The Op e ra t io na l Robert Semantics o fa n Active Message System Palumbo, Hossein Saiedian and Mansour Zand Department of Computer Science University of Nebraska Omaha, Nebraska 68182 Abstract In traditional computer-baaed meaaage syatema, mea- aagee are typically viewed as pasaive entitia with no processing power. The users are thue responsible for explicitly creating, routing and processing each mea- aage imtance. Meaaages, however, may be viewed ae active objects which can do certain proceaaing on their own. Th~ paper explores the concept of %neaaageer ae objectan and propoaea an active memage ya te m for office automation purpoees. 1 Introduction In recent yeara, there hw been an increasing demand for computer systems to support routine and casual of- ficeinformation proceaaing activities. Under the theme of ofie automatio~ considerable re se arch work haa b en done [4, 23] and both office automation equip ment and software packages are emerging aa commer- ci l products. OfHce automation in effect conaiate of the integration and support of varioua oflice proce- dures such ae document preparation, electronic filing, electronic mail, administrative and decision support, etc., by computer systems. Communication systems are neceaaar y to integrate and automate office proce- dures. Although office procedure have been gradually automated, especially in routine buaineae appIicationa, using the currently available office support systeme and equipment, they are still heavily dependent on office workers’ manual handling of office procedure s. Office procedures usually require the cooperation of several office workers who may be geographkally d- persed in many phxes. The office workera coo pe rat e by synchronizing their actiona through communication and exchange of information. Communication thw Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or di tributed for direct commercial Avantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notica ia given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee an d/ or sp ec ific permission. Q 1992 /-lCM 0897 31 -472-4/92/0002/0367 .50 playe key role in an ofie. Research data (e.g., [21, 16]) show that office workera, and in particu- lar managera and profmioneda, spend the majority of their time in office communication. To support cooper- ative ofEce work ethctively, we need to provide intelli- gent communication tools in an OtEcesupport system. Communication and computer-baaed meaaagesysteme thue havebecome one of the mat important iaauea in current ofhce automation research. The uae of telecommunication networka and & tributed syateme in odicea remove many constraint inherent in traditional organizational communication channela and improve many aspecta of office work. They allow offi e information/knowkdge to be pasaecl aa electronic meaaages, and office work to be performed by meane of communication. Although the technole gies develo ed on d~tributed system are useful to sup port some type of office work [13], they are innuflicient to model some other types of office work. Thii ia partly due to the view that communication between com~ nente in diatnbuted system ia considered to be very simple and structured activity [26]: Each component knows exactly where to get in- formation it needa (i.e., it knows the other comp- onent that it can communicate with), and If a component does not know the existence of another component, they cannot communicate. Moreover, communication in the current distributed systems ia implemented in a rather ad hoc manner. For e-pie, moat systems treat communication just aa tranemiaaion of some piece of text from one user to another ueer . Thie paper discusses the development of a ad- vanced communication syst ms in which meaaagea are viewed as ~tive objects. The goal of the research u to explore the ways to expand the capabditiea of ele- tronic communication within orgartiaationa and thus leading to systems that better facilitate collaborative work. 36 7
