Using multi-agent platform for pure decentralised business workflows

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Guo, Li^; | Robertson, Dave | Chen-Burger, Yun-Heh

Affiliations: London Internet Centre, Imperial College, United Kingdom | CISA, Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract: This paper describes the development of a distributed multi-agent workflow enacting mechanism starting from a BPEL4WS specification. Our work demonstrates that a multi-agent interaction protocol (Lightweight Coordination Calculus) can be derived from a BPEL4WS specification to enable pure decentralised business workflows. The key difference between our work and other existing multi-agent based systems is that our approach proposes a pure distributed architecture (no centralised controller/coordinator) for deploying workflow systems in an open environment (internat). Moreover, with our approach, existing workflow developing methodologies and business process models can be adopted in as much as possible for multi-agent system development. Some problems we encountered such as mapping problem between the used business process modelling and multi-agent interaction protocol description languages are addressed.

Keywords: Multi-agent system, workflow system, BPEL4WS, agent interaction protocol

DOI: 10.3233/WIA-2008-0142

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An International Journal, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 295-311, 2008