Agent in Service Ecosystem View (Yes/No)?

Colleagues,

 

Looks like some progress was made on Action.  One issue 
that remains open is the notion of Agent and its use in the Business via Service 
View (or Service Ecosystem View or Using SOAs View or whatever we're going to 
agree to call it).

 

It seems that the way Agent is defined in the RA PRD1 (lines 
570-571) implies that it is a non-human entity (although the definition does not 
state this) and it is an entity that is required for use in electronic 
communications.  Personally, I don't have a problem with this, 
provided we clarify that the agent is a non-human entity.  Another option 
would be to drop this type of agent from the Service Ecosystem View 
altogether and concentrate on the core Participants and not worry about 
electronic communications.  In this case, we would delegate the 
discussion of Agents (or Components) to the Realizing SOAs View where electronic 
communications comes to play.

 

That said, another interpretation of Agent could be (as the 
stereotype implies) a proxy for a Participant.  In this case, perhaps a 
Participant asks another entity to act on its behalf, independent of electronic 
communication.  This could be a human entity (or a non-human 
entity?).  This perspective is not really consistent with 
the Stakeholders and Participants model currently described in Section 3.1 
in which Agent is an (implied non-human) entity that ties human 
Participants to the electronic communications world.

 

So we should decide whether to keep Agent in 
the Ecosystem view and firm up its definition, i.e., is it a non-human 
entity that ties Participants to electronic communication (as more or less 
currently defined) or Agent as a proxy that could be another entity (human or 
non-human) that acts on behalf of the Participant.  And once we decide, we 
need to clean up the supporting visual models and definitions of terms used 
throughout the Service Ecosystem View for consistency.  For example, 
the definition of Intent (lines 784-787) is very specific to agent and really 
should read "participant (or agent)" on all occurrences of agent.  Assuming 
we keep with the current definition of non-human agent.

 

Cheers...

 

 - Jeff