I want to change the whole structure of a multi agent system an introduction to multi agent organizational paradigms- by Mr. Horling, I mean I want to measure a multi agent system's performance and under some circumstances I need to ask the multi agent system to change it's structure. for example from a hierarchical model to a society model.
MY exact problem is that how can I tell agents hey you, change your structure? How can I write this in java using JADE framework?
Can any body help me with this? Do you have any ideas?
It would be hard to find a mature JADE extension framework to deal with organizations where it would be easier to change the organization as you intent. The book Developing Multi-Agent System with JADE shows some techniques what for me looks like ad hoc solutions like the use of Contract Net Protocol to organize and later to coordinate agents.
The way it seems to be better to design and make adjustements on the organizational structure is using a mature framework that has organization as a first-class programming dimension, as in JaCaMo. With this framework the organization scheme is define in a XML file (using a structure defined by the framework Moise). It uses CArtAgO artifacts to coordinate the agents according to the defined relations, norms, agent's roles and commitements.
Related
According to TOGAF specification, the main domains / division of concerns are:
Business Architecture
Data Architecture
Application Architecture
Technology Architecture
According to the specification, the Enterprise Repository should hold all information.
I have this information:
How it works the company in terms of business model
How it works the application in terms of functional features
How the application is implemented and deployed
How can I map this data according to the TOGAF big picture?
App architecture description --> Architecture Landscape ?
App components description --> Solutions Repository ?
App functional description --> Architecture Capability ?
App deployment info --> ¿?
Business model --> ¿?
Update 08/11/2018
Some questions I have:
Where can I put company info like company structure, people, teams, etc?
Where can I put business info like products and services offered by company, how pricing is calculated? what it means "X thing" for the business?
Where should I put ongoing assessments? and where should I put once it's put in production?
Where should I put a general glossary of terms?
Where should I put development guides? like list of environments, IPs, delivery workflow, jira workflow, etc?
Where should I put service API definitions?
You are trying to mix Solution Architecture and Enterprise Architecture, that's probably why it seems confusing.
TOGAF is about enterprise architecture - big picture stuff, as you correctly pointed out. Information about a concrete app on the other hand is more of a solution architecture concern. Of course, one could argue that you can describe enterprise architecture as detailed as you need, but that's not the point.
Answering your original question, though: it seems like app information (architecture description, components description, functional description) you have should be stored in Architecture Repository as Solution Building Blocks. I'd recommend addressing them as part of Baseline Application Architecture and Baseline Technology Architecture description, during Phase C and Phase D.
Then again, you should first carefully consider wether you really need level of detail this high.
P.S. if you provide a bit more context on what you are trying to achieve, I'd probably be able to give you more specific advice
Update 11/11/2018
Where can I put company info like company structure, people, teams, etc?
It depends. Company structure should be stored in Baseline/Target Business Architecture as part of Organization structure model. Here's a definition from TOGAF:
"Organization structure: document the organization structure, identifying business locations and relating them to organizational units."
It is also one of the inputs - Organizational Model for Enterprise Architecture (see Part IV, 36.2.16 of TOGAF spec).
Where can I put business info like products and services offered by company, how pricing is calculated? what it means "X thing" for the business?
It is also a part of Business Architecture, here's a whole list from TOGAF spec:
Organization structure - identifying business locations and relating them to organizational units
Business goals and objectives - for the enterprise and each organizational unit
Business functions - a detailed, recursive step involving successive decomposition of major functional areas into sub-functions
Business services - the services that the enterprise and each enterprise unit provides to its customers, both internally and externally
Business processes, including measures and deliverables
Business roles, including development and modification of skills requirements
Business data model
Correlation of organization and functions - relate business functions to organizational units in the form of a matrix report
Where should I put ongoing assessments? and where should I put once it's put in production?
There's a standard pattern in TOGAF:
Assess current situation and write it down as Baseline Architecture
Create a vision and write it down as Target Architecture
Work towards Target Architecure and update Baseline Architecture as you go
So, in the end, your baseline should become equal to target and now it's your new baseline for the next ADM cycle.
Where should I put a general glossary of terms?
It's usually done as soon as possible during tailoring TOGAF to your enterprise - Preliminary Phase of the ADM cycle (see Part IV, 36.2.21 of TOGAF spec).
Where should I put development guides? like list of environments, IPs, delivery workflow, jira workflow, etc?
Developments guides, jira workflow and other project management stuff is not usually of a direct concern of TOGAF. It should be definitely be aware of it, enterprise architect might even consult on this matter. Only one thing comes to mind in terms of project management - roadmaps, they are written down and updated as needed during virtually all the phases.
