A Conceptual Model for Negotiating in Service-Oriented Environments

Web services have been developed in recent years as a fundamental technique for the new generation of B2B or EAI applications. For their getting more available that imposes a new vision of service-oriented computing, the software industry has shifted its attention on software from developing a product as required to delivering a service on demand. In order to gain the many benefits from such a service-oriented model of software, several critical issues need to be addressed in a service-oriented environment such as differentiation of services with multiple attributes, dynamic selection and provision of services in a supply chain style, and commitment of services with prescribed rules. From the perspective of management, these issues are concerned within a process of negotiating desired services in a service-oriented environment. In this paper, we propose an object-oriented model that specifies such a negotiation process with explicit constructs addressing these critical issues. The model contains an architecture diagram that describes required components and their interactions for fulfilling the negotiation process, as well as a class/sequence diagram that specifies in detail what class objects these components have in order to collaboratively support all required behaviors occurred within the negotiation process

Autonomous Agents for Business Process Management

Traditional approaches to managing business processes are often inadequate for large-scale organisation-wide, dynamic settings. However, since Internet and Intranet technologies have become widespread, an increasing number of business processes exhibit these properties. Therefore, a new approach is needed. To this end, we describe the motivation, conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel agent-based business process management system. The key advance of our system is that responsibility for enacting various components of the business process is delegated to a number of autonomous problem solving agents. To enact their role, these agents typically interact and negotiate with other agents in order to coordinate their actions and to buy in the services they require. This approach leads to a system that is significantly more agile and robust than its traditional counterparts. To help demonstrate these benefits, a companion paper describes the application of our system to a real-world problem faced by British Telecom

From SMART to agent systems development

In order for agent-oriented software engineering to prove effective it must use principled notions of agents and enabling specification and reasoning, while still considering routes to practical implementation. This paper deals with the issue of individual agent specification and construction, departing from the conceptual basis provided by the SMART agent framework. SMART offers a descriptive specification of an agent architecture but omits consideration of issues relating to construction and control. In response, we introduce two new views to complement SMART: a behavioural specification and a structural specification which, together, determine the components that make up an agent, and how they operate. In this way, we move from abstract agent system specification to practical implementation. These three aspects are combined to create an agent construction model, actSMART, which is then used to define the AgentSpeak(L) architecture in order to illustrate the application of actSMART

Automatic Service Agreement Negotiators in Open Commerce Environments

There is a steady shift in e‑commerce from goods to services that must be provisioned according to service agreements. This study focuses on software frameworks to develop automated negotiators in open commerce environments. Analysis of the litera‑ ture on automated negotiation and typical case studies led to a catalog of 16 objective requirements and a conceptual model that was used to compare 11 state-of-the-art software frameworks. None of them was well suited for negotiating service agreements in open commerce environments. This motivated work on a reference architecture that provides the foundations to develop negotiation systems that address the previous requirements. A software framework was devised to validate the proposal by means of case studies. The study contributes to the fields of requirements engineering and software design, and is expected to support future efforts of practitioners and researchers because its findings bridge the gap among the existing automated negotiation techniques and lay the founda‑ tions for developing new software frameworksMinisterio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2006–00472Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009–07366Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007–64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008–04718-

Inter-organizational negotiation of web-services

The web service technology allows organizations to interact through business processes. \ud However, organizations involved in cooperative business processes have different interests \ud and points of view. A negotiation allows them to discuss their interests and requirements in \ud order to reach an acceptable agreement. We propose an integrated web service negotiation \ud process that takes into account human interaction and the use of different negotiation \ud protocols. It focuses on the application of feature modelling to describe the negotiated \ud services. Our contributions include: (i) the definition of a negotiation process; (ii) the \ud definition of a conceptual model to support the negotiation of web services; (iii) reuse of \ud artefacts generated throughout the negotiation process; (iv) coverage of critical elements in \ud the negotiation of electronic contracts, such as role, properties of electronic services and \ud contract models; and (v) exploration of the process in different application scenario

A Reference Architecture for Automated Negotiations of Service Agreements in Open and Dynamic Environments

The provision of services is often regulated by means of agreements that must be negotiated beforehand. Automating such ne gotiations is appealing insofar it overcomes one of the most often cited shortcomings of human negotiation: slowness. In this article, we report on a reference architecture that helps guide the development of automated negotiation systems; we also delve into the requirements that must au tomated negotiation systems must address to deal with negotiations of service agreements in open environments. Finally, we analyse how well suited current software frameworks to develop automated negotiation systems are for negotiating service agreements in open environments. This approach is novel in the sense that, to the best of our knowledge, no previous article compares extensively automated negotiation frame works in the context of negotiating service agreements in open environ ments nor provides a reference architecture specifically designed for this scenario.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) TIN2006-00472Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel

BOF4WSS : a business-oriented framework for enhancing web services security for e-business

When considering Web services' (WS) use for online business-to-business (B2B) collaboration between companies, security is a complicated and very topical issue. This is especially true with regard to reaching a level of security beyond the technological layer, that is supported and trusted by all businesses involved. With appreciation of this fact, our research draws from established development methodologies to develop a new, business-oriented framework (BOF4WSS) to guide e-businesses in defining, and achieving agreed security levels across these collaborating enterprises. The approach envisioned is such that it can be used by businesses-in a joint manner-to manage the comprehensive concern that security in the WS environment has become

Agent Technology in Supply Chains and Networks: An exploration of high potential future applications

This paper reports on an ongoing research project that\ud is aimed at evaluating how software agents can improve\ud performance of supply chains and networks. To conduct\ud this evaluation, first a framework is developed to classify\ud potential applications of software agents to supply\ud networks. The framework was used in workshop sessions\ud with logistics and information systems experts from\ud industry, software/consultancy and academia to identify\ud promising areas for agents. Based on the framework and\ud the outcome of the workshop sessions, this paper presents\ud promising application areas for the near future and\ud beyond