Designing, Verifying, and Evolving Commitment-based Protocols for Business

Abstract

Businesses today are facing increasing pressure to interoperate across multiple business partners. We address the design, verification, and evolution of business services in open environments. We approach the problem as an application of multiagent system concepts and techniques using protocols and commitments. We present an approach to the design and hierarchical composition of protocols that treats protocols as first-class entities, and explicitly addresses role-specific responsibilities and accountabilities. We propose a definition of protocol refinement between a putative subprotocol and a putative superprotocol. To address the evolution of protocol requirements, we describe an interaction architecture and a library of automated, interaction refactorings. We demonstrate these approaches via realistic applications from the insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, and software development domains.