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Vol: 55(69) No: 1 / March 2010 Finite State Process Models of Protocol-Based Service Coordination Amelia Bădică Department of Business Information Systems, University of Craiova, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Str.A.I.Cuza 13, 200585 Craiova, Romania, e-mail: ameliabd@yahoo.com Costin Bădică Department of Software Engineering, University of Craiova, Faculty of Automation, Computers and Electronics, Bvd.Decebal 107, 200440 Craiova, Romania, e-mail: cbadica@software.ucv.ro Elvira Popescu Department of Software Engineering, University of Craiova, Faculty of Automation, Computers and Electronics, Bvd.Decebal 107, 200440 Craiova, Romania, e-mail: epopescu@software.ucv.ro Mihnea Scafeş Department of Software Engineering, University of Craiova, Faculty of Automation, Computers and Electronics, Bvd.Decebal 107, 200440 Craiova, Romania, e-mail: mscafes@software.ucv.ro Keywords: service coordination, interaction protocol, agent, finite state process. Abstract In this paper we propose a formal framework based on finite state process algebra for modeling service coordination in agent systems. The model is inspired by WS-Coordination specification. Several participant agents can coordinate their actions towards reaching a semantically consistent outcome in a distributed activity. Our model defines coordinator and participant agents and their generic interaction protocols and allows integration of application specific protocols by means of protocol handlers. The approach is demonstrated by developing a sample model that shows how coordination is achieved between a set of agents involved in contracting activities. References [1] [1] OASIS Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) TC. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ws-tx, (accessed in December 2009). [2] Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination) Version 1.2, Committee Specification 01, 2 February 2009, http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-tx/wstx-wscoor-1.2-spec.html, (accessed in December 2009). [3] The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, http://www.fipa.org, (accessed in December 2009). [4] G. Alonso, F. Casati, H. Kuno, and V. Machiraju, Web Services. Concepts, Architectures and Applications. Springer, 2004. [5] A. Bădică and C. Bădică, Specification and verification of an agent-based auction service. In G. A. Papadopoulos, W. Wojtkowski, G. Wojtkowski, and S. Wrycza, editors, Information System Development. Towards a Service Provision Society, 239-248, Springer, 2009. [6] A. Bădică, C. Bădică, and V. Liţoiu, “Middle-agents interactions as finite state processes: Overview and example”, Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE 2007), pages 12–17. IEEE Computer Society, 2007. [7] H. Foster, S. Uchitel, J. Magee, and J. Kramer, “Model-based verification of web service compositions”, Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pages 152–163. IEEE Computer Society, 2003. [8] C. Guidi, R. Lucchi, and M. Mazzara, A formal framework for web services coordination. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 180(2):55–70, 2007. [9] J. Johnson, D. Langworthy, L. Lamport, and F. Vogt, Formal specification of a web services protocol. Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming, 70(1):34–52, 2007. [10] J. Magee and J. Kramer. Concurrency. State Models and Java Programs, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2006. [11] R. Milner, Communicating and Mobile Systems: The p-calculus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999. [12] I. Robinson, The Roots of WS-Coordination, http://ianrobinson.blogspot.com/2007/01/roots-of-ws-coordination.html, 2007, (accessed in December 2009). [13] R. Smith, The contract net protocol: High-level communication and control in a distributed problem solver. IEEE Transactions on Computers, C-29(12):1104–1113, 1981. [14] http://software.ucv.ro/~badica_costin/fsp/saci09_models.zip [15] M. Wooldridge, An Introduction to Multiagent Systems, John Wiley & Sons, 2002. [16] A. Bădică and C. Bădică, Formalizing Agent Interactions in Matchmaking Processes Using FSP and FLTL, Scientific Bulletin of “Politehnica” University of Timişoara, Transactions on Automatic Control and Computer Science, vol.54(68), no.1, 13-18, 2009. [17] R. Hennicker and M. Ludwig, “Design and Implementation of a Coordination Model for Distributed Simulations”, Proceedings Modellierung 2006, GI-Edition Lecture Notes in Informatics 82, 83-97, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), 2006. |