Coordination Strategies: Domain Characteristics

This is a relatively simple list of characteristics that are handy to keep in mind when analyzing distributed agents. Most of them should be obvious enough that it's not worth discussing each one in turn, especially when combined with the examples; think of this more as a checklist or template of questions one might ask. (If these entries aren't as self-explanatory as I think, then you should definitely let me know and I'll flesh them out.)

Speed of response
- Subsecond
- Subminute
- Daily
- Longer
Robustness $amp; accuracy required
- Life-critical
- Enterprise-critical
- Advisory
- Informational
- Fun
- Deliberately misleading
Security of information
- Stored in agent
- Between coordinating servers or peers
- Transmitted to user
- Threat model
  - Denial-of-service
  - User impersonation
  - Exposure of confidential information
  - Modification of information
  - Perversion
Source of domain knowledge
- External databases
- Users (excluding simple personalization inputs)
Completeness of domain knowledge
- Complete
- Probably complete
- Known partial
Persistence of agent memory
- Long-term/permanent
- Per-user
- Per-transaction
- None
User interface issues
- Degree of anthropomorphism
- Exposure of underlying mechanism (e.g., other agents)

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Lenny Foner

Last modified: Fri Dec 15 07:49:03 1995