以代理人為基礎的工作流程管理系統中定義的一致性

Abstract

一般來說，工作流程管理系統是被設計成以資料庫中的工作流程定義及文件定義來執行。然而工作流程定義的靜態特性可能會降低系統的實用性。要開發一個工作流程管理系統的代價很高，所以把彈性和再利用性考慮進來是合理的。本篇論文中，我們要呈現一個利用代理人動態地修正工作流程定義的方法。在我們以代理人為基礎的工作流程管理系統中，一個執行中的工作流程可以被視為是一個（群）代理人，根據工作流程定義，和角色間的互動。代理人本身也能對一個工作流程作修改。因此，代理人可以修改它們對使用者的導引，而系統在面對規格異動時也能更有彈性。

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) are usually designed to run with the workflow (process) definitions and artifact definitions from repository. The static characteristics for process definitions might reduce the practicability of the systems. The cost to develop a WfMS is so high that it is reasonable to take the flexibility and reusability of system architecture into account. In this thesis, we present an approach to modify the definition of workflow processes with agents dynamically. In our agent-based workflow system, the running of a workflow can be viewed as an (or a set of) agent interacting with roles based on the definition of the workflow. The definition of a workflow can be modified by the agent itself. Therefore, agents can modify their guidance for workers, and the system will be more flexible to meet the specification modification.