Tosca: Operationalizing Commitments Over Information Protocols

King, Thomas C.; Günay, Akın; Chopra, Amit K.; Singh, Munindar P.

doi:10.24963/ijcai.2017/37

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The idea is that the base events correspond to message observations, based on which higher-level meanings such as commitments can be computed. Tosca [17] explores the layering of commitments on top of information protocols from the point of view of alignment. Clouseau [18] aims at a protocol language that unifies the operational and higher-level aspects in a single language.…”

Section: Operational Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering: Programming abstractions for autonomy and decentralization

Chopra

2022

AIC

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We review the main ideas and elements of Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering (IOSE), a program of research that we have pursued for the last two decades, a span of time in which it has grown from philosophy to practical programming abstractions. What distinguishes IOSE from any other program of research is its emphasis on supporting autonomy by modeling the meaning of communication and using that as the basis for engineering decentralized sociotechnical systems. Meaning sounds esoteric but is the basis for practical decision making and a holy grail for the field of distributed systems. We describe our contributions so far, directions for research, and the potential for broad impact on computing.

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Section: Operational Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering: Programming abstractions for autonomy and decentralization

Chopra

2022

AIC

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“…BSPL supports both instances and integrity and therefore better supports social meaning. Indeed, Singh (2011a, p. 498) discusses social meaning and other work has applied BSPL toward commitment consistency in decentralized settings (King, Günay, Chopra, & Singh, 2017). Listing 29 specifies the Deliver-Payment commitment in Cupid (Chopra & Singh, 2015).…”

Section: Social Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of Communication Protocol Languages for Engineering Multiagent Systems

Chopra

Christie²,

Singh³

2020

jair

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Communication protocols are central to engineering decentralized multiagent systems. Modern protocol languages are typically formal and address aspects of decentralization, such as asynchrony. However, modern languages differ in important ways in their basic abstractions and operational assumptions. This diversity makes a comparative evaluation of protocol languages a challenging task. We contribute a rich evaluation of diverse and modern protocol languages. Among the selected languages, Scribble is based on session types; Trace-C and Trace-F on trace expressions; HAPN on hierarchical state machines, and BSPL on information causality. Our contribution is four-fold. One, we contribute important criteria for evaluating protocol languages. Two, for each criterion, we compare the languages on the basis of whether they are able to specify elementary protocols that go to the heart of the criterion. Three, for each language, we map our findings to a canonical architecture style for multiagent systems, highlighting where the languages depart from the architecture. Four, we identify design principles for protocol languages as guidance for future research.

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“…BSPL fully supports the computation of social meaning since it supports instances and integrity. Indeed, Singh (2011a, p. 498) discusses social meaning and other work has applied BSPL toward commitment consistency in decentralized settings (King, Günay, Chopra, & Singh, 2017).…”

Section: Social Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of Communication Protocol Languages for Engineering Multiagent Systems

Chopra¹,

V²,

Singh³

2019

Preprint

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We understand a multiagent system (MAS) as a decentralized system of agents. Specifically, agents represent autonomous principals; consequently, in general, they would be independently constructed or configured and their computations loosely coupled. For this reason, it is appropriate to adopt a programming model for interactions among the agents that is based on asynchronous messaging.A communication protocol, understood as a specification of constraints on messaging between agents, serves as the primary operational specification of a multiagent system. The significance of protocols for engineering MAS has inspired two decades of research on protocol languages. Modern protocol languages typically address decentralization. However, modern languages differ in important ways in their basic abstractions and operational assumptions. This diversity makes a comparative evaluation of protocol languages a challenging task.We contribute a rich evaluation of modern protocol languages based on diverse approaches. Among the selected languages, Scribble is based on session types; Trace-C and Trace-F on trace expressions; HAPN on hierarchical state machines, and BSPL on information causality. Our contribution is four-fold. One, we contribute a set of important criteria for evaluating protocol languages. Two, for each criterion, we compare the languages on the basis of whether they are able to encode elementary scenarios that go to the heart of the criterion. Three, for each language, we map our findings to a canonical architecture style for MAS, highlighting where the languages depart from the architecture. Four, we identify a few design principles for protocol languages as guidance for future research.Agents communicate by sending and receiving messages via a communication infrastructure. Messaging is asynchronous, as captured by Constraints 1 and 2.Constraint 1 (Asynchrony: Nonblocking emission) When an agent sends a message, it does not block on the sending action.Constraint 2 (Asynchrony: Anytime reception) An agent receives a message when it is delivered by the infrastructure. That is, message reception is nondeterministic.Whereas message emission is up to the agent, message reception is not. An agent receives a message when the infrastructure brings the message to the agent-this is what asynchrony means. Of course, an agent being autonomous may not act on any message it has received but the reception itself occurs due to the infrastructure.Asynchrony promotes loose coupling between agents. Notably, programming paradigms for building distributed systems such as the actor model (Agha, 1986;Hewitt, 1977;Hewitt, Bishop, & Steiger, 1973) give prominence to asynchronous messaging for organizing decoupled computations. Practical communication infrastructures such as the Internet support asynchronous messaging. In fact, asynchrony is the only viable option in the important setting of the Internet of Things (IoT) (OASIS, 2014;Shelby, Hartke, & Bormann, 2014; XMPP, 2015).Constraint 3 restricts what may be expected from the infras...

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Tosca: Operationalizing Commitments Over Information Protocols

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering: Programming abstractions for autonomy and decentralization

Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering: Programming abstractions for autonomy and decentralization

An Evaluation of Communication Protocol Languages for Engineering Multiagent Systems

An Evaluation of Communication Protocol Languages for Engineering Multiagent Systems

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