Beyond Composite Applications

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Beyond Composite Applications

Automating the Exception Rich Business Processes that Represent the Next

Generation of Application Development

Peter EvansGreenwood

[email protected] Stason

[email protected]

The market for enterprise applications is

maturing, forcing new development efforts to

move up the business valuechain and deliver

solutions to the exceptionrich business prob-

lems that were previously beyond information

technology's reach. Existing servicebased

approaches are reaching their limits and new

tools and techniques are needed to drive thisgrowth. Agent technology has proven to be a

powerful tool, enabling the development of

more flexible, adaptive and sophisticated solu-

tions than possible with more conventional

approaches. Integrating the technology with a

modern servicebased architecture allows us to

deliver applications as networks of dynamic

business services, supporting the sophisticated

negotiation and exception management neces-

sary to enable this next wave of application

development.

Serviceoriented architectures (SOA) and

webservice technologies[1] represent the lat-

est generation of tools and techniques for deliv-

ering enterprise applications. A webservice

based approach allows us to create applications

from distributed networks of loosely coupled

services in heterogeneous environments,

breaking away from the limitations of previous

monolithic approaches to deliver more flexible

applications more cost effectively than before.

Today, the major focus in enterprise software is

the development of composite applications[2].

Existing applications from a companys portfo-

lio are cracked open, exposing as webservices

the suite of basic services the business trans-

actions that each legacy application sup-

ports. Any additional functionality required is

developed as new services within the SOA of

the composite application. Finally, the set of

hetrogeneous services are strung together using

workflow tools and techniques (such as

BPEL[3]) to create higher level business pro-

cess services to support the endtoend busi-ness processes required. These services act as

clerks (Figure 1), scripting together the func-

tionality provided by business transactions to

deliver solutions targeted at a specific business

need or process.

Existing composite applications have already

harvested much of the low hanging fruit, pro-

viding companies with a suite of targeted appli-

cations that simplify business operations andallow the business to focus on the problem at

hand: delivering value to their customers and

shareholders. Rather than interacting with a

range of systems to carry out their job, users

are now provided with a focused user interface

that reduces the effort required to carry outtheir daytoday business activities, reducing

cost and improving overall quality of service.

FIGURE 1. Composite Application Technology Stack

Workflow Tools

Scripting Languages

Clerks

Composite Applications

3rdParty Applications

Network ServicesCustomer Functionality

Business Transactions

Service WrappedLegacy Applications
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From Consolidation to Automation

With the first generation of applications rapidly

maturing, the next step in the evolution of

webservice technology and composite appli-

cations lies in front of us. The next generation

of enterprise application technology will build

on the consolidated business processes pro-

vided by composite applications, automating

the the decision and exception management

processes that were previously beyond the

reach of process automation technology. These

applications will for the first time can cap-

ture the truly dynamic nature of a business pro-

cess as a collection of cooperating,

deliberating, negotiating services.

Automation allows us to bring the benefits of

software to these (previously manual) pro-cesses. A software based solution can look

across the enterprise to create globally optimal

solutions where manual processes are restricted

to locally acceptable solutions, restricted by the

limited data and time available to human oper-

ators. To do this we need to add a new layer to

the technology stack (Figure 2) Agent ser-

vices that contains technologies and

approaches that are capable of automating theexception rich business processes and delibera-

tions that are currently the responsibility of the

human operators. Previously we had a suite of

business transactions (webservices) coordi-

nated by clerks (BPEL); now we introduce a

layer of agents capable of managing business

exceptions and planning the operations of

Clerks in the layer below. This provides us

with a simple threelayer technology model

that allows us to associate specific technologies

and approaches with different types of func-tionality in the final solution.

A simple analogy is to compare the different

layers to the roles in a simple shipping business

process. If you were to walk into a shipping

office to ship a package, then the three layers

would be represented by the following business

entities:

The Shipping Business Transactions repre-sent the basic business transaction required

to fulfill the business process. These

include common business operations such

as creating a waybill, scheduling a pickup,

etc.

You interact with a Shipping Clerk who is

responsible for shipping business processes

such as filling out and validating the

waybill, calculating the charge or booking

a pickup created by stringing together

the business transactions. However, the

Shipping Clerk cannot cope with business

exceptions or complex business decisions.

A Shipping Agent is responsible for plan-

ning a shipment, and dealing with any busi-

ness exceptions that arise. Whereas the

Shipping Clerk knows how to carry out a

business process, the Shipping Agent

understands how the business process inte-

grates with the business and the processs

purpose.

