Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Process Coordination with Business Artifacts and Multiagent Technologies

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Journal on Data Semantics

Abstract

This work is set in the context of data-centric approaches and is motivated by the observation that business artifacts are not devised as natural means of coordination, despite the fact that they have this potential. Instead of using orchestration and choreography languages, we propose to enrich business artifacts with a normative layer that defines the coordination, basing our approach on social commitments. The straightforward advantage is an increased reusability of both processes and business artifacts, thanks to a clear decoupling between the coordination logic and the business logic. We show how social commitments can be leveraged for modularizing the design of distributed tasks and discuss the advantages of the approach from a software engineering perspective.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The code of the whole system can be downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/p/twocomm/codesvn/HEAD/tree/2COMMJaCaMoExamples/hiring/.

References

  1. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, Calvanese D, Micalizio R, Montali M (2016) Towards data- and norm-aware multiagent systems. In: Post-proceedings of the 4th international workshop on engineering multi-agent systems, EMAS 2016, revised selected and invited papers, no. 10093 in LNAI, pp 22–38

  2. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, Capuzzimati F, Micalizio R (2018) Objective Coordination with Business Artifacts and Social Engagements. In: Teniente E, Weidlich M (eds) Business Process Management Workshops, BPM 2017 International Workshops, Revised Papers, volume 308 of Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP), p 1–18, Springer, Berlin

  3. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, Capuzzimati F, Micalizio R (2018) Commitment-based agent interaction in JaCaMo+. Fundam Inform 157:1–33

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, Marengo E, Patti V, Capuzzimati F (2014) Engineering commitment-based business protocols with the 2CL methodology. JAAMAS 28(4):519–557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-013-9233-1

    Google Scholar 

  5. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, May KM, Micalizio R, Tedeschi S (2016) Computational accountability. In: Chesani F, Mello P, Milano M (eds) Deep understanding and reasoning: a challenge for next-generation intelligent agents, URANIA 2016, vol 1802. CEUR, Workshop proceedings, Genoa, Italy, pp 56–62

  6. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, May KM, Micalizio R, Tedeschi S (2017) ADOPT JaCaMo: Accountability-driven organization programming technique for JaCaMo. In: PRIMA 2017-20th International Conference, Proceedings, LNCS, vol 10621. Springer

  7. Baldoni M, Baroglio C, Micalizio R (2018) Goal distribution in business process models. In: Chiara G, Magnini B, Passerini A, Traverso P (eds) Proceedings of the AI*IA 2018-advances in artificial intelligence-17th international conference of the italian association for artificial intelligence. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 11298. Springer, Trento, Italy, 20–23 Nov 2018, pp 252–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03840-3_19

  8. Bhattacharya K, Caswell NS, Kumaran S, Nigam A, Wu FY (2007) Artifact-centered operational modeling: lessons from customer engagements. IBM Syst J 46(4):703–721

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bhattacharya K, Hull R, Su J (2009) A data-centric design methodology for business processes. In: Cardoso J, van der Aalst W (eds) Handbook of research on business process modeling. IGI Publishing, pp 503–531

  10. Boissier O, Bordini RH, Hübner JF, Ricci A, Santi A (2013) Multi-agent oriented programming with JaCaMo. Sci Comput Program 78(6):747–761. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2011.10.004 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016764231100181X

  11. Bordini RH, Hübner JF, Wooldridge M (2007) Programming multi-agent systems in agentspeak using Jason. Wiley, Hoboken

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. de Brito M, Hübner JF, Boissier O (2018) Situated artificial institutions: stability, consistency, and flexibility in the regulation of agent societies. Auton Agents Multi Agent Syst 32(2):219–251

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Busi N, Ciancarini P, Gorrieri R, Zavattaro G (2001) Coordination models: a guided tour. Springer, Berlin, pp 6–24

    Google Scholar 

  14. Calvanese D, De Giacomo G, Montali M (2013) Foundations of data-aware process analysis: a database theory perspective. In: Hull R, Fan W (eds) Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART symposium on principles of database systems, PODS 2013, New York, NY, USA, 22–27 June 2013. ACM, pp 1–12

  15. Castelfranchi C (1995) Commitments: From individual intentions to groups and organizations. In: Lesser VR, Gasser L (eds) Proceedings of the 1st international conference on multiagent systems, San Francisco, California, USA, 12–14 June 1995. The MIT Press, pp 41–48

  16. Chopra AK (2009) Commitment alignment: semantics, patterns, and decision procedures for distributed computing. Ph.D. thesis, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

  17. Cohn D, Hull R (2009) Business artifacts: a data-centric approach to modeling business operations and processes. IEEE Data Eng Bull 32(3):3–9

    Google Scholar 

  18. De Masellis R, Di Francescomarino C, Ghidini C, Montali M, Tessaris S (2017) Add data into business process verification: bridging the gap between theory and practice. In: Proceedings of the 31st AAAI conference on artificial intelligence, San Francisco, California, USA, 4–9 Feb 2017, pp 1091–1099

