Abstract
We propose an agent-oriented methodology for modelling business processes between enterprises that consists of the steps of analysis and design. The analysis starts by modelling intentional dependencies between the actors of the problem domain at hand, and continues by modelling intentional relationships that are internal to the actors, such as task decomposition links. In the design, intentional dependencies between the actors are transformed to commitment-based models of interactions between the agents. Models of tasks performed by the actors, obtained as a result of means-ends analysis, are transformed to activities and reaction rules, defining the behaviours of agents. The methodology is evaluated by using the case study of an electronic advertising process in newspapers.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
AgentBuilder®, http://www.agentbuilder.com
Wagner, G.: Agent-Oriented Enterprise and Business Process Modeling. In: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Enterprise Management and Resource Planning Systems (EMRPS’99), Venice, November 1999.
Bellifemine, F., Poggi, A., Rimassa, G.: Developing multi-agent systems with FIPA-compliant agent framework. Software-Practice and Experience 31 (2001) 103–128.
Wagner, G.: Foundations of Knowledge Systems with Applications to Databases and Agents. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston Dordrecht London (1998).
Ross, R. G.: The Business Rule Book: Classifying, Defining and Modeling Rules. Second Edition. Boston, Massachusetts, Database Research Group, Inc. (1997).
Defining Business Rules-What Are They Really? The Business Rules Group, formerly known as the GUIDE Business Rules Project, Final Report. Revision 1.3, July 2000. Prepared by D. Hay and K. A. Healy. Available at http://businessrulesgroup.org/firstpaper/br01c0.htm
Taveter, K., Wagner, G.: Agent-Oriented Enterprise Modeling Based on Business Rules. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER’2001), Yokohama, Japan, November 27–30, 2001. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York (2001), forthcoming.
Wagner, G.: Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design of Organizational Information Systems. In: Barzdins, J., Caplinskas, A. (eds.): Databases and Information Systems. Proceedings of the Fourth IEEE International Baltic Workshop on Databases and Information Systems, 1–5 May 2000, Vilnius, Lithuania. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston Dordrecht London (2000).
Widom, J., Ceri, S. (eds.): Active Database Systems: Triggers and Rules for Advanced Database Processing. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., San Francisco (1996).
Wagner, G.: Vivid Agents-How they Deliberate, How They React, How They Are Verified. Extended version of: Wagner, G.: A Logical And Operational Model of Scalable Knowledge-and Perception-Based Agents. In: Van de Velde, W., Perram. J. W. (eds.): Agents Breaking Away. Proceedings of MAAMAW’96. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 1038. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York (1996). Available At http://tmitwww.tm.tue.nl/staff/gwagner
Georgeff, M. P., Lansky, A.: Reactive reasoning and planning. In: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-87), Seattle, Washington, USA (1987) 677–682.
Antikainen, H., Bäck, A.: Challenges of electronic advertising processes in newspapers. Technical report. VTT Information Technology, Espoo, Finland (2000).
Herbst, H.: Business Rule-Oriented Conceptual Modeling (Contributions to Management Science). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York (1997).
Huber, M. J.: Jam Agents in a Nutshell, http://members.home.net:80/marcush/IRS/
Taveter, K., Wagner, G.: Combining AOR Diagrams and Ross Business Rules’ Diagrams for Enterprise Modeling. In: Proceedings of the Second International Bi-Conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS-2000), 5–6 June 2000, Stockholm (Sweden) and 30 July 2000, Austin (Texas, USA). iCue Publishing, Berlin (2000).
Hammer, M., Champy, J.: Reengineering the Corporation. New York, Harper Collins (1993).
Yolum, P., Singh, M.P.: Synthesizing Finite State Machines for Communication Protocols. North Carolina State University Technical Report TR-2001-06 (2001).
Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA), http://www.fipa.org
Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML), http://www.cs.umbc.edu/kqml/
Davenport, T. H.: Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press (1992).
Yu, E.: Modelling Strategic Relationships for Process Reengineering. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto (1994).
Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N., Kinny, D.: The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 3 (2000) 285–312.
Castro, J., Kolp, M., Mylopoulos, J.: A Requirements-Driven Development Methodology. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’01), Interlaken, Switzerland, June 4–8, 2001. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York (2001).
Venkatraman, M., Singh, M. P.: Verifying Compliance with Commitment Protocols: Enabling Open Web-Based Multiagent Systems. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 3 (2000) 217–236.
Yu, E. S. K., Mylopoulos, J.: From E-R to ‘A-R’-Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships for Business Process Reengineering. International Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems 2/3 (1995) 125–144.
Singh, M.: An Ontology for Commitments in Multiagent Systems: Toward a Unification of Normative Concepts. Artificial Intelligence and Law 7 (1999) 97–113.
Odell, J., Van Dyke Parunak, H. Bernhard, B.: Representing Agent Interaction Protocols in UML. In: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE-2000), Limerick, Ireland, June 2000.
Unified Modelling Language (UML), http://www.omg.org/uml/
Ould, M. A.: Business processes: modelling and analysis for re-engineering and improvement. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (1995).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Taveter, K., Wagner, G. (2002). A Multi-perspective Methodology for Modelling Inter-enterprise Business Processes. In: Arisawa, H., Kambayashi, Y., Kumar, V., Mayr, H.C., Hunt, I. (eds) Conceptual Modeling for New Information Systems Technologies. ER 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2465. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46140-X_31
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46140-X_31
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44122-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46140-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive