Kai Jander

Bio: Kai Jander is an academic researcher from University of Hamburg. The author has contributed to research in topics: Workflow & Workflow management system. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 24 publications receiving 236 citations.

Unifying Agent and Component Concepts

Abstract: The construction of distributed applications is a challenging task due to inherent system properties like message passing and concurrency. Current technology trends further increase the necessity for novel software concepts that help dealing with these issues. An analysis of existing software paradigms has revealed that each of them has its specific strengths and weaknesses but none fits all the needs. On basis of this evaluation in this paper a new approach called active components is proposed. Active components are a consolidation of the agent paradigm, combining it with advantageous concepts of other types of software components. Active components, like agents, are autonomous with respect to their execution. Like software components, they are managed entities, which exhibit clear interfaces making their functionality explicit. The approach considerably broadens the scope of applications that can be built as heterogeneous component types, e.g. agents and workflows, can be used in the same application without interoperability problems and with a shared toolset at hand for development, runtime monitoring and debugging. The paper devises main characteristics of active components and highlights a system architecture and its implementation in the Jadex Active Component infrastructure. The usefulness of the approach is further explained with an example use case, which shows how a workflow management system can be built on top of the existing infrastructure.

The Jadex Project: Programming Model

Abstract: This chapter describes the priciples of the Jadex programming model. The programming model can be considered on two levels. The intra-agent level deals with programming concepts for single agents and the interagent level deals with interactions between agents. Regarding the first, the Jadex belief-desire-intention (BDI) model will be presented, which has been developed for agents based on XML and Java encompassing the full BDI reasoning cycle with goal deliberation and means-end reasoning. The success of the BDI model in general also led to the development goal based workflow descriptions, which are converted to traditional BDI agents and can thus be executed in the same infrastructure. Regarding the latter, the Jadex active components approach will be introduced. This programming model facilitates the interactions between agents with services and also provides a common back box view for agents that allows different agent types, being it BDI or simple reactive architectures, being used in the same application.

Unifying agent and component concepts: Jadex active components

Abstract: The construction of distributed applications is a challenging task due to inherent system properties like message passing and concurrency. Current technology trends further increase the necessity for novel software concepts that help dealing with these issues. An analysis of existing software paradigms has revealed that each of them has its specific strengths and weaknesses but none fits all the needs. On basis of this evaluation in this paper a new approach called active components is proposed. Active components are a consolidation of the agent paradigm, combining it with advantageous concepts of other types of software components. Active components, like agents, are autonomous with respect to their execution. Like software components, they are managed entities, which exhibit clear interfaces making their functionality explicit. The approach considerably broadens the scope of applications that can be built as heterogeneous component types, e.g. agents and workflows, can be used in the same application without interoperability problems and with a shared toolset at hand for development, runtime monitoring and debugging. The paper devises main characteristics of active components and highlights a system architecture and its implementation in the Jadex Active Component infrastructure. The usefulness of the approach is further explained with an example use case, which shows how a workflow management system can be built on top of the existing infrastructure.

Go4Flex: Goal-Oriented Process Modelling

Abstract: Many companies consider business process management strategies a fundamental source for successful business operation. Despite this importance of business processes a conceptual and operational gap still exists between the business and the IT view of processes. In this paper we argue that an important reason for this gap is the strong focus of IT on the behaviour and execution perspective of workflows while more abstract and higher-level process properties are often neglected. This is especially apparent in the way processes are modelled and described on the IT-side using state of the art modelling approaches like BPMN. The presented Go4Flex research project, which is conducted in cooperation with Daimler AG, has the objective of bringing together both sides by establishing higher-level modelling concepts for workflows, which results both in increased intelligibility of workflow descriptions for business people and greater consideration for the way processes are described on the business side. The core idea of the approach is to strengthen the context perspective of a workflow by introducing different kinds of goals and goal relationships in addition to the established activity-centred behaviour model. The applicability of the approach is further illustrated with an example workflow from Daimler AG.

Goal-oriented processes with gpmn

Abstract: Business process management is a challenging task that requires business processes being described, executed, monitored and continuously enhanced. This process management lifecycle requires business as well as IT people working together, whereby the view on business process is quite different on both sides. One important means for bridging the gap between both consists in having a modeling notation that can be easily understood but also has a precise semantics and can be used as a basis for workflow execution. Although existing approaches like BPMN and EPCs aim at being such as notation they are already very activity oriented and do not consider the underlying motivations of processes. Introducing the goal oriented process modeling notation (GPMN) a new language is presented that has the objective of bringing together both sides by establishing higher-level modeling concepts for workflows. This results in an increased intelligibility of workflow descriptions for business people and greater consideration for the way processes are described on the business side. The core idea of the approach consists in introducing different kinds of goals and goal relationships in addition to the established activity-centered behavior model. The applicability of the approach is further illustrated with an example workflow from Daimler AG.

Production workflow: concepts and techniques

Abstract: We may not be able to make you love reading, but production workflow concepts and techniques will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

Workflow Management Coalition.

Abstract: A process for expressing extracellular beta -glucosidase in a filamentous fungus by expressing a fungal DNA sequence encoding enhanced, deleted or altered beta -glucosidase in a recombinant host microorganism is disclosed. Recombinant fungal cellulase compositions containing enhanced, deleted or altered expression of beta -glucosidase is also disclosed.

Computational Intelligence Based QoS-Aware Web Service Composition: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract: Web service composition concerns the building of new value added services by integrating the sets of existing web services. Due to the seamless proliferation of web services, it becomes difficult to find a suitable web service that satisfies the requirements of users during web service composition. This paper systematically reviews existing research on QoS-aware web service composition using computational intelligence techniques (published between 2005 and 2015). This paper develops a classification of research approaches on computational intelligence based QoS-aware web service composition and describes future research directions in this area. In particular, the results of this study confirms that new meta-heuristic algorithms have not yet been applied for solving QoS-aware web services composition.