| Search the Collection|Browse Subjects|Services|Library Information|Community |News & Events | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|||||||
Type of Document Dissertation Author Mallya, Ashok Ullal, Author's Email Address ashok.mallya@gmail.com URN etd-11212005-133937 Title Modeling and Enacting Business Processes via Commitment Protocols Among Agents Degree PhD Graduate Program Computer Science Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Dr. Munindar P. Singh Committee Chair Dr. Dennis R. Bahler Committee Member Dr. James C. Lester Committee Member Dr. Rada Y. Chirkova Committee Member Keywords
- Multiagent systems
- Business processes
- Service-Oriented Computing
Date of Defense 2005-11-09 Availability unrestricted Abstract Multiagent systems involve a rich variety of interactions among agents?situated computationsthat are autonomous in their behavior and heterogenous in structure. These interactions can
be realized unambiguously if they are governed by published protocols, since agents diverse in their
structure and behavior can interact as long as they respect the protocols. However, traditional protocol specifications are unduly rigid for application in open settings involving autonomous entities. They represent protocols simply as an ordering of steps and stifle the participants? autonomy due to a lack of flexibility during enactment.
Commitments among agents, which are akin to contractual obligations among businesses,
are a powerful abstraction for modeling flexible protocols. Commitment-based design enables a
more faithful model of the openness of the business world. However, modeling business interactions requires a rich variety of interaction protocols that can capture the needs of different applications.
Whereas general (business) protocols might most flexibly characterize the interactions of
their participants, protocols often must be refined based on the environment in which they are to be deployed, so as to yield improvements along various properties such as performance and risk outlay, when applied to real-world tasks such as in e-business.
We introduce a formal semantics and an operational characterization for commitmentbased
protocols wherein traditional software engineering notions such as refinement and aggregation
are extended to apply to protocols. We also develop a principled approach for the design of
such protocols in addition to methodologies for modeling and handling exceptions in them. We
demonstrate, with appropriate examples, the benefits of this approach over traditional ones when applied to business process modeling and enactment.
Our chief contributions are
- A theoretical basis for describing protocol refinement using subsumption hierarchies
and an algebra for composing protocols using existing ones.
- A methodology for modeling and handling exceptions in commitment protocols that
incorporates the preferences of the protocol designer and policies of the participants
and enables specification of exceptions independent of the protocol specification.
- Two methodologies for designing commitment protocols, one by enhancing an existing
agent-oriented software engineering methodology, and another by deriving protocols
from agent conversations.
Our work draws from and contributes to agent communication, business process modeling and
enactment, service-oriented computing, and software engineering.
Files
Filename Size Approximate Download Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds)
28.8 Modem 56K Modem ISDN (64 Kb) ISDN (128 Kb) Higher-speed Access etd.pdf 1.22 Mb 00:05:39 00:02:54 00:02:32 00:01:16 00:00:06