MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 1

MOWAHS: Mobile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems

Reidar Conradi, Mads NygårdDept. Computer and Information Science (IDI)

NTNU

www.mowahs.com

Tel +47 73.593444 (rc), +47 73.593470 (mn), Fax +47 73.594466

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 2

MOWAHS motivation (1)

• Applications: nomadism, virtual organizations – 300 mill. mobile phones in Jan. 2000,

3 bill. in 2005 and 10% with powerful PCs/PDAs?

– Entry ticket to become a global (virtual?) company: reduced by factor 100 in recent years.

– Enormous dynamics: 3C convergence, liberalization.

– New work modes: RAD, nomadic, 100% on-line.

• Technology: mobility, agents, ...– “Deluge”: www, IP, Java, CORBA, XML, applets / servlets /

displets, agents = active html pages?, BSCW tool, …

– E.g. XML used for sending electricity bills to bank, XML/Java tools to make graphical editors.

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 3

MOWAHS motivation (2)• The new network economy:

international companies, managers, developers, products, markets.

• The industry: uses the new IT (or else it dies), but also reinforces the same technology.

• UMTS:• ”UMTS is a set of services which we cannot imagine

today, with a technology that does not yet exist, for user needs which we don’t yet know”. --- Juha Rupeli of Nokia, chairman.

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 4

MOWAHS motivation (3)

• Some challenges:– How to support both fixed and portable PCs / PDAs?

– How to support different and varying connectivity?

– How to federate heterogeneous devices, tools, data?

– How to effectively support work on mobile platforms?

– How to fast and reliably build / evolve such support?

– How to asses the impact on humans / virt. organizations?

• Piggy-back on existing technologies and solutions:– CAGIS: Multiagent architecture for prosesses / transactions.

– CAGIS: Cooperating workspaces and meeting places.

– Other: groupware, agents, XML, multimedia, UMTS, WfM process interaction standard, ...

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 5

MOWAHS: Mobile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems (1)

• Newly accepted NFR basic R&D project, 2001-04.• Sw.eng. and database groups at IDI:

– 2 IDI teachers: Reidar Conradi, Mads Nygård.– 2 PhD students: Carl-Fredrik Sørensen, Hien Nam Le– 2 postdocs: Alf Inge Wang, Heri Ramampiaro.

• Budget: 5 mill. kr totally.

• Outspring from CAGIS project in 1997-2001.• Support nomadic computing over heterogeneous

platforms: process and transaction support.• Internationalization, coop. with Telenor(?), ...

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 6

MOWAHS goals (2)

• G1) Helping to understand and to continuously assess and improve workprocesses in virtual organizations.

• G2) Providing a flexible, common work environment to execute and share real workprocesses and their artifacts, applicable on a variety of electronic devices (from big servers to small PDAs).

• G3) Disseminating results to colleagues, students, companies, and community at large.

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 7

MOWAHS approach, iterative (3)

• Design a flexible work environment for virtual organizations using heterogeneous devices, with support for processes and their artifacts and transactions.

• Implement a testbed for process/transaction support for virtual organizations, using XML-based and mobile agents.

• Use real rqmts/scenarios to evaluate the above, e.g. on software development and net-based education. 25% on empirical work.

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 8

MOWAHS results (4)• R1) A XML-formalism to describe/execute

federated and heterogeneous processes and coop. Workspaces/transactions (G2).

• R2) A simple set of tools to support the above, based on agent technology (G2).

• R3) A set of scenarios with defined work models, using above formalisms/tools (G1).

• R4) A body of experiences from empirical studies of such technologies (G1).

• R5) Presentation material, courses (G3).

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 9

MOWAHS: Problem context (5)• Distributed and heterogeneous environments

• Manage people working:– Different places– Different times– Different tools– Different processes and data

• Organisations divided into autonomous sub-organisations

• Plus the new IT opportunities ...

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 10Slide 10

MOWAHS Technical Motivation (6)• Problems with traditional process / workflow /

groupware architectures:– Too centralized

– Too homogenous models

– Hard to change tools and models

– Need open-ended spectrum of cooperative process tools

– No integration of data access and process support

– Traditional transaction models / data accessing too stiff

• Solution 1: Agent-based architectures.

• Solution 2: Novel transaction models.

• Solution 3: Use XML, Java, ...

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 11

MOWAHS challenges• Move to mobile, not just distributed setting.

• Allow different process / groupware formalisms/tools locally, i.e. federation.

• Couple transaction support to e.g. UML data model.

• Try out on realistic scenarios:– Network-based education, the mobile student

– Virtual teams in sw.eng. (ourselves, students, industry?)

• => Cooperate with others on solutions and applications!!

MOWAHS: MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems, NFR IKT2010 R&D project Slide 12

Possibilities for joint activities• MUNIN:

– Offer method support for developing multimedia / mobile applications wrt. process / transaction support.

– Test out on students / developers.

• PATT/Parlay: similar, both for applications and platforms.

• HiA’s “The mobile student”: similar + applying such technologies/applications on own students.

• INCO: Use MOWAHS as testbed.