Workflow Model Based On Agent

With the evolution of internet, it becomes an important part of national economy of China that various commerce activities (electronic business, Enterprise Resource Planning, Product Data Management, Computer Integrated Manufacturing) based on internet. Workflow Management Coalition which takes charge of the standardization of workflow comes into existence in 1993. According to the definition of WfMC, a workflow management system is a system that can define and manage workflow completely, execute the workflow with the sequence of the logic computer identifiers in workflow as the way of executing software. The workflow technology has got a big development with the application scope of workflow technology used in information management becoming wider. People have more requirement of workflow management system due to their dependence on workflow management system and desire the workflow management system to improve its flexibility, stabilization, ability of interaction, security and so on. It becomes possible to improve the workflow technology with the development and application of Java,.net, distribution, J2EE.What the research and application of Agent in computer domain appears the first time is in a series of researches on distribution artificial intelligence made by researchers of MIT in 1970s. Nowadays, Agent technology has been applied on management of the development process in products of workflow management, Computer Aided Design, Decision support, supply chain management, integrated platform and integrated framework, electronic business and Internet applications. Whatever the origin point and result is, there are some basic common acknowledge that it is to improve the flexibility of software, the intelligence level of application system and also increase the ability to handle complicated problem. The main point of this paper is design and implicates a model of workflow management system based on the system of Aglet from IBM. The core is to solve the problem of journey selection when the process Agent running on client side.This paper completes the follow items:(1) Explanations of the knowledge of workflow, the classification of workflow management system and some software in detail. The development history and application of Agent is presented and also the model method of workflow and classical model. The idea of model Agent and the model of BDI are summarized in this section and also the advantages of workflow management model based on Agent.(2) 4 modules are designed according to the characteristics of enterprises and they are module of process definition, module of execute service of Agent, module of database and module of workflow control.Module of process definition is used to implement the function of definition and model of the workflow procedure. Module of execute service of Agent instantiates workflow according to definition of flow and setting of every activity in model of workflow defined by user. Module of interface implements the interaction between system and client application and the process of workflow invokes application. Module of database takes charge of the storage of data. Module of database and module of workflow harmonized observes instance of the execution of workflow and control different execute service of workflow, so as to work together, avoids conflict.Agent in system is divided into 5 parts: execute Agent, flow Agent, resource management Agent, resource Agent, manage Agent.Execute Agent prepares and manages the behavior of other agents in execute service of workflow directly or indirectly; Flow Agent take charge of execution of an instance of workflow; Resource management Agent is used to administrate resource information and resource Agent and supply information for Agents who want to get resource information; System must use resource Agent to access resource; Manage Agent inspects and harmonize the normal execution of other Agents; The interaction between system and environment is charged by user Agent(3) Problem of journey selection which exists in flow Agent running on client side is settled by creating message agent. Every subject which can execute flow agent, should be informed when the instance of flow agent are waiting. Instead of cloning flow agent which can go to subject, we create message agent each of which is a sub agent of corresponding flow agent. These message agents go to the subjects, waiting for the confirmation from the subject who would like to execute the task. If subject sends a confirm message to the message agent, the message agent will go back to the corresponding flow Agent. Flow Agent informs all the other message agents that it has found the subject and creates killing agent to kill all the other message agents after which flow agent go to the subject to execute task. The approach is implemented by simulating operations among different department in the procedure of products purchase in enterprise. This paper has strong fundamental research value and the reality instruction significance for the enterprise to use workflow management system.