Method of Using BDI Agents to Implement Service-oriented Workflow Mapping in AGWMS

Abstract

Grid computing is becoming a mainstream technology for large-scale distributed resource sharing and system integration. Workflow management is also emerging as one of the most important grid services. Web service composition has been one of the hottest research topics. Grid environment is very dynamic, and the services are shared among many users, it is impossible to optimize the 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. In this paper, we propose a method of using BDI agents to implement service-oriented workflow mapping in our agent-based grid workflow management system (AGWMS), which helps grid users streamline, manage and monitor their routinely problem solving processes without having to know any details of the underlying complex structure and dynamic state of VOs. BDI agent technology helps the system meet challenges from the grid context. Three types of workflow in AGWMS are denoted as abstract workflow (AW), concrete workflow (CW) and executable workflow (EW). We also propose AW2CW mapping algorithm and CW2EW mapping algorithm to implement service-oriented workflow mapping. Utilization of three workflow types further liberates model designers from sophisticated system details. It also increases the reusability of domain-specific models and improves the fault tolerance of the system