Environments, IPs and other infrastructure information is usually worked on during Phase D, mainly as part of technology architecture models and specifications.
Where should I put service API definitions?
Again, you should carefully consider if you need this level of detail, but it seems appropriate to address it in Phase C (Applications Architecture). One of the steps is defining a model (it's advised by TOGAF to find reference in your industry), which may include API definitions. It's usually enough to address a more abstract Applications Interoperability in terms of the enterprise.
Very important point: TOGAF is just a framework, you can tailor it as you see fit for your current enterprise, just don't forget to document it. You should also remember that it's not just a set of tools, but also a set of expectations, glossary of terms and guidelines, so a new architect wouldn't need to learn everything from the ground up in each new enterprise he works at. As it always goes - you have to find a proper balance point.
I have a system prototype, which I want to model in BPMN. That system has three layers: data layer, gui and business logic. Can I use these three layers names as BPMN swimlanes names instead of using actors or roles?
http://blog.goodelearning.com/bpmn/common-bpmn-modeling-mistakes-swimlanes/
Says swimlanes are for an organizational role (e.g. developer, analyst and manager).
As far as I understand it, the blog entry does not state that organizational roles cannot be IT systems. It even mentions content management system as one example for an organization (when discussing pools). Subsequently, a sub system of the content management system should be a perfectly valid candidate for a lane.
When it comes to technicalities, it's always good to refer to the BPMN specification. Regarding the usage of lanes, it states:
The meaning of the Lanes is up to the modeler. BPMN does not specify the usage of Lanes. (page 306, respectively 336 in PDF document)
So according to the specification, you can use these three layer names as BPMN swimlane names.
Well, your work might have finished a long ago, but you are mixing Architecture with BPMN (Process design).
Application mapping is not part of business process design and this is a common mistake done by people missing E2E purpose and scope of process modeling and how it integrates with other domains.
for Architecture you might need to use some other language more specific to it, say Archimate which handles this requirement very well and global standard for modeling architecture.
Business architecture/process architecture and process design are separate entities. we should try not to mix them.
All the best for current assignments.
I am studying Object Oriented Design and am using usecases with actors and scenario''s to plan out the application i am trying to build. No specific language yet, just the theory at the moment.
I have come to the point where i have identified and written out the use cases for the users, administrator, owner, etc and also the external systems like the feed generator.
but i have come to realise that my application actually consists of multiple smaller apps. like a data gathering application and a analysis application.
Can/should i use the data gathering and analysis app as an actor in the overall application too?
I can write specific use cases for them, with scenarios etc.
Typically, no.
Actor is an entity that sits outside of the system and produces some action. It gets to the system boundaries, but then all interactions between system components are modeled not as usecases, but as i.e. dynamic diagrams or sequence diagrams.
For the record, I think this approach is flawed and doesn't really help you in building applications. I personally prefer thinking about components and their interactions directly, without forcing the idea of architecture to fit a particular modeling scheme.
I developing a 3 tier architecture for an MVC4 webapp + EntityFramwork5.
I want to keep separete the layer, so only DAL knows that I'm using EF, for example.
Actually I have a lot of classes to manage that:
DAL
Entity POCO
Entity DataContext : DbContext
Entity Repository
BL
Entity ViewModel
Entity Service(instantiate Entity Repository)
WEB
Entity Controllers (instantiate Entity Service)
This is working but is quite hard to mantain. I was thinking to remove the Entity Repository in DAL and use directly the DataContext (if I'm not wrong, after all DbContext has been desingned to be a Repository and a Unit of Work), but that will force me to add a reference to EntityFramework.dll in my BL. Is not a big issue, but I0m not sure it is the best choice.
Any advice?
(I hope I gave enough informations, if you need more, just ask)
You can use this this and this article.
An experienced Architect does not need to go through every single step in the book to get a reasonable design done for a small web
application. Such Architects can use their experience to speed up the
process. Since I have done similar web applications before and have
understood my deliverable, I am going to take the faster approach to
get the initial part of our DMS design done. That will hopefully
assist me to shorten the length of this article.
For those who do not have experience, let me briefly mention the general steps that involved in architecturing a software below...
Understand the initial customer requirement - Ask questions and do research to further elaborate the requirement
Define the process flow of the system preferably in visual (diagram) form. I usually draw a process-flow diagram here. In my
effort, I would try to define the manual version of the system first
and then would try to convert that into the automated version while
identifying the processes and their relations. This process-flow
diagram that we draw here can be used as the medium to validate the
captured requirements with the customer too.
