Object Management Group

OMG and OMG Agent WG.  Craig Thompson participated in the OMG meeting in Philadelphia PA on 22-23 March 1999.

• Thompson chaired the OMG Internet SIG, completed and posted ISIG minutes.  The morning session was a three-hour review of the MITRE Joint Collaboration Services (JCS) architecture and alpha release.  There is interest in MITRE and DARPA in pushing this architecture to become a standard for collaboration services (white boards and other tools, rooms metaphor and beyond).
• Thompson co-chaired OMG Agent Working Group (a subcommittee of Internet SIG and Electronic Commerce Domain Task Force), which met M and T afternoon.  This was a busy and productive meeting:
• Thompson got the OMG-FIPA Liaison Proposal. (which he had drafted) passed by Agent WG, Liaison Subcommittee, and the Architecture Board.  This agreement is as much a psychological boost as a plan of action for how OMG and FIPA can coordinate.  Next step is to get FIPA to pass a resolution approving the agreement.  It is on the FIPA Nice April agenda.
• Thompson got the Agent Technology RFI (which he had drafted) passed by Agent WG and the Domain Technical Committee, so now it is officially released to industry - see http://www.omg.org/techprocess/meetings/schedule/Agent_Technology_RFI.html.  This RFI requests input to populate the OMG Agent Technology Green Paper which will lead to RFPs.  The FIPA reference architecture effort is planning to respond and the GITI/ISX grid vision team tentatively agreed to.
• Thompson completed and posted the Agent WG minutes. and updated the Agent WG homepage which is on the OBJS site but accessible from the OMG site.


The significance of the above is that we have engineered a catch for a DARPA CoABS throw of its architecture and grid working papers.  Also, that we have begun to engineer a convergence of FIPA and OMG.