Virtual Enterprise Workflow And Its Prototype Based On Multi-agent And Web Service

Virtual Enterprise Workflow is an emerging technology that has become increasingly important in the application domain of virtual enterprise (VE). It may well fit the needs of VE management in a highly dynamic and unpredictable environment and it is also the coordination infrastructure for the VE to reach global system goals. On the basis of analyzing many famous projects,products and specifications,a new business process model and a new multi-agent based architecture is designed and developed,and a lightweight workflow prototype is implemented. The contribution may be valuable for promoting the development of VE and electronic commerce.1. Discusses the main characteristics of VE,especially the dynamic characteristics of VE. A technology infrastructure including XML,Java,Agent,and Web Service,etc.,is proposed which can be used synthetically to resolve the dynamic,loosely coupled,unpredictable,autonomous and heterogeneous problems of VE.2. Four principles have been identified including coordination principle,communication principle,restriction principle and ontology. It is one of the thesis's contribution that introduces the Coordination theory in the analysis to the VE workflow process,and builds the restriction rule for the process coordinating on the electronic contract.3. This thesis also proposes a new methodology named multi-agent oriented analysis and design (MAOAD) based on the conventional Agent oriented analysis and design (AOAD) methodology. In MAOAD,the phrase domain model is a new and key concept in resolving the multi-domain problem such as virtual enterprise.4. This thesis researches the details of the principle of VE workflow,and proposes a new management theory that the global VE business process could be coordinated by means of monitoring the intermediate results of business processes. Based on it,a new VE business process definition model is built which is divided into three logic layers:the global business process,the shared business process and the private business process. The shared business process is the mid-tier by which the global process could monitor and control the private business process. According to the process model a business process definition language for VE (VE_BPDL) is also defined.5. Based on the philosophy of coordination theory and methodology,a three layered multi-agent architecture is proposed which is in accordance with the business process definition model. The three layers are multi-agent management layer,the shared multi-agent application layer and the global multi-agent application layer.6. This thesis researches the philosophy of ontology and builds the ontology for the VE workflows.7. This thesis also researches the Web Services.,and shows how to use the web services torealize the application of VE. A new computational model formed by Web service plus agent is also discussed which could be used to realize the automation of dynamic selection of partners.8. This thesis has implemented a lightweight multi-agent based workflow prototype. In the prototype,the JADE platform is responsible for creating and managing the agents,the ontology is built by means of protege 2000,the VE_BPDL is created based on XML,NWPU-P815 workflow engine is finished by modifying the source code of the Europe project EURESCOM P815,the business process definition modeling tool is built on the GEF flow chart library,the APACHE Axis is used as the application server which supports the communication between agents based on SOAP protocol,and finally,the management console for the global and shared business process is developed.