Software Agent Architecture for Managing Inter-Organizational Collaborations

The growing importance of cooperation among organizations, as a result of globalization, current market opportunities and technological advances, encourages organizations to dynamically establish inter-organizational collaborations. These collaborations are carried out by executing collaborative business processes among the organizations. In this work we propose an agent-based software architecture for managing inter-organizational collaborations. Two types of agents are provided: the Collaboration Administrator Agent and the Process Administrator Agent. The former allows organizations setting up collaborations. The latter allows organizations executing collaborative business processes. A Colored Petri Net model specifying the role, which an organization fulfills in a collaborative process, is used to carry out the behavior of the Process Administrator Agent that represents the organization. Planning and execution of the actions of the Process Administrator Agents are driven by a Colored Petri Net machine embedded to them. Thus, Process Administrator Agents do not require to have defined at design-time the protocols they can support. In addition, we propose a model-driven development method for generating Colored Petri Net models from a collaborative process model defined as interaction protocol. Finally, an implementation of the agent-based software architecture and methods based on model-driven development are presented.La creciente importancia de la cooperación entre las organizaciones, como consecuencia de la globalización, las oportunidades actuales de mercado y los avances tecnológicos, alienta a las organizaciones a establecer en forma dinámica colaboraciones inter-organizacionales. Estas colaboraciones se llevan a cabo mediante la ejecución de procesos de negocio colaborativos entre las organizaciones. En este trabajo de investigación se propone una arquitectura basada en agentes de software para la gestión de colaboraciones inter-organizacionales. La arquitectura provee dos tipos de agentes: el Agente Administrador de Colaboraciones y el Agente Administrador de Proceso. El primer agente permite a las organizaciones a establecer colaboraciones. El segundo agente habilita a las organizaciones ejecutar procesos de negocio colaborativos. El rol que una organización desempeña en un proceso colaborativo es especificado mediante un modelo de redes de Petri coloreadas. Este modelo es usado para dirigir el comportamiento del Agente Administrador de Proceso, el cual representa a una organización. La ejecución de los planes y las acciones del Agente Administrador de Proceso son dirigidas mediante una máquina de redes de Petri coloreadas embebida en el agente. Entonces, los Agentes Administrador de Proceso no requieren tener definido en tiempo de diseño los protocolos que dan soporte a su comportamiento. Adicionalmente, se propone un método basado en el desarrollo dirigido por modelos para la generación en forma automática de modelos de redes de Petri coloreadas a partir de un modelo de procesos de negocio colaborativo definido como protocolo de interacción. Finalmente, la implementación de la arquitectura y los métodos basados en el desarrollo dirigido por modelos son presentados.Fil: Tello Leal, Edgar. Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas; MéxicoFil: Chiotti, Omar Juan Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño (i); ArgentinaFil: Villarreal, Pablo David. Universidad Tecnologica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Centro de Investigacion y Desarrollo de Ingenieria En Sistemas de Informacion; Argentin

Detection of Anti-Patterns in the Control Flow of Collaborative Business Processes

The verification of the behavior of Collaborative Business Processes is an important aspect to consider when developing inter-organizational systems. In this work, a verification approach for the control flow of collaborative processes based on anti-patterns is proposed to improve the performance of verification. The approach supports the verification of complex constructs for advanced synchronization, multiple instances, and exception management. To this aim, 10 anti-patterns were defined from a repository of process models, and a tool which implements the anti-patterns was developed to evaluate the verification approach. Results indicate that, at worst, the verification time is less than half a millisecond, even for models with complex control flow constructs.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Detection of Anti-Patterns in the Control Flow of Collaborative Business Processes

The verification of the behavior of Collaborative Business Processes is an important aspect to consider when developing inter-organizational systems. In this work, a verification approach for the control flow of collaborative processes based on anti-patterns is proposed to improve the performance of verification. The approach supports the verification of complex constructs for advanced synchronization, multiple instances, and exception management. To this aim, 10 anti-patterns were defined from a repository of process models, and a tool which implements the anti-patterns was developed to evaluate the verification approach. Results indicate that, at worst, the verification time is less than half a millisecond, even for models with complex control flow constructs.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Detection of Anti-Patterns in the Control Flow of Collaborative Business Processes

The verification of the behavior of Collaborative Business Processes is an important aspect to consider when developing inter-organizational systems. In this work, a verification approach for the control flow of collaborative processes based on anti-patterns is proposed to improve the performance of verification. The approach supports the verification of complex constructs for advanced synchronization, multiple instances, and exception management. To this aim, 10 anti-patterns were defined from a repository of process models, and a tool which implements the anti-patterns was developed to evaluate the verification approach. Results indicate that, at worst, the verification time is less than half a millisecond, even for models with complex control flow constructs.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Método para el modelado y especificación de procesos de negocio colaborativos

El modelado y la especificación de los procesos de negocio colaborativos constituyen un desafío importante para que las empresas puedan establecer colaboraciones Business-to-Business. El objetivo de esta tesis es definir y proponer un método robusto y sistemático que de soporte al desarrollo de procesos colaborativos, desde el modelado de los mismos, hasta la especificación de dichos procesos y de las interfaces de las empresas que conforman el sistema de información Business-toBusiness, en una tecnología particular. El método está basado en la filosofía del desarrollo conducido por modelos y fundamentalmente, en los principios y guías de la Arquitectura Conducida por Modelos. Como parte de este método, se propone el lenguaje de modelado UP-ColBPIP, para dar soporte al análisis y diseño de los procesos colaborativos. El lenguaje está basado en el concepto de protocolos de interacción para definir procesos colaborativos independientes de la tecnología. Además, se propone un método y una herramienta para definir y ejecutar transformaciones de modelos de procesos colaborativos en especificaciones basadas en un estándar Business-toBusiness. Finalmente, se definen las transformaciones que posibilitan generar, a partir de modelos definidos con UP-ColBPIP, soluciones tecnologías con dos tipos diferentes de estándares Business-to-Business.Fil: Villareal, Pablo David. Universidad Tecnológica. Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe; Argentina.Peer ReviewedLa presente publicación corresponde a una tesis presentada para cumplir con los requisitos exigidos por la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional – Facultad Regional Santa Fe para obtener el grado Académico de Doctor en Ingeniería con Mención en Sistemas de Informació

Verification of Structured Processes: A Method Based on an Unsoundness Profile

The verification of business processes has been widely studied in the last two decades achieving significant results. Despite this, existing verification techniques based on state space exploration suffer, for large processes, the state space explosion problem. New techniques improved verification performance by structuring processes as trees. However, they do not support complex constructs for advanced synchronization and exception management. To cope with this issue we propose the definition of an unsoundness profile of a given process language, which specifies all possible combinations of control flow constructs that can lead to errors in the behavior of structured processes defined with such a language. In addition, we introduce the sequential and hierarchical soundness properties, which make use of this profile to determine soundness of a structured process with complex constructs in polynomial time. As an example, we defined an unsoundness profile for a subset of the BPMN language and verified the behavior of a BPMN process model.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO