Commitment-based service coordination Online publication date: Wed, 04-Feb-2009
by Stefan J. Witwicki, Edmund H. Durfee
International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (IJAOSE), Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009
Abstract: We present a methodology for composing large-grained services that exhibit temporal uncertainty and complex task dependencies. Our multi-agent approach incorporates temporal and stochastic planning paradigms and commitment-based negotiation to achieve the coordinated provision of services with stochastic outcomes. This is all captured within a service-choreography protocol, by which agents can request future service provisions and receive probabilistic temporal service promises in return, converging on coordinated decisions about how and when to work together. We hypothesise that our approach can scalably converge on good coordination solutions because it partially decouples the problems of negotiating service interactions and computing service policies. Our empirical evaluation provides initial confirmation of this hypothesis, demonstrating the scalability and effectiveness of our approach in producing coordinated, approximately optimal agent policies in a small fraction of the time that an optimal approach requires.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (IJAOSE):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook