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Inspired by the recent problems in supply chains, we propose an approach to declarative modeling of contracts between agents that will eventually support reasoning about resilience of and about ways to improve supply chains. Specifically, we present a high-level language for specifying and reasoning about contracts over action domains of agents. We assume that the behavior of the agents can be formally expressed through action theories and view a contract as a collection of constraints. Each constraint specifies the responsibility of an agent to achieve a certain result by a deadline. Each agent also has a mapping between constraints and the agent’s concerns, i.e. issues that the agent is concerned about, which are modeled in accordance with the CPS Framework proposed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We discuss how common questions related to the fulfillment of a contract or the concerns of the agents can be answered and computed via Answer Set Programming.
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This content will become publicly available on April 1, 2027
Programmable Dataflows: Abstraction and Programming Model for Data Sharing
Abstract Data sharing is central to various applications such as fraud detection, ad matching, and improving patient care. However, each solution to data sharing is bespoke and cost-intensive, hampering value generation. We identify the lack of abstractions to control data release as the culprit of the problem. For example, it is common to have constraints on whether to share data that depend on the result of sharing, and evaluating these constraints requires sharing in the first place, leading to a standstill. To help people build solutions to a wide variety of data sharing applications, we proposeprogrammable dataflows, which consist of two components. The first component is an abstraction, thecontract, which agents use to communicate the intent of a data sharing action and evaluate its consequences before the dataflow takes place. This helps agents control the release of their data. The second component is acontract programming model(CPM), which allows agents to program data sharing applications catered to each problem’s needs with the contract abstraction. We describe how to deploy those applications on a data escrow to ensure data remains protected from unintended data releases. Our evaluation shows 1) the contract abstraction permits representing a wide range of sharing problems, 2) CPM permits writing programs for complex data sharing problems and 3) quantitatively, our improvements to CPM make sharing programs run efficiently.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2340034
- PAR ID:
- 10706804
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The VLDB Journal
- Volume:
- 35
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1066-8888
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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