Date[ September 26, 1998             ]       Recordnr[        ]
Who[ ns, gw, lm, wp, db
Agenda[ 

Minutes[ 

Future meetings will be Tuesday 10:30, starting Oct. 6., in room CS498.

State of the project:
RMI-wrapper: upgraded to 2.0 and documented
CORBA-wrapper: coded, halfway through testing. Pending: integration with 
compiler, final testing, examples for demo.

Compiler: wp has done/is working on getting list of parameters, getting 
only some parameters. ATTENTION: lm and wp still have to merge their 
versions of compiler.

Omnibroker 3.0: got installed, I/O-module is upgraded.

Example supply-chain-management: started by lm.

Examine, result of our discussion:
EXAMINE will be enhanced by a second parameter.
- second parameter for examine: when first parameter is equal 
"executing", then there is a second parameter which is an integer with 
an unknown semantic. The semantic depends on the specific megamodule.
- we do not provide any general possibility to say that specific results 
have finished computing (of course second parameter can be used also for 
this in a megamodule specific way). lm makes example (specification of 
dummy megamodule plus megaprogram).
- This requires updates in the general description of CPAM, the 
individual protocol definitions, the RMI-wrapper, the CORBA-wrapper and 
the compiler, plus creating a small demo that demonstrates one possible 
usage of this parameter (maybe based on some add-ons to the 
transportation modules, e.g. a weather service.)

Detail problems:
- lm and wp will make subdirectories omnibroker etc. to CHAIMS/Env and 
will add readmes about makefiles and compilation and makefiles to these 
directories
- Demo for Oct. 27: Laurence will give the demo. Woody and Laurence will 
prepare it together.
- Repository: wp will still put description of each keyword on web.

Work for automn,winter terms:
1) CHAIMS 2.0
- finishing started works (see above)
- masterclient (wp)
- enhancing examine by second parameter (see also above)
- helper-modules: simple math megamodule, as CS446 project, maybe also 
complex math megamodule
We do not yet start work on local megamodules, as we can demonstrate the 
main concepts of CHAIMS without them.

2) Demos and examples:
Approach: first designing examples (megaprogram, repository ==> 
specification of methods), then planning concerning who does adapt which 
modules and what we can give out as CS446 projects.
The issues that should be covered by these demos are:
- hierarchical setting of parameters
- using estimate to choose megamodules and for other decisions
- partial extraction of results
- using second parameter of examine
- heterogeneity: Omnibroker, Orbis and RMI
- example for a logistic officer, decision of officer via I/O-module
Everybody prepares some draft examples, which we then can discuss and 
unify in our next CHAIMS meeting.

3) Scenarios:
Workflow management (WfMS): will be investigated by Fabio

Laurence presented her investigations into supply chain management. 
SCM-Tools with optimization:
- ERP = enterprise resource planning to manage the four M manpower, 
material, machinery, money. Tools are from SAP, BANN, Peoplesoft. These 
tools are at the company level, they optimize for one company.
- APS = advanced planning systems, purpose is to optimize the whole 
suplly chain, they run simulations. Tools: i2 from Ilog, Manuqistia. 
Ilog focuses on optimization tools and has an office in the Bay area.

Chaims and SCM:
- megamodules = services of individual companies
- examples of methods: bid(various constraints), pay(...), deliver(...), 
request_prize(...) 
- transfer of data: information from one megamodule (e.g. results of 
bid) has to be transferred to other megamodule (e.g. parameter for a 
delivery)
- megaprogram: yet unclear, problem in real chain where a more agent-
oriented model is needed. Problem is that CHAIMS is a pure client-server 
thing. 
Benefits of using CHAIMS instead of using oral composition by phone:
- consistent and precise description of data (obviously there are lots 
of problems now in oral transport of problems because information 
changes slightly)
- immediate transfer (no delay to oral transfer)
- information merging: making relations between informations, control
- estimation: maybe for estimations of how long a bid goes?

Suggestion of Gio:
SCM in an agent-oriented way would mean to make a new research proposal, 
where a megaprogram itself can be a megamodule (==> enhancing CPAM, 
changing the client side radically).
For now: simple version of SCM, Laurence finishes example (describe the 
simple case where only one company uses servers of other companies to do 
its own planning).


4) Scheduling:
Neal and Laurence start on it beginning of November.
- integrate preprocessor
- conceptual work: what to schedule, how to schedule, goals of 
scheduling
- conceptual work: investigate other schedulers (in WfMS, compiler, ..)
Along with these steps, we have to define what exactly we want to do 
(changing compiler to interpreter? what scheduling algorithms? 
connections to other features of CHAIMS? simplifying infrastructure to 
only RMI or only CORBA for scheduling?)


Possible future projects (for more possible future projects see task 
list):
Moving to NT: either RMI-server on NT, or having DCOM-on UNIX for 
client, and a DCOM-wrapper (maybe as CS395-project in winter term).






Minutes of weekly meeting of 
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