Abstract
The characteristic of being autonomous and proactive makes the agents able to explore a wide solution space, that dynamically changes or contains uncertainty. We propose a language for describing system goals that may be injected at run-time into the system. The novelty of our approach consists in decoupling the business goals (what is expected) and their implementation (how to address the desired behavior). Indeed relieving the tension between ’what’ and ’how’ provides more degrees of freedom to the system. On the occurrence, agents of our system may exploit their features (mainly autonomy and proactivity, but also learning and planning) for getting benefits from a wider solution space. The result is that the system behavior may adapt to the current operating conditions. Moreover, the injection mechanism contributes to reduce the effort in evolving the system. This paper focuses on the goal specification language that is the base for enabling both adaptivity and evolution.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
BPMN, O.: Business process model and notation (bpmn) (2009), www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
Van der Aalst,, W., Basten, T., Verbeek, H.M.W., Verkoulen, P.A.C., Voorhoeve, M.: Adaptive workflow. In: Enterprise Information Systems. Kluwer Academic Publishers (1999)
Casati, F., Ceri, S., Pernici, B., Pozzi, G.: Workflow evolution. Data & Knowledge Engineering 24(3), 211–238 (1998)
Kammer, P., Bolcer, G., Taylor, R., Hitomi, A., Bergman, M.: Techniques for supporting dynamic and adaptive workflow. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 9(3), 269–292 (2000)
Serral, E., Sabatucci, L., Leonardi, C., Valderas, P., Susi, A., Zancanaro, M., Pelechano, V.: Applying a methodology for developing ami systems: the nursing home case study. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Information Systems Development Cutting Edge Research on Information Systems (2011)
Buhler, P., Vidal, J.: Towards adaptive workflow enactment using multiagent systems. Information Technology and Management 6(1), 61–87 (2005)
Morandini, M., Penserini, L., Perini, A.: Towards goal-oriented development of self-adaptive systems. In: Proceedings of the 2008 International Workshop on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-managing Systems, pp. 9–16 (2008)
Winikoff, M., Padgham, L., Harland, J., Thangarajah, J.: Declarative and procedural goals in intelligent agent systems. In: International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Morgan Kaufmann (2002)
Bresciani, P., Perini, A., Giorgini, P., Giunchiglia, F., Mylopoulos, J.: Tropos: An agent-oriented software development methodology. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 8(3), 203–236 (2004)
Van Lamsweerde, A.: Goal-oriented requirements engineering: A guided tour. In: Proceedings of Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, pp. 249–262 (2001)
Yu, E., Mylopoulos, J.: Why goal-oriented requirements engineering. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundations of Software Quality, pp. 15–22 (1998)
Cheng, B., de Lemos, R., Giese, H., Inverardi, P., Magee, J., Andersson, J., Becker, B., Bencomo, N., Brun, Y., Cukic, B., et al.: Software engineering for self-adaptive systems: A research roadmap. Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems, 1–26 (2009)
Whittle, J., Sawyer, P., Bencomo, N., Cheng, B.H.C., Bruel, J.M.: RELAX: a language to address uncertainty in self-adaptive systems requirement. Requirements Engineering 15(2), 177–196 (2010)
Van Dyke Parunak, H., Brueckner, S.: Entropy and self-organization in multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 124–130. ACM (2001)
Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M.C., Regnell, B., Wesslén, A.: Experimentation in software engineering: An introduction. Kluwer Academic Publishers (2000)
Team, BMM: Business motivation model (bmm) specification. Technical report, Technical Report dtc/06–08–03, Object Management Group, Needham, Massachusetts, USA (2006)
Rolland, C., Souveyet, C., Achour, C.: Guiding goal modeling using scenarios. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 24(12), 1055–1071 (1998)
Yu, E.: Modelling strategic relationships for process reengineering. Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering 11 (2011)