These new agent services require tools and

techniques capable of supporting the develop-

ment and maintenance of these complex,

exception rich, business processes. One obvi-

ous candidate is agent technology[4]. Agent

technology is a large field that covers a wide

range of disciplines; though, at its core, the

technology is simply inspired by the flexibility

and sophistication seen in living systems[5].

The technology draws inspiration from a wide

variety of fields; including philosophy, physi-

ology, biology, game theory & mathematics,

FIGURE 2. Agents, Clerks & Business Transactions

Workflow ToolsScripting Languages

MoreCom

plex

LessComplex

Clerks


Human Agents

Software Agent Technology

Agents

Agents &

Business Webs

3rdParty Applications

Network Services

Customer FunctionalityBusiness Transactions

Service Wrapped

Legacy Applications
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logic, linguistics, economics and computer sci-

ence.

Agent technology's anthropomorphic nature

makes it a good fit to the development of agent

level services. The exception rich, goalbased,

trialanderror nature of realworld business

decisions can be directly supported by model-ing these decisions with goaldirected technol-

ogy[6]. In the agent layer, business exceptions

are no longer exceptional; they are simply

alternative ways of achieving a goal. Business

processes consist of a series of decisions made

by different business roles. The roles are

formed into networks of negotiating, cooperat-

ing, agents working toward a common goal.

Multiagent systems allow us to use agent

tools and techniques to directly capture, and

implement, the roles, their relationships, and

the communication between them.

A Logistics Composite Application

Logistics management is typical of the style of

business problem that webservice enabled

composite applications are suited. The current

trend in enterprise application support for

logistics is to divide support between planning

systems which compute production plans over-

night, and execution systems which manage

the flow of events (Figure 3). The disconnec-

tion forces employees to deal with business

exceptions (lost shipments for example). man-

ually resolving the problems by updating the

execution and planning applications directly.

Consolidating Logistics Functionality

We can address this problem by leveraging

web technology to create a heterogeneous com-

posite application involving all participants in

the business process. The new applications fits

between the existing systems, creating new

endtoend business processes extending them

rather than replacing them outright. The final

composite application connects the planning

and execution systems, providing employees

with a single unified view into the logistics

pipeline (Figure 4). Using this solution,

employees can quickly identify and correct

business exceptions as they occur.

Automating Logistics Management

Todays logistics solution architectures take a

simple blackbox view of optimization: pro-

duction is matched to expected demand and

FIGURE 3. Logistics Management Today

Planning

Execution

Planning

Execution

FIGURE 4. A Logistics Composite Application

Planning

Execution

Planning

Execution

CompositeApplication

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then fed into a set of predefined delivery pipe-

lines, with business exceptions and deviations

from the plan requiring human intervention.

Once a shipment has entered a pipeline we can

only delay its progress, and it is impossible for

employees to optimize across pipelines by

diverting underutilized capacity in one to covera deficiency in another. The result is a logistics

network that contains excess stock, as the dis-

connection between the planning and execution

systems restricts the plan to managing produc-

tion on a daily basis; tuning the input to the

pipeline but not movements through it.

One approach to improving the efficiency of

the logistics network is to introduce a set of

exception management and planning services

to manage operation of the logistics pipeline

(Figure 5). These exceptionrich roles werepreviously the domain of employees but lever-

aging agent technology allows us to integrate

them into the applications SOA, creating an

enhanced application.

New services are introduced to support the

realtime planing and management functions

required by the new application, previously thedomain of employees. Agent technology is a

good fit for these services as each service

implements business processes and heuristics

reflecting the goalbased, trailanderror

approach employees used to manually solve

these problems in the past; approaches that are

intractable with conventional technologies andtools. The final solution contains services in all

three layers from the Business Transactions,

through Clerks, to Agent services (Figure 6).

The use of agent technology provides us with a

degree of flexibility not possible with conven-

tional approaches. The agentbased services

isolate key business decisions behind cleanly

defined interfaces, rather than forcing these

decisions to be implemented with design pat-terns (such as Chain of Responsibility[7]) that

bake business decisions into the solutions

structure; where changing the business deci-

sion involves (to some extent) refactoring the

application. In contrast, agent tools and tech-

niques provide a simple, highlevel, approach

to capturing this goalbased behavior. Adding

a new optimization strategy for the Optimiza-tion service is simply a matter of defining the

new optimization business process, and then

FIGURE 5. Automated Logistics Management

Planning

Execution

Planning

Execution


Route

Management

Optimization

Replenishment


Route

Management

Optimization

Replenishment

FIGURE 6. Services in Automated Logistics Management

Workflow Tools

Scripting Languages

MoreComplex Le

ssComplex

Clerks


Route Management

ReplenishmentOptimization

Agents

Agents &

Business Webs

Planning

Execution

Business Transactions

Service Wrapped

Legacy Applications
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adding it to the set of approaches for the agent

to consider. The agent manages at runtime

the trialanderror process of trying differ-

ent optimization approaches until a successful

one is found.

