GOLD Project Update Meeting
GOLD
an infrastructural approach to virtual organisations
April 21, 2005
Rob Smith
1/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
about the project
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Lots of VO definitions
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All different
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None entirely satisfactory
Lots of different types of VO
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Greatly differing requirements
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Different degress/aspects of ‘virtual’
Hard to write a definition that includes them all without being
too general
April 21, 2005
Rob Smith
2/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
types of VO
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Very different types of organisation that involve some aspect
of virtual working:
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April 21, 2005
Franchises, such as fast food outlets, building society counters, travel
agents etc.
Utilities companies such as gas, electric, railway etc. selling services
based on a separately-managed infrastructure. Also, the company or
companies managing that infrastructure.
Companies with long-term outsourcing agreements. For example,
outsourcing of IT or payroll services.
Companies using short-term outsourcing agreements to meet particular
needs on-demand. For example, chemicals companies requiring
specific expertise; scientific companies needing additional compute
resource; supply-chain based companies wishing to respond flexibly to
exceptions etc.
Truly distributed companies with different functions supplied by different
organisations but no central management function.
Rob Smith
3/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
infrastructural approach
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Diverse requirements demand an infrastructural approach
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Core services implementing VO behaviour
VOs at or close to application level
Maximum flexibility
Loose coupling
Needed:
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April 21, 2005
Standards
Middleware
Infrastructure
Languages
Rob Smith
4/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
VO infrastructure
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Coordination
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Information management
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Security
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Trust
April 21, 2005
Rob Smith
5/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
proof of concept
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The infrastructure will be tested by applying it to R&D
projects within the chemicals industry
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Project=VO
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Highly dynamic
April 21, 2005
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Membership
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Focus
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Basis of interaction between parties
Rob Smith
6/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: requirements
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Conventional approaches are difficult when:
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The technology doesn’t exist
The business use doesn’t exist
The potential users have no basis for thinking about requirements
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They don’t know what they want to do
They don’t know what their non-functional requirements are (security,
dependability etc.)
An ethnographic approach is being taken
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April 21, 2005
Interviews with target organisations
Studies of how they do things at the moment
Understanding of business context
Iterative development in step with requirements capture
Rob Smith
7/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: requirements
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Interviews with several chemicals companies have taken place
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These have confirmed some of our ideas about VOs
And have changed others
A great deal of enthusiasm
A diverse set of functional and non-functional requirements is
being gathered
We are beginning to understand the real business context: what
VOs can do, how people want to use them, what is their
potential? (more on this later)
SSM models of organisations constructed
April 21, 2005
Rob Smith
8/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: coordination and trust
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Distributed workflow enactment
April 21, 2005
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Our own language with semantics defined using pi
calculus
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Compositions can be model checked using SPIN
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Basic system works, basic GUI implemented
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Further work needed on GUI, composition/deployment
tools, monitoring, management
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Further work required on defining tasks, task
management, communication etc.
Rob Smith
9/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: coordination and trust
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Contract management
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April 21, 2005
Contracts mediate interactions between organisations,
describing rights, obligations, constraints etc.
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This provides evidence in the case of disputes
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And can be used for coordination
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Promela used as a specification language for describing
contracts
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Basic contract mediators implemented
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Need to investigate how to integrate with workflow
enactment and access control
Rob Smith
10/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: coordination and trust
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Non-repudiable interactions
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Actions must be attributable to the parties who performed
them and commitments to the committing party
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Non-repudiable interactions implemented on J2EE
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April 21, 2005
Works for interactions between Java objects over RMI
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Currently being re-implemented for SOAP using
appropriate WS standards
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Prototype working
Rob Smith
11/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: coordination and trust
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Summary
April 21, 2005
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We can run business processes over organisational
boundaries
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We can specify and police interactions using electronic
contracts
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We can construct non-repudiable audit trails
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Integration needed
Rob Smith
12/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: information management
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Each party has heterogeneous, distributed and
autonomous information sources
These need to be integrated in non-trivial ways
April 21, 2005
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Dynamic information integration/sharing and business
composition
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Dynamic security
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Notification
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Ontology
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Discovery
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Personalisation
Rob Smith
13/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: information management
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Test/development platform built (based on Oracle)
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Requirements captured
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Architecture proposed
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Services identified (IAS, DBPMS, LCS etc.)
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Significant interest from Oracle
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Need to:
April 21, 2005
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define services
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Formalise the information model
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Implement
Rob Smith
14/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: security
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Looking for a formal answer to the question “what is a
dynamic coalition?”
Models of:
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What a VO is
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What knowledge is
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How it is transferred
Some models produced and will be used to analyse
information flows in VOs
April 21, 2005
Rob Smith
15/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: security
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RBAC and TBAC have been investigated
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Dynamic AC investigated
April 21, 2005
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Can the infrastructure dynamically control access based
on policies?
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Prototype constructed based on existing technologies
Rob Smith
16/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
progress: general
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Candidate architecture proposed
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Core services defined
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Framework for building and managing VOs constructed
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Demos available (at this meeting) in all major areas
April 21, 2005
Rob Smith
17/18
GOLD Project Update Meeting
summary
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The project has been running for about 1 year
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Recruitment is complete (visa problems notwithstanding)
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Progress has been very good:
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Strong understanding of industrial requirements
Candidate architecture
Prototypes in most major areas
Lots of talks/outreach events
Still a great deal to do!
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April 21, 2005
Architecture
Integration
Testing
Rob Smith
18/18