Fuxman, A., Pistore, M., Mylopoulos, J., Traverso, P.: Model checking early requirements specifications in tropos. In: Proceedings of Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, pp. 174–181. IEEE (2001)
Yu, L.: From requirements to architectural design–using goals and scenarios. University of Toronto (2001), http://www.cs.toronto.edu/km/GRL/fromr2a/fromr2a/straw01.pdf
Dardenne, A., Van Lamsweerde, A., Fickas, S.: Goal-directed requirements acquisition. Science of Computer Programming 20(1), 3–50 (1993)
Hindriks, K.V., de Boer, F.S., van der Hoek, W., Meyer, J.-J.C.: Agent programming with declarative goals. In: Castelfranchi, C., Lespérance, Y. (eds.) ATAL 2000. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1986, pp. 228–243. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Howden, N., Rönnquist, R., Hodgson, A., Lucas, A.: Jack intelligent agents-summary of an agent infrastructure. In: 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents (2001)
Rao, A.: Agentspeak (l): Bdi agents speak out in a logical computable language. Agents Breaking Away, 42–55 (1996)
Bordini, R.H., Hübner, J.F.: A java-based agentspeak interpreter used with saci for multi-agent distribution over the net (2004)
Hindriks, K.V., De Boer, F.S., Van der Hoek, W., Meyer, J.J.C.: Agent programming in 3APL. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 2(4), 357–401 (1999)
Dastani, M., van Riemsdijk, M.B., Dignum, F.P.M., Meyer, J.-J.C.: A programming language for cognitive agents goal directed 3APL. In: Dastani, M., Dix, J., El Fallah-Seghrouchni, A. (eds.) PROMAS 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3067, pp. 111–130. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Braubach, L., Pokahr, A., Moldt, D., Lamersdorf, W.: Goal representation for BDI agent systems. In: Bordini, R.H., Dastani, M., Dix, J., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A. (eds.) PROMAS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3346, pp. 44–65. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Ribino, P., Lodato, C., Lopes, S., Seidita, V., Hilaire, V., Cossentino, M.: A norm-governed holonic multi-agent system metamodel. In: Müller, J.P., Cossentino, M. (eds.) AOSE 2012. LNCS, vol. 7852, pp. 22–39. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
ISO Technical Committee TC 154: Iso 8601 international standard date and time notation (1998), http://www.iso.org/
Bordini, R.H., Hübner, J.F., Wooldridge, M.: Programming multi-agent systems in AgentSpeak using Jason, vol. 8. Wiley Interscience (2007)
TC OASIS: WS-BPEL - Web Services Business Process Execution Language (2007), http://www.oasis-open.org
Ghose, A.K., Koliadis, G.: Relating business process models to goal-oriented requirements models in kaos. Faculty of Informatics-Papers, 573 (2007)
Burmeister, B., Arnold, M., Copaciu, F., Rimassa, G.: Bdi-agents for agile goal-oriented business processes. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: Industrial Track, pp. 37–44. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (2008)
Greenwood, D., Ghizzioli, R.: Goal-oriented autonomic business process modelling and execution. Multiagent System (2009)
Chen-Burger, Y.H., Stader, J.: Formal support for adaptive workflow systems in a distributed environment. In: Workflow Handbook 2003, p. 93 (2003)
Cao, J., Yang, J., Chan, W.: Exception handling in distributed workflow systems using mobile agents. e-Business Engineering (2005)
Liaskos, S., Khan, S.M., Litoiu, M., Daoud Jungblut, M., Rogozhkin, V., Mylopoulos, J.: Behavioral adaptation of information systems through goal models. Information Systems (2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sabatucci, L., Ribino, P., Lodato, C., Lopes, S., Cossentino, M. (2013). GoalSPEC: A Goal Specification Language Supporting Adaptivity and Evolution. In: Cossentino, M., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A., Winikoff, M. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8245. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45343-4_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45343-4_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-45342-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-45343-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)