a protocol ontology for inter organizational workflow coordination

8/14/2019 A Protocol Ontology for Inter Organizational Workflow Coordination

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A Protocol Ontology for

Inter Organizational WorkflowCoordination

Eric Andonoff,Wassim Bouaziz, Chihab Hanachi

Toulouse, France, IRIT Laboratory & Toulouse 1 University

ADBIS 2007, Varna, Bulgaria


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Organization

sContextInter-Organizational Workflow (IOW)sProblemCoordination in IOW

sApproachProtocol based approach

sContributions

Coordination Protocol Ontology

how to describe IOW coordination protocols?

how to dynamically select them?

Protocol Management System

sConclusion


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Context

s

Inter-Organizational Workflow Workflow

automation of a single business process running in a single

organization

Inter Organizational Workflow (IOW)

several organizations put in common their business processes

value added service

constraints autonomous organizations

distributed and heterogeneous business processes

dynamic IOW

organizations are not predefined but dynamically selected at run time

a step forward to make automated IOW applications possible


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Problem

s Coordination in IOW Rules and manages the interactions between

business processes involved in IOW

Takes into account IOW constraints (autonomy,

distribution, heterogeneity) Important problem in IOW which remains open

notably with the emergence of dynamic IOW


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Problem

s Dynamic Coordination in IOW Issues

Finding partners (organizations)

Connect a requester organization looking for a workflow service

(i.e. a service implementing a business process) to one or several

organizations able to provide the requested service

Negotiation between Partners Evaluate the provided workflow services (quality of service)

Select the provider organization

Specification of contracts between partners Execution of these contracts


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Approach

s Protocols are recurrent in dynamic IOW

coordination issues

Coordination Protocols = first class entities

Coordination Protocols are

Isolatedto be better studied, designed and exploited Specified, validated and implemented by separating protocols rules

from the way they are used which is specific to each organization

Shared and reused at run time by each organization involved

in IOW


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Approach

s Coordination Protocols pushed out of IOW

applicationsProtocol Management System

Server of coordination protocol acting as an

interaction medium between business processes

(and consequently workflow systems)

Permits the description, selection and enactment of

coordination protocols

Relieves business processes (and consequently

workflow systems) of coordination protocol

management


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Contributions

s

Coordination Protocol Ontology Description of Coordination Protocols Mains concepts

Classification of IOW Coordination Protocols

How to use this ontology to describe a protocol

Dynamic Selection of Coordination Protocols Using the IOW Coordination Protocol Classification

According to the coordination issue to be solved and thetype of interaction the participating organizations areable to perform

s Architecture of a Protocol ManagementSystem


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s Description of Coordination Protocols

Main concepts (implemented using Protg-2000 & OWL)

has-business-domain

dictates

has-

senderhas-receiver

authorizes

has-type

Parameter

exchanged

used-in

has-parameter

plays

participates

ProtocolType Rule

ConversationDomain

Role

MessageType

Message

Actor

Intention

DescriptionMinNumbParticipants TextRule

Name

URIOntology

Type

Name

Content

TypeCurrentState

NameType

Condition


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s

Description of Coordination Protocols Classification of IOW Coordination Protocols Identification of IOW Coordination Protocols

Finding Partners: Matchmakerand Brokercoordination

protocols of MAS and Web services

Negotiation between Partners

Criteria: Negotiation behavior, Number of partners, Number of

rounds and Multi-Attribute negotiation

Multi-Attribute auctions, Argumentation,Heuristic and

IterativeContract-Net Protocols of MAS


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s

Description of Coordination Protocols Classification of IOW Coordination Protocols Hierarchy of IOW Coordination Protocols (implemented

using Protg-2000 & OWL)

has-comparison

mode

implements

dictates

ProtocolType

RuleConversation

Mode

manages

NumberOfProviders

DelayInResponse

FindingPartner

Matchmaker Broker

Negotiation

Argumentation Heuristic MultiAttributeAuction

IterativeContractNet

P2PExecution

BidObjective

OpenDialog

Explanations

FindingPartnerRule

NegotiationRule

FindingPartnerModerator

NegotiationModerator

OtherActor Moderator

Actor

QualityRate

Type


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s Description of Coordination Protocols Using IOW Coordination Protocol Ontology to design

Coordination protocols

Editor Protg-2000

MyProtocol.owl

Protocol Design

Designer

Coordination

Protocol

Ontology.owl

Broker.owl

Matchmaker.owl

Heuristic.owl

MyProtocol.owl

Specifics coordination protocols

Meta schema of coordination protocols


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s

Dynamic Selection of Coordination Protocols according to the considered IOW coordination issue

the type of interaction the organizations involved in the

IOW are able to participate in

Protocol SelectionReasoner RACER &

nRQL query language

Business

process

Coordination

Protocol

Ontology.owl

Broker.owl

Matchmaker.owl

Heuristic.owl

MyProtocol.owl

Specifics coordination

protocols

Meta schema of

coordination protocols


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s Axioms

Constraint the concepts of the ontology (classes,

properties and relationships)

Expressed in Protg Axiom Language (PAL)

Examples: Each protocol type has a minimal number of participants greaterthan 2

(forall ?ProtocolType (> (allowed-slot-value MinNumbParticipant ?ProtocolType)

2))

Each conversation has an actor who plays the role of moderator and

implements the ProtocolType used in the conversation

(defrange ?pt :FRAME Conversation used-in) pt conversation

(forall ?Conversation ( => (exist ?Actor (and ((participates ?Actor ?Conversation)

(plays ?Actor?Role) (allowed-slot-value TypeRole Role 'Moderator' ) )))

(and ((instance-of (?Actor) Moderator) (implements ?Actor ?pt) ))))


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s

Architecture

Communication Channel

Protocol Design and

Selection

Message Dispatcher


Protocol Execution

Domain Ontology

Protocol Selection

Coordination

Protocol Ontology

Protocol Design

Protocol Launcher

Conversation Act

Database

...

Conversation

Database

ModeratorConversation

ServerModerator


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Conclusion

s A Novel Approach to IOW Coordination Isolate Coordination Protocols involved in IOW

from participating business processes

which are left to a Protocol Management System

s Contributions Description of IOW Coordination Protocols using

ourCoordination Protocol Ontology

Dynamic Selection of IOW Coordination Protocols Using an IOW Coordination Protocol Hierarchy

According to the coordination issues to be solved andthe type of interaction the participating organizations areable to perform

Architecture of a Protocol Management System


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Conclusion

s

Future works Provide an implementation of the PMS

Use the PMS in other contexts than the IOW one

E-government

Crisis Management


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a protocol ontology for inter organizational workflow coordination

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