_0_5_0_C More is promised: "In the next few blog posts we will detail more about each of the 5 application areas, identify how to get started in each, and define the limits of scalability and performance for the new layer." -- Dave
Hello The slides from this morning's session are available on http://www.semanticgrid.org/GGF/ggf14/ We gave out a big pile of AgentLink newsletters - those who didn't get one or who weren't at the session can find it online here (select issue 17, April 2005) http://www.agentlink.org/newsletter/ Will report back on followup discussions later. Thanks -- Dave
Hello Some thoughts from the discussion at the end of this morning's session: - The world we describe, where the decision about exactly which service is to be used is taken out of the hands of the users, may not be what all users want. - It was apparent that the agents approach is more "loosely coupled" than the grid services approach appears to be at this time, and may therefore be particularly beneficial at the inter-grid level. - How to engage the agents and grid communities? In agents there have been very successfuly competitions / challenges (Jon Dale ran an Agent Cities one). Could we do a challenge on the Grid? This would require some Grid services. I will take this issue back to GGF - i.e. will GGF provide/coordinate/list Grid services for community use? It also requies a scenario(s) (which must be motivating!) Suggestions? - People in the research community are looking at agents and web services and at semantic web services. What happens when working with grid services instead? e.g. Are the existing solutions affected by the state-handling? Do grid services go some way to providing agent functionality beyond web services? Are OWL-S/WSMO/WSDL-S neutral about the extra functionality in Grid services? Please add to this anything I've forgotten (I'm sure there's something...) Incidentally, I heard from Julie on the GGF operations side that we had over half the registered participants at GGF in the community track this morning - this is a clear success for the community track approach! I welcome comments on this that I can feed back into the GGF community council. Thanks -- Dave
Hi all, First of all thanks to Dave for providing food for thought on some interesting issues. I would like to trigger some discussion on the following point on the integration issues of various technologies (Grid services, Web Services, Agents, Semantic Web Services..)
- People in the research community are looking at agents and web services and at semantic web services. What happens when working with grid services instead? e.g. Are the existing solutions affected by the state-handling? Do grid services go some way to providing agent functionality beyond web services? Are OWL-S/WSMO/WSDL-S neutral about the extra functionality in Grid services?
1. In one of the earlier discussions on the integration issues of agents and grid computing, I have pointed out that most of the solutions that aim to integrate agents and web services, they usually end up in bridging the gap between the communication protocols. OR atleast this is what I have experienced. Probably we need some effort like JAS (Java Agent Services) which ended up prematurely, unfortunately. JAS like functionality will be needed in order to fill this gap and provide interoperability with existing service oriented architectures like (web services and Grid) 2. Agent Community has a lot of experience in Communication and Interaction protocols that provide the basis for autonomy and negotiation in an Agent Platform. And current research inititaives in web and grid world clearly depict that both web and grid world also require negotiation and communication languages. SLAs is one of the step in this direction. Web service choreography is another for defining interactions with a given web service. People in semantic web services community are now developing choreography languages to define complex interaction patterns. In agent paradigm, an agent cannot directly invoke the method of another, rather they have to exchange ACL messages which can ultimately leads to negotiation and interaction before invoking another agent behavior or this model can be used to acquire a resource or invoking a method of a service, or forming a VO in Grid. Current Web Services standards lack this model of interaction and invocation. But no doubt web services need interaction and negotiation and Choreography languages and SLAs specs for negotiation are steps forward in this direction. Now the question arises that if agents characteristics like communication and negotiation protocols are adopted by web services without any feedback from agent community, how we will end up in the integration of these two technologies? 3. As far as state handling and existing solutions are concerned, existing developing systems (those which I know, and I am working with) like WSMX (Web Service Modelling Execution Environment) and Adaptive Services Grid platform which is still in design phases will be using WS-Addressing for handling state. GT4 has also implemented WS-addressing. WSRF.Net is another example. 4. As far as WSMO and Grid service are concerned. We are planning to develop GSMO (Grid Service modeling ontology) to capture concepts from the Grid world and to describe Grid Services comprehensively. I have proposed this in GGF-12 and feedback was to get some use cases from the Grid community and if possible then a GGF working group should be established in order to allign with Grid standards. (May be Dave can suggest how should we proceed with this?) These are some of my personal thoughts, please correct me if I am wrong somewhere. Best regards, Kashif -----Original Message----- From: owner-sem-grd@ggf.org [mailto:owner-sem-grd@ggf.org] On Behalf Of David De Roure Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 7:35 PM To: Semantic Grid Research Group Subject: [sem-grd] Re: GGF14 Semantic Grids and the Agents Community Hello Some thoughts from the discussion at the end of this morning's session: - The world we describe, where the decision about exactly which service is to be used is taken out of the hands of the users, may not be what all users want. - It was apparent that the agents approach is more "loosely coupled" than the grid services approach appears to be at this time, and may therefore be particularly beneficial at the inter-grid level. - How to engage the agents and grid communities? In agents there have been very successfuly competitions / challenges (Jon Dale ran an Agent Cities one). Could we do a challenge on the Grid? This would require some Grid services. I will take this issue back to GGF - i.e. will GGF provide/coordinate/list Grid services for community use? It also requies a scenario(s) (which must be motivating!) Suggestions? - People in the research community are looking at agents and web services and at semantic web services. What happens when working with grid services instead? e.g. Are the existing solutions affected by the state-handling? Do grid services go some way to providing agent functionality beyond web services? Are OWL-S/WSMO/WSDL-S neutral about the extra functionality in Grid services? Please add to this anything I've forgotten (I'm sure there's something...) Incidentally, I heard from Julie on the GGF operations side that we had over half the registered participants at GGF in the community track this morning - this is a clear success for the community track approach! I welcome comments on this that I can feed back into the GGF community council. Thanks -- Dave
participants (2)
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David De Roure
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Kashif Iqbal