OAA 1.0.2 Runtime Distribution November 1998 Thank you for downloading the OAA 1.0 package. Below you will find instructions for setting up your system and for running the sample application. Additional information about OAA can be found on the OAA homepage, at http://www.ai.sri.com/~oaa. Requirements: In order to run this demonstration package, you must have either a PC running Windows (95, NT, 98) or a Sun computer running SunOS or Solaris. You must also install Java 1.1.*, available from http://www.javasoft.com/ Contents: This runtime distribution contains what you need to run and debug a small OAA application. To create new agents in OAA, you should download the appropriate agent libraries for your language of choice (distributed separately). This runtime distribution contains: Agent Coordination Server: - An OAA Facilitator (v 1.0), the heart of an OAA system. Tools: - Start-It: an agent which simplifies launching the many agents making up a community (application) - Monitor: An agent which helps graphically visualize an agent community and then log, monitor and profile interagent communication - Debug: An agent which enables a developer to send tasks or messages to the agent community or to an individual agent, expressed either in English or in the Interagent Communication Language (ICL) Sample Application: - DCG_NL: A simple natural language agent that accepts dynamic vocabulary and grammar rules - WebLOAA: an OAA wrapper around the WebL language (http://www.compaq.com/WebL) for creating web extractors - WebL script for finding the weather forecast for thousands of cities from http://www.intellicast.com * Note this has been replaced by a script for extracting weather from Yahoo, since Intellicast redesigned their site. - WebL script for extracting creating a small employee database out of a web page - Database: a simple Prolog database with a domain file containing city information (airports, average rainfall, etc.) extracted from http://www.oag.com - WebL script which produced the database domain file for the city info The sample application allows simple natural language queries to the web such as: What is the weather in London for tuesday? Who is Adam Cheyer's manager? etc. The interpretation and execution of the natural language query is a distributed process -- as more agents connect, what the user can say and do expands dynamically. Installation Instructions: I. Decompress the distribution - On PCs, a self extracting executable will set things up. Note: Under Windows, shortcuts will be added to your desktop pointing to the OAA Facilitator, the startup for the sample application, and to OAA's main runtime tools. When you run the Java tools, you may get an "Environment Out Of Space" error. If this is the case, edit the properties of each shortcut (right mouse click), and set Memory|Initial Environment to be 2048. You will probably also want to set Program|Close on Exit and Program|Run Minimized. - On UNIX, decompress and untar the distribution file. II. Defining host/port for your Facilitator Agent 1. Copy \oaa\setup.pl to the root directory of the drive on which you have installed OAA, or if on UNIX, to your home directory 2. Run the Facilitator by clicking on its icon added by the setup program, or by running \OAA\PROLOG\b.exe. The Facilitator should connect, and print out your local hostname in a message: Loading setup file: 'F:/setup.pl' * Singleton variables, clause 1 of rootdata/2: X * Approximate line: 1, file: 'F:/setup.pl' Listening on tree.ai port 3344 Ready. 3. Carefully note the exact wording of your hostname, and change the variable "ChangeMe" in setup.pl to your hostname, enclosed in single quotes. %% OLD: rootdata(3344,ChangeMeToHost_SeeAbove). rootdata(3344, 'tree.ai'). 4. Now all agents should be able to connect correctly. Loading setup file: 'F:/setup.pl' Listening on tree.ai port 3344 Ready. III. Download WebL 1. SRI does not have the right to distribute WebL. You will find a download page at the WebL homepage, http://www.compaq.com/WebL. 2. Copy the WebL jar file to OAA\JAVA\JARS\WebL.jar IV. Update startit properties for sample application 1. PC: If for some reason, you installed the distribution in a directory other than \OAA (on some drive), you must edit the startit properties in JAVA\CLASSES\STARTIT\DEMO\CONFIGS\tiny_app.prop UNIX: You must edit the startit properties in java/config/startit/demo/configs/tiny_app_unix.prop replace: TOP=\\oaa to be: TOP=\\YOUR_DIRECTORY (PC) OAA_TOP=/YOURFULLPATH/oaa (UNIX) Additionally for UNIX: replace: STARTIT_DISPLAY=tree STARTIT_DISPLAY=yourhost Running the Sample Application: 1. Start the Facilitator (clicking on icon or running \OAA\PROLOG\b) 2. Run "Start-It -- Sample App" (or \OAA\JAVA\CLASSES\win_startit.bat) UNIX: > setenv OAA_TOP /YOURFULLPATH/oaa > startit.run 3. Hit the big Start button to start all agents. The lights should become green as the agents connect. 4. Some java agents (including Start-It!) may not autoconnect. Use the File|Connect menu to connect each agents to the Facilitator until all lights become green in Start-It. 5. In WebLOAA module, click on the "Load Module" button to load WebLOaa\scripts\tiny_app.webl. This file will load two modules, intellicast.webl (weather) and empldb.webl (employee database). 6. If you like, start and connect the OAA Monitor agent to graphically see visualize the connected agents. Clicking on the "record" button will watch interagent messages. The Monitor Agent may be started separately by running the .bat file, or with Start-It by choosing it from Start-It's Application menu (as defined in tiny_app.cfg). 7. Type a query. In the OAA Debug Interface, type in the English field Who is Adam Cheyer's boss? What is Ray Perrault's phone number? You should see an answer come back in the main log window. Data for the employee database comes from the html file: \OAA\JAVA\CLASSES\WEBLOAA\SCRIPTS\empldb.html Note: telephone numbers are not real ones... 8. Try some weather queries for your favorite cities (just about any in the world...) What is the weather in Boston? What is London's weather on Tueday? The information comes live from http://www.intellicast.com so if the agents don't find an answer for your request, go to the page and see if there is an answer there. For some cities, the agents aren't able to guess the citycode for the city (as used by Intellicast), so if you know the city code, you may use that instead of the city name. Ex: for Geneva What is the weather for gva? What is the city code for Cleveland? 9. When finished, kill all the agents by choosing the Kill All menu option in Start-It. It's normal that Start-It won't be able to kill some of the Java agents, as the Kill Process command in Java won't kill a process started in DOS window (like the batch files used to start these agents). 10. When all agents have disconnected, including Start-It, you can kill the Facilitator Agent. On PC, ctrl-C doesn't work, so just close the window and accept the complaining message. Known Issues: - Under Windows NT, the setup program may not be able to install icon shortcuts on the desktop to the OAA applications Reporting Problems: To report any problems with this installation, please make use of the OAA Users mailing list. - To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to cheyer@ai.sri.com. - To send mail to the list, send to oaa-users@ai.sri.com. - To browse the mail archives, visit the OAA download documentation page.