CoAX Timing Information

We would like to gather timing and evaluation information that culd be
used in slides for the talk, or i Dylan's after demo briefing.  Things like
how long it takes to wrap an agent to make it work on the Grid or KAoS,
etc.  I know we have a lot of these that are relevant.  An example might be
for me "time to deploy a process panel to a new country".  Provide these to
me separately and I will collate them.

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From David Allsopp, QinetiQ, 18-Sep-2002

Some timings for our translator agents (although they don't feature in
the edited demo any more...):


To achieve a feed from UTexas (ASW contacts) to Decision-Desktop takes
about 40 minutes _from scratch_; the majority of this time is taken by
writing an XSL stylesheet - a moderately experienced XSL author is
assumed. Not much other time is needed since the subscription mechanism
is simple, and an example message is included in the UTexas ServiceUI.


To achieve a feed of submarine predictions from the UMD-Predict to
Decision-Desktop took 55 minutes for writing an XSL stylesheet plus 15
minutes to write an AttrValPairs->XML translator. This took longer than
the UTexas feed because the format changed at one point, and because UMD
weren't using XML.


The UMD feed was dependent on a feed in the opposite direction;
providing Intel data to UMD from the QinetiQ-Intel agent. This took 45
minutes for a translator to produce AttrValPairs, plus (very approx) 3
hours to modify the QinetiQ-Intel agent, plus 15 minutes to enter new
data into files. The data would in reality come from a human analyst;
this could be done in parallel with the computer work. The coding time
could be reduced substantially if a) XML were used and b) the Intel
agent used a more plug-in architecture.
Nevertheless, creation of feeds was feasible 'overnight' even with
unfavourable data formats.


For completeness, the feed from SimWorld to Decision-Desktop (which we
didn't use in the end) took 45 minutes for the XSL stylesheet, plus
approx 3 hours coding for a FIPA->XML translator. BBN were planning to
implement XML formats for SimWorld, in which case the coding wouldn't
have been needed.  In practice things overall took longer because we
were discovering bugs, clarifying issues etc.


In each case there is of course some additional time required to run the
agents, check that the feeds are as expected, test software, and so on,
but I'm not sure that can be quantified. The bottom line is that the
techie work required for a basic feed takes between <1 and 5 man-hours
for our examples; i.e. definitely feasible overnight, assuming
well-defined message interfaces, and reasonable communication between
partners.

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I-X - from Austin Tate, AIAI, 18-Sep-2002

6 different users conducted timed tests
which were all carried out without any problems other than
requiring clarifications in documentation or instructions in some
cases. It is possible to mount and test run I-X process panels in a
new environment and by staff who would be knowledgeable about mounting
software (such as a country HQ sys admin team might be) in less than
half an hour - and much of that is to go though a familiarisation test
of messaging between 2 panels.  The tailoring of a process panel to be
country specific takes between 5 and 7 minutes.