Identify the software development model that suite your requirements
When the requirements are fully captured and defined before the design start, you can use the 'Water-Fall' model. But when the
requirements are undefined, a variant of 'Spiral' can be used to deal
with that.
When requirements are not defined, the system gets defined while it is being designed. In such cases, you need to keep adequate spaces
in respective modules, which later expansions are expected.
Decide what architecture to be used. In my case, to design our Document Management System (DMS), I will be using a combination of
ASP.NET MVC and Multitier Architecture (Three Tier Variant).
Analyze the system and identify its modules or sub systems.
Pick one sub system at a time and further analyze it and identify all granular level requirements belonging to that part of the systems.
Recognize the data entities and define the relationships among entities (Entity Relationship Diagram or ER Diagram). That can
followed by identifying the business entities (Some business entities
directly map with the classes of your system) and define the business
process flow.
Organized your entities. This is where you normalize your database, and decide what OOP concepts and design pattern to be used
etc.
Make your design consistent. Follow the same standards across all modules and layers. This includes streamlining the concepts (as an
example, if you have used two different design patterns in two
different modules to achieve the same goal, then pick the better
approach and use that in both the places), and conventions used in the
project.
Tuning the design is the last part of the process. In order to do this, you need to have a meeting with the project team. In that
meeting you need to present your design to your team and make them ask
questions about it. Take this as an opportunity to honestly evaluate/
adjust your design.
I am currently trying to draw a set of UML diagrams to represent products, offers, orders, deliveries and payments. These diagrams have probably been invented by a million developers before me.
Are there any efforts to standardize the modeling of such common things? Or even the modeling of specific domains (for example car-manufacturing).
Do you know if there is some sort of repository containing UML diagrams (class diagrams, sequence diagrams, state diagrams...)?
There is a movement for documenting (as opposed to standardizing) models for certain domains. These are called analysis patterns and is a term Martin Fowler came up with. He actually wrote a book called Analysis patterns. Also, he has a dedicated section on his website where he presents some of these patterns accompanied by UML diagrams.
Maybe you'll find some inspiration that will help you in modeling your domain. I've stressed the word inspiration as I think different businesses have different requirements although they operate the same domain so the solutions you might read about may not be appropriate for your problem.
There are many tools out there that do both - but they're generally not free!
Microsoft Visio does both and is extensible. For UML artefacts they come with auto generators into VB/Java template code - but you can modify them to auto-generate any code. There are many users of Visio that have created models from which to use as templates.
Artisan Enterprize is by far the most powerful UML tool (but it's not cheap).
Some would argue that Rational Rose or RUP is the better tool
But for Car-Manufacturing and other similar real world modelling, by far the best tool is Mathworks Simulink (not because it's one of the most expensive). It is by far the best tool beccause you can animate the model - you can prove the model working before generating the slik code (in whatever grammar/language/other Models you care to push it)!
You can obtain a student license for around £180; with the 'real thing' pushing £4000 (for car-related artefacts). The full product with all the trimmings is about £15k. Simulink is also extensible with a C like language though there is a .Net addin and APIs to use a plethora of other langhuages. And, just like Visio there is a world-wide forum creating saleable, shareware & freeware real world model templates. Many world-wide Auto-Manufacturers are already using Simulink.
I think that MiniQuark question is really good and will sooner or later be provided by vendors such as Omondo, Rational IBM etc... Users doesn't just need tools, they need models out of the box and just add their business rules inside an existing well defined architecture. Why to develop from scratch a new architecture if the job has already be done ? In Java we use plenty of frameworks, existing methods etc...so why not to go one level higher and reuse architecture ? It is today impossible to guess how a project will evole and new demands are coming every day. We therefore need a stable architecture which has been tested previously and is extensible. I have seen so many projects starting with a nice architecture then realizing in the middle of the project that this is not what is the best and then changing their architecture. Renaming classes, splitting classes, creating packages etc...after the first iteration it is getting a real mess. Could you imagine what we found after 10 iterations !! a total mess !!
This mess would had been avoided if using a predefined model which has been tested previously because the missing class, or package etc..would have already been created and only a class rename would be sufficient for architecture purposes. Adding business rules methods will end the codding stage before deployment test.
I think there is a confusion between patterns and the initial question which is related to UML model re usability.
There is no today any reusable model out of the box which has been developped. This is really strange but the job has never been done or never been shared.
Omondo has tried to launch an initiative without real success. I have heard that they are working on hundred of out of box models which will be open source and given for free to the community. I hope this will be done because this is really important for me and would save me a lot of time at the beginning of a project.