The main objectives of the AgentLink TFG-CASA are:

1. To assess the importance of ongoing agent-dedicated and agent-related standardization activities.
2. To clarify how existing standardization bodies and groups relate and possibly contribute to establishing stronger liaisons.
3. To understand and position the role of AgentLink for ongoing and future agent-dedicated and agent-related standardization work.

The key idea is to clarify and strengthen the importance of standardization activities for software agent technology, an issue of central importance to many academic and industrial organizations making use of agent-oriented software and associated techniques. Such standardisation activities are critical to the commercialisation of agent-based research, and strengthen interaction within the agent community.

To this end, during the Third AgentLink III Technical Forum (AL3-TF3) held in Budapest, Hungary, September 15-17 2005, the TFG-CASA took a high-level perspective on standardisation activities by bringing together researchers and organizations directly involved in a number of standardisation bodies, including IEEE FIPA, OMG, GGF, and W3C. Members already active in these groups and involved in identifying application requirements, addressing possible infrastructure themes, and promoting best practice and experience towards agent-oriented computing, met at the AL3-TF3 to exchange information and discuss the importance of creating synergies between the different standardisation bodies. In this perspective, the AgentLink TFG-CASA activity is an essential component of helping to guarantee and promote such meta-level and standardization-agnostic coordination across various groups. Note that the presentations given at the TFG-CASA in Budapest can be found here.

Additionally, the TFG-CASA hosted several coordination sessions involving individuals from other TF groups, including Agent Argumentation Interchange Format (AIF), Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE), and Programming Multi-Agent Systems (PROMAS). The purpose of these sessions was to gain an understanding of where standards are required for the various TFGs. The main issues that were identified (listed below) are expected to be addressed in the context of the new IEEE FIPA Standards Committee.

• Methodology: Method engineering enables developers to customize system development methodologies to fit the needs of an agent project. The general idea is to achieve modularity through the integration and customization of multiple methodologies. Possible areas for standardization could include a method fragments meta-model, a method engineering repository meta-model, and possibly a MAS infrastructure meta-model.
• Service-Oriented support for agents: Web Services do not provide an adequate model for capturing the expressivity intrinsic to existing agent models, such as ACL performatives. A question that needs consideration is how to structure the formal relationship between agents and Web services. Semantic Web service standards are clearly relevant and were discussed, such as WSDL-S, OWL-S, WSMO.
• Auditing multi-agent systems: This would require monitoring the interactions between multi-agent systems at different levels, such as the behavioural level, infrastructure level, and so on. The notion of debugging agent systems was considered and distinguished from the validation of agent behaviours. It was generally felt that multi-agent system debugging was of significant interest, and required greater consideration.
• Formulation of application-driven requirements on agent system capabilities: This involves identifying the functionalities necessary in an agent system from the perspective of application development. This implies proactive engagement with the applications community to elicit requirements and identify current standards that may be impacted them.
• Interaction between agents and environments: Agent systems rarely operate in isolation from an environment and as such clearer statements concerning this relationship need to be established. This requires environment modelling and defining the nature of the agent-environment interface. An important distinction was made between the wrapping of legacy systems and the embedding of multi-agent systems within larger applications.

Given that AgentLink III will officially end in December 2005, several TFG-CASA promoters and participants are considering in which ways it would be possible to continue this meta-level coordination activity for agent-related standardization bodies. Of course, AgentLink IV would represent the most ideal context!

Feedback and ideas are welcome. Please send your input to the TFG-CASA mailing lists: tfg-casa@agentlink.org.