Originally from: Gerd Wagner <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: Inst.f.Informatik, Univ. Leipzig
Subject: AOIS'99 -- 2nd CfP
---------------------------

             2nd  C a l l   f o r   P a p e r s

                  Agents'99 and CAiSE'99
          International Bi-Conference Workshop on
        AGENT-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS (AOIS'99)

                1 May 1999, Seattle (USA) and
             14-15 June 1999, Heidelberg (Germany)

                    AOIS'99 Homepage:
      http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~gwagner/AOIS.html


Agent-Orientation is emerging as a potentially powerful new paradigm
in computing. Yet its role in information systems and information
systems development is only beginning to be investigated.

Information systems continue to be the predominant application of
computing technology, and the development, maintenance, and evolution
of information systems remain the primary pre-occupation of most
computing professionals. However, the environment for information
systems has been changing rapidly and often radically. Organizations
in almost every sector -- manufacturing, education, health care,
government, and businesses large and small -- are reinventing
themselves in a competitive, fast-moving, global environment. They
are becoming more interconnected, more decentralized, but more
interdependent. New information system concepts and technologies
have contributed in no small measure to these changes. These have
accelerated with the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
At the same time, technology has also contributed to much of the
complexity and obstacles to change, as evidenced in the problem of
legacy systems.

Techniques such as Structured Analysis and Entity-Relationship
modelling, while revolutionary in their time (and still the foundation
of much of IS practice today), were developed for the environment of
the 1970's. Throughout the 80's and 90's, many extensions have been
developed, with object-orientation gaining increasing momentum. The
rapidly changing environments of today and of the near future call for
further advances in IS concepts and techniques.

Agent concepts, which originated in artificial intelligence but which
have further developed and evolved in many areas of computing,
hold great promise for responding to the new realities of information
systems. While there are many conceptions of agents, most have
embodied higher levels of representation and reasoning involving
knowledge/belief, perception, goal, intention, and commitment. On
the one hand, the technical embodiment of these concepts can lead to
advanced functionalities, e.g. in inference-based query answering and
in transaction monitoring. On the other, their rich representational
capabilities allow more faithful and effective treatments of complex
organizational processes.

Will agent concepts and techniques figure prominently in information
system architectures of the near future?  Will they play key roles in
the requirements analysis, design, implementation, and evolution of
information systems? What are our visions of agent-orientation in
information systems, and what will be the appropriate research
agendas for pursuing them?

This bi-conference workshop aims to bring together researchers and
practitioners from the Information Systems and Agents communities
who will be shaping the future of information systems engineering.


Topics of Interest

Technical issues to be addressed include, but are not restricted to:

* agent-oriented modeling and design methods
* models and architectures for agent-oriented information systems
* agent-oriented requirements engineering
* agent-oriented transaction models
* agent-oriented extensions to database languages (such as SQL)
* agent-oriented enterprise modeling
* agent-oriented business process modeling and reengineering
* agent communication languages for business communication
* automated business-to-business interaction (including negotiation
  and contracting)
* agent-based workflow modeling
* agent-oriented extensions to enterprise resource planning (ERP)
  systems


Workshop Format

To foster greater communication and interaction between the
Information Systems and Agents communities, we are organizing the
workshop as a bi-conference event. It is intended to be a single
"logical" event with two "physical" venues. It is hoped that this
arrangement will encourage greater participation from,
and more exchange between, both communities.

The technical program will include invited talks by leading experts
in the field, one or more panel discussions, and contributed papers.
Poster sessions are also being planned. Authors of accepted papers
who present their paper at one location will also be invited to
present their papers as a poster in the other location. It is planned
to have the proceedings published as a post-workshop book.

To mitigate the geographic and temporal separation of the two parts
of the workshop, electronic discussion will be strongly encouraged.
Accepted papers will be posted on the workshop website. There will be
designated discussants for each paper. Discussants' comments will
also be posted on the website.


Submission of Papers

To submit a paper, authors should place it as a html, postscript or pdf
file on a web server and send its URL along with the title, author
names, affiliations, contact information and an abstract by email to
one of the workshop chairs by February 15, 1999. Papers must be of
reasonable size (not exceeding 20 pages). All submissions must be
clearly related to an explicit agent concept and should explain what
is the benefit from the proposed agent-oriented approach compared to
more traditional approaches.

Together with each submission, each individual author should indicate
which part of the workshop he or she will be able to attend:
 a) AA only
 b) CAiSE only
 c) both AA and CAiSE
 d) either one but prefer AA
 e) either one but prefer CAiSE
 f) either one but not both, no preference
 g) cannot attend (but other author/s will)


Participation

To keep the workshop size small, participation is by invitation only.
Everyone interested to participate in the AOIS'99 workshop should
either submit a paper as described in the above or a one-page
statement of interest to one of the workshop chairs by March 12, 1999.


Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline               February 15, 1999
Late Submission (CAiSE only)            March 8, 1999
Statement of Interest                   March 12, 1999

Notification                            March 15, 1999
Accepted papers due                     March 29, 1999
Web presentation                        April 15, 1999

AOIS Workshop at Agents'99              May 1, 1999
Agents'99 Conference                    May 1-5, 1999

AOIS Workshop at CAiSE'99               June 14-15, 1999
CAiSE'99 Conference                     June 15-18, 1999


AOIS'99 Preliminary List of Invited Speakers

C. Castelfranchi (Univ. of Siena)
M. Huhns (Univ. S. Carolina, USA)
K. Sycara (CMU, USA)


AOIS'99 Workshop Chairs

Gerd Wagner                             [log in to unmask]
Institute of Computer Science
University of Leipzig

Eric Yu                                 [log in to unmask]
Faculty of Information Studies
University of Toronto


AOIS'99 Program Committee

H.-D. Burkhard (Humboldt Univ., DE)
I. Ferguson (Active On-line Systems, UK)
A. Gal (Rutgers Univ., USA)
W. Hesse (Univ. Marburg, DE)
M. Huhns (Univ. S. Carolina, USA)
F. Dignum (Eindhoven Univ., NL)
M. Jarke (RWTH Aachen, DE)
G. Karakoulas (CIBC and Univ. Toronto, CA)
G. Lakemeyer (RWTH Aachen, DE)
Y. Lesperance (York Univ., CA)
F. Matthes (TU Harburg, DE)
J.P. Mueller (Wiley, UK)
J. Mylopoulos (Univ. Toronto, CA)
D.T. Ndumu (BT Labs, UK)
H. Nwana (BT Labs, UK)
M.P. Papazoglou (Tilburg Univ., NL)
K. Sycara (CMU, USA)
M. Schroeder (City Univ. London, UK)
Y.-H. Tan (Univ. Rotterdam, NL)
B. Thalheim (Univ. Cottbus, DE)
G. Wagner (Univ. Leipzig, DE)
C. Woo (Univ. British Columbia, CA)
E. Yu (Univ. Toronto, CA)




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