Co-operation and communication within an active IPSE

摘要

Most currently available Integrated Project Support Environments achieve integration of project components through the use of a cohesive set of tools layered on top of a database management system. In addition to the integration of tools and data, future IPSEs will be required to support integration of the various activities within a project. The ISM project is developing an architecture for a prototype IPSE which supports activity integration. The IPSE is implemented as a federation of intelligent, co-operating agents which communicate with each other and with IPSE users by message passing. This paper is particularly concerned with the mechanisms employed to permit inter-agent and agent-user communications, both to initiate actions within the IPSE and to enable the direct manipulation of the IPSE object store.