Dynamic Business WebsThis approach to role automation can also

extend beyond the original application bound-

ries to integrate multiple application into a

dynamic business web: a hetrogenerous collec-

tion of applications, representing different

companies (or departments within a company),

that collaborate together in a single market-

place to manage resources and negotiate. Com-

panies can use business webs to coordinate

operations between their various departments,or to automate planning and management with

their partners.

One example of this is gathering multiple 3PL

solutions together into a logistics marketplace

(Figure 7), extending the 3PL logistics man-

agement solution beyond the original model to

support 4PL operation. A 4PL solution allows

us to combine multiple logistics providers into

a single heterogeneous virtual logistics net-

work a dynamic business web where cus-

tomers, suppliers and partners can come

together to create tailored solutions to business

problems in real time. Each shipment is

assigned a route assembled dynamically from

one or more individual logistics providers. The

extended realtime negotiation and monitoringfunctionality required by the 4PL approach is

supported by creating a virtual auction between

the participants in the business web. Previously

these business functions were manual and off

line, where today agenttechnology allows us

to use advanced algorithms (inspired by eco-

nomics) to automate them. The composite 4PL

application consists of a distributed network of

heterogeneous (agent) services using auction

based algorithms to negotiate logistics and

shipment routes, dynamically creating virtualsupply chains in realtime. The algorithms

include advanced features such as multiitem

markets, multiunit markets, trust, coalition

formation and contract formation & breach

management. The enhanced application uses

this functionality to support, online and in real

time, the dynamic formation and management

of virtual supply networks disturbed across

multiple logistics providers.

Each in the business web is implemented with

webservice tools and techniques extended

with agent technology, while still presenting

conventional webservice interfaces exter-

nally. The collection of (agent) services oper-

ates as a multi-agent system each agent

acting independently but coordinating its

FIGURE 7. A 4PL Logistics Marketplace

Monitoring &

Auditing3PL

Application

3PL

Application

3PL

Application

3PL

Application

4PL

Marketplace
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actions with other agent via orchestration pro-

tocols.

Conclusions

As the market for webservices based applica-

tions matures, the lowhanging fruit the

straightforward composite applications

will be exhausted, and new development

efforts will move up the technology chain to

provide more advanced systemwide behav-

iours. This move will be characterized by a

shift from developing composite applications

designed to consolidate business processes and

data, to solutions that automate and optimize

the business process brought into focus by the

original composite application. These solutions

can form the basis for the creation of dynamicbusiness webs, virtual applications, which

dynamically provision the resources they

require.

Current tools and techniques cannot support

this new generation of webservice based

applications due to the nonlinear, exception

rich nature of the business processes that they

must implement. Agent technology promises to

fill this gap, by providing the tools and tech-

niques required to extend existing webserviceand SOA based approaches. The technology

integrates cleanly with a modern servicebased

approach to application development, with a

modern SOA environment providing a sound

foundation for the advanced functionality pro-

vided by an agentbased solution.

Marrying agent technology with webservice

technology results in applications that exhibit a

flexibility and robustness not seen with current

technologies creating dynamic business

webs that dynamically adapt to the rapidly

changing business environment. Integrating the

two technologies can provide us with the plat-

form required to deliver the next generation of

enterprise applications.

References

1. Singh & Huhns (2004), ServiceOriented

Computing, Wiley, ISBN

2. Dan Woods (June 2003), Packaged Com-

posite Applications, O'Reilly & Associates,

ISBN 059600520

3. BPEL

4. Nicholas Jennings (2001),An Agent Based

Approach to Building Complex Systems,

Communications of the ACM, Volume 44,

Number 4

5. Michael Wooldridge (June 2002),Introduc-

tion to MultiAgent Systems, John Wiley &

Sons, ISBN 047149691X6. M. Georgeff and A. Lansky (1986), Proce-

dural Knowledge, Proceedings of the IEEE

(Special Issue on Knowledge Representa-

tion), 74:13831398

7. Chain or Responsibility Pattern

8. FIPA protocols

Beyond Composite Applications

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