  19. Decker G, Weske M (2011) Interaction-centric modeling of process choreographies. Inf Syst 36(2):292–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Desai N, Chopra AK, Singh MP (2009) Amoeba: a methodology for modeling and evolving cross-organizational business processes. ACM Trans Softw Eng Methodol 19(2):6-1–6-45

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Dumas M (2011) On the convergence of data and process engineering. In: Proceedings of the 15th International conference on advances in databases and information systems, ADBIS. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 6909. Springer, pp 19–26

  22. Hubner JF, Sichman JS, Boissier O (2007) Developing organised multiagent systems using the MOISE+ model: programming issues at the system and agent levels. Int J Agent Oriented Softw Eng 1(3/4):370–395. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJAOSE.2007.016266

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Hull R, Damaggio E, De Masellis R, Fournier F, Gupta M, Heath III FT, Hobson S, Linehan MH, Maradugu S, Nigam A, Sukaviriya PN, Vaculín R (2011) Business artifacts with guard-stage-milestone lifecycles: managing artifact interactions with conditions and events. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM international conference on distributed event-based systems, DEBS 2011, New York, NY, USA, 11–15 July 2011, pp 51–62

  24. Lenzerini M (2002) Data integration: a theoretical perspective. In: Popa L, Abiteboul S, Kolaitis PG (eds) Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART symposium on principles of database systems, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, 3–5 June. ACM, pp 233–246

  25. Nigam A, Caswell NS (2003) Business artifacts: an approach to operational specification. IBM Syst J 42(3):428–445

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. (OMG) OMG (2006) Case management model and notation (cmmn), version 1.1. OMG Document Number formal/2016-12-01 (http://www.omg.org/spec/CMMN/1.1/PDF)

  27. Omicini A, Ossowski S (2003) Objective versus subjective coordination in the engineering of agent systems. In: Klusch M, Bergamaschi S, Edwards P, Petta P (eds) AgentLink, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 2586. Springer, pp 179–202

  28. Philippsen M (2000) A survey of concurrent object-oriented languages. Concurr Pract Exp 12(10):917–980

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Ricci A, Piunti M, Viroli M, Omicini A (2009) Environment programming in CArtAgO. Springer, Boston, pp 259–288

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Schumacher M (2001) Objective coordination in multi-agent system engineering: design and implementation. Springer, Berlin

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Silver B (2012) BPMN method and style, with BPMN implementer’s guide, 2nd edn. Cody-Cassidy Press, Aptos

    Google Scholar 

  32. Singh MP (1999) An ontology for commitments in multiagent systems. Artif Intell Law 7(1):97–113

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Singh MP (2003) Distributed enactment of multiagent workflows: temporal logic for web service composition. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, AAMAS 2003, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 14–18 July 2003. ACM, pp 907–914

  34. Singh MP (2011) Information-driven interaction-oriented programming: BSPL, the blindingly simple protocol language. In: 10th International conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems (AAMAS), pp 491–498

  35. Telang PR, Yorke-Smith N, Singh MP (2012) Relating goal and commitment semantics. In: Proceedings of ProMAS, LNCS, vol 7212. Springer, pp 22–37

  36. Weyns D, Omicini A, Odell J (2007) Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems. JAAMAS 14(1):5–30

    Google Scholar 

  37. Winikoff M, Yadav N, Padgham L (2018) A new hierarchical agent protocol notation. Auton Agents Multi Agent Syst 32(1):59–133

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Wooldridge M, Jennings NR, Kinny D (2000) The gaia methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. Auton Agents Multi Agent Syst 3(3):285–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Wooldridge MJ (2002) Introduction to multiagent systems. Wiley, Hoboken

    Google Scholar 

  40. Zambonelli F, Jennings NR, Wooldridge M (2003) Developing multiagent systems: the Gaia methodology. ACM Trans Softw Eng Methodol 12(3):317–370. https://doi.org/10.1145/958961.958963

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Olivier Boissier (Laboratoire Hubert Curien UMR CNRS 5516, Institut Henri Fayol, MINES Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France) and Jomi Fred Hübner (Department of Automation and Systems Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brasil) for the interesting discussions and for having supported the improvement in the draft. Special thanks to Stefano Tedeschi who supported the implementation. This work was partially supported by the Accountable Trustworthy Organizations and Systems (AThOS) project, funded by Università degli Studi di Torino and Compagnia di San Paolo (CSP 2014).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di Torino, Torino, Italy

    Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Federico Capuzzimati & Roberto Micalizio

Authors
  1. Matteo Baldoni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Cristina Baroglio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Federico Capuzzimati
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Roberto Micalizio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matteo Baldoni.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Baldoni, M., Baroglio, C., Capuzzimati, F. et al. Process Coordination with Business Artifacts and Multiagent Technologies. J Data Semant 8, 99–112 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13740-019-00100-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13740-019-00100-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation