Method of using BDI agents to implement service-oriented workflow mapping in AGWMS

Abstract

Workflow management is one of the most important parts of ShanghaiGrid, which has a complex service-oriented infrastructure. Because grid environment is very dynamic and services in it are shared among many users, it is impossible to optimise grid workflow from the point of view of execution ahead of time. In fact, one may want to make decisions about the execution locations and the access to a particular data set as late as possible, which is the main objective of grid workflow mapping. In this paper, three types of workflow are denoted as abstract workflow (AW), concrete workflow (CW) and executable workflow (EW). We propose a method of using Belief-desire-intention (BDI) agents to implement service-oriented workflow mapping in the agent-based grid workflow management system (AGWMS) of ShanghaiGrid. BDI agent technology helps the system meet challenges from the grid context. Contract net protocol (CNP) provides a very proper negotiation model for these agents. The problem of workflow mapping has been transferred to the problem of multi-agent negotiation with the help of CNP model in AGWMS. AW2CW and CW2EW mapping algorithms are also given to accomplish service-oriented workflow mapping.