TBP: Code-Oriented Component Behavior Specification

Web services are nowadays attracting the attention of both academia and industry. However, a very little has so far been accomplished in terms of design and development methods that assist those who are responsible for specifying and running applications based on Web services. For this purpose, we developed CP4WS that stands for Context and Policy for Web Services. CP4WS is a context-based and policy-driven method for designing and developing composite Web services. Policies manage various aspects related to Web services like participation in composition and adjustment due to changes in the environment, and context provides the necessary information that enables for instance to trigger the appropriate policies and to regulate the interactions between Web services according to the current state of the environment. CP4WS consists of several steps such as user needs identification and Web services behavior specification. Each step has a specific graphical notation that facilitates the representation, description, and validation of the composition operations of Web services. A running scenario that illustrates the use of CP4WS is presented in the article as well.

Download Full-text

Using Rule-Based Concepts as Foundation for Higher-Level Agent Architectures

Handbook of Research on Emerging Rule-Based Languages and Technologies ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-402-6.ch021 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 493-524 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Lars Braubach ◽

Alexander Pokahr ◽

Adrian Paschke

Keyword(s):

Real World ◽

Application Domain ◽

Behavior Control ◽

Software Projects ◽

Rule Based ◽

Agent Architectures ◽

Agent Behavior ◽

Key Characteristics ◽

Behavior Specification ◽

Rule Bases

Declarative programming using rules has advantages in certain application domains and has been successfully applied in many real world software projects. Besides building rule-based applications, rule concepts also provide a proven basis for the development of higher-level architectures, which enrich the existing production rule metaphor with further abstractions. One especially interesting application domain for this technology is the behavior specification of autonomous software agents, because rule bases help fulfilling key characteristics of agents such as reactivity and proactivity. This chapter details which motivations promote the usage of rule bases for agent behavior control and what kinds of approaches exist. Concretely, these approaches are in the context of four existing agent architectures (pure rule-based, AOP, Soar, BDI) and their implementations (Rule Responder, Agent-0 and successors, Soar, and Jadex). In particular, this chapter emphasizes in which respect these agent architectures make use of rules and with what mechanisms they extend the base functionality. Finally, the approaches are generalized by summarizing their core assumptions and extension mechanisms and possible further application domains besides agent architectures are presented.

Download Full-text