Representing and Reasoning about Commitments in Business Processes (original) (raw)
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Modeling and Verifying Business Interactions via Commitments and Dialogue Actions
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Existing computer science approaches to business modeling offer lowlevel abstractions such as data and control flows, which fail to capture the business intent underlying the interactions that are central to real-life business models. In contrast, existing management science approaches are high-level but not only are these semiformal, they are also focused exclusively on managerial concerns such as valuations and profitability. This paper proposes a novel business metamodel based on commitments that considers additional agent-oriented concepts, specifically, goals and tasks. It proposes a set of business patterns and algorithms for checking model completeness and verification of agent interactions. Unlike traditional models, our approach marries rigor and flexibility, providing a crisp notion of correctness and compliance independent of specific executions.
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A requirements analysis in the emerging field of Semantic Web Services (SWS) (see http://daml.org/services/swsl/requirements/) has identified four major areas of research: intelligent service discovery, automated contracting of services, process modeling, and service enactment. This paper deals with the intersection of two of these areas: process modeling as it pertains to automated contracting. Specifically, we propose a logic, called CT R-S, which captures the dynamic aspects of contracting for services. Since CT R-S is an extension of the classical first-order logic, it is well-suited to model the static aspects of contracting as well. A distinctive feature of contracting is that it involves two or more parties in a potentially adversarial situation. CT R-S is designed to model this adversarial situation through its novel model theory, which incorporates certain game-theoretic concepts. In addition to the model theory, we develop a proof theory for CT R-S and demonstrate the use of the logic for modeling and reasoning about Web service contracts.
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Existing service-oriented architectures are formulated in terms of lowlevel abstractions far removed from business services. In a new SOA, the components are business services and the connectors are patterns, modeled as commitments, that support key elements of service engagements.
A Semantic Protocol-Based Approach for Developing Business Processes
A (business) protocol is a modular, public specification of an interaction among different roles that achieves a desired purpose. We model protocols in terms of the commitments of the participating roles. Commitments enable reasoning about actions, thus allowing the participants to comply with protocols while acting flexibly to exploit opportunities and handle exceptions. A policy is a (typically private) rule-based description of a participant's business logic that controls how it participates in a protocol. We propose that a business process be conceptualized as a cohesive set of protocols, and be enacted by agents playing specified roles in the protocols in which they participate. The agents would respect the given protocols while adhering to their local policies.
Semantic Web Service Choreography: Contracting and Enactment
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008
The emerging paradigm of service-oriented computing requires novel techniques for various service-related tasks. Along with automated support for service discovery, selection, negotiation, and composition, support for automated service contracting and enactment is crucial for any large scale service environment, where large numbers of clients and service providers interact. Many problems in this area involve reasoning, and a number of logic-based methods to handle these problems have emerged in the field of Semantic Web Services. In this paper, we build upon our previous work where we used Concurrent Transaction Logic (CTR) to model and reason about service contracts. We significantly extend the modeling power of the previous work by allowing iterative processes in the specification of service contracts, and we extend the proof theory of CTR to enable reasoning about such contracts. With this extension, our logic-based approach is capable of modeling general services represented using languages such as WS-BPEL. 3
Formalizing Commitments Using Action Languages
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
This paper presents an action language, called L mt , for representing and reasoning about commitments in multi-agent domains. The language is an extension of the language L, with new features motivated by the problem of representing and reasoning about commitments. These features include time, delayed effects, ir/reversible effects, concurrent actions, and multi-agents, for specifying and reasoning about narratives in multi-agent domains. The paper provides a transition-based semantics for L mt , which makes it possible to define an entailment relation between queries and multi-agent narratives with time constraints. The paper also demonstrates how features and properties of commitments can be described in this action language. In particular, it shows how L mt can handle both simple commitment actions as well as complex commitment protocols. Furthermore, the semantics of L mt provides a uniform solution to different problems in reasoning about commitments such as the problem of (i) verifying whether an agent fails (or succeeds) to deliver on its commitments; (ii) identifying outstanding commitments; and (iii) suggesting ways to satisfy outstanding commitments. Introduction and Motivation Consider the following conversation between agents A and B: Agent A: Do you want to do something tonight? Agent B: Sure, what do you want to do? Agent A: Let us have a potluck dinner with X. I will prepare some sandwiches and call X. But can you pick her up? Also, could you bring some soft-drinks? Agent B: Sure. How about 7pm? Agent A: Great. The conversation highlights a number of activities that A and B promise to perform: A needs to prepare the sandwiches and call X. These activities need to be completed before 7pm. B, on the other hand, needs to show up at A's flat by 7pm with soft-drinks and with X. These activities are referred to as commitments between A and B. This conversation also provides a number of interesting questions. What happens if A fails to make the phone call to X? What happens if B does not have enough money to buy the drinks? Can B ask A for money or can B ask X to bring the softdrinks? More generally, what does it mean for an agent to