INTEGRATING WORKFLOW WITH INTERACTING AGENTS TO SUPPORT COOPERATIVE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Alf Inge Wang, Reidar Conradi, Chunnian Liu · 2001
Cooperative software engineering processes involve structured, repeatable processes as well as dynamic, cooperative processes. Existing workflow systems are suited to model and support the former type of processes, and multi-agent systems are suited to model and support the latter. We have designed and implemented a gluing-framework for integrating workflow processes with software agents. By using this framework, support for cooperative software engineering processes can be provided in a better and more flexible way. This paper focuses on how to integrate these two kinds of components into a functioning multi-agent based cooperative software engineering system. Keywords: Agents, Cooperative software engineering, Workflow, Web. 1 INTRODUCTION Cooperative Software Engineering (CSE) means that largescale, software development and maintenance can be conducted in a distributed organisation or across organisations. CSE can be regarded as a special case of Computer Supported Cooperative Wo...