ebXML   masters by research in Computer Science  by Sacha Schlegel
   http://www.schlegel.li/ebXML/index.html    is the homepage of this project.

 M E E T I N G
 
m e e t i n g . h e a d e r  
  
date:    March 10th, 2003
week:    11
report:    x out of y
location:    School of Computing at Curtin University
Building 314, Level 4 Meeting room Don Reid
person:    Don Reid, supervisor
Sacha Schlegel, student (2967)
 
m e e t i n g . a c t i v i t i e s  
  
  • Did sell hundreds of sausages for the Curtin Soccer Club on Wednesday and Friday. Could not work much for the project those days.
  • Went to UWA for an introduction to MPI (Message Passing Interface) unit. Might be too busy to join the course, unfortunately.
  • Did write a small algorithm to retrieve the XPath for any given XML Element. This is necessary for the Conflict File.
  • Did study the "ebXML Automated Negotiation of Collaboration Protocol Agreements Specification, Version 0.0.4".
    This specification does have the NDD (Negotiation Description Document) XML Schema plus, a NCPA (Negotation Collaboration
    Protocol Agreement) sample, the Negotiation Business Process (eg the Negotiation Protocol, eg. the choreography of
    negotation messages) XML instance.
  • The output of level 1 is input for level 2, so have to carefull design for level 3. Level two has defined inputs,
    where as level 3 is a self inveted process with open inputs at the moment.
  • Conflict within level 1. First phase was a "just" find matches algorithm. Phase two was decided to ba an algorithm
    which takes the NDD into account. BUT the algorithm for level 1 "can" have some enhancing algorithm parts which does "edit" the CPPs.
  • Basically level one creates a draft CPA. A draft CPA can include "alternatives", "possible ways", which were not present
    in the origianl CPPs.
  • At the stage thinking how to proceed with level 1 algorithm as there is now the potential to change CPP's
    (which is a valid action), eg to add a new DeliveryChannel.
  • Thinking of level 3. Can be split into a) business related conflicts (business level) and b) technical conflicts
    (eg protocol, synchronous, asynchronous etc)
  • Using the state machine design pattern for ruby for negotation protocol state.
 
m e e t i n g . n o t e s  
Don mentioned, that time will be a limiting factor with what I agreed.
Concerning level one output is input for level 2 and not for level 3. Basically it was the idea to have level three done before level 2. Generally this is a good idea as with dealing with human negotation this can help to apply that behaviour to level 2. BUT there are two different things about "how to negotiate": 1) the infrastructe, the setup of the game, the game itself. In ebXML terms these are the negotiation protocol, the structure of negotiation messages between two parties, the CPA of the negotation, eg. encryption of the messages, which port, which protocol etc etc. then 2) there is the strategy: How do I decide to negotiate over element x rather then element y. How do I choose which value to take if the valid values are in the range of 0..10 for example.
It comes down to that the negotiation infrastructe should be setup for level 2. This infrastructe should be used also in level 3. I (student) did have a very own solution for level 3 in mind but I think now that level 3 should follow the "general" ebXML specification way of negotiation.
So its good to get into negotation at this stage and start to provide the infrastructre. Documented short paths can be taken here but have to be documented/mentioned.
  
  
  
 
m e e t i n g . t o . d o . l i s t  
Choose a path for level one. If this choice does leave some other paths aside document that those other paths are not be included in this project. As long as they are document its ok.
Analyse different states during a negotiation session, what have the systems to take care of etc.
  
  
  
  


© Sacha Schlegel@2003!