research-article

Checking correctness of business contracts via commitments

Authors:

Nanjangud C. Narendra,

Munindar P. SinghAuthors Info & Claims

AAMAS '08: Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - Volume 2

Pages 787 - 794

Published: 12 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Business contracts tend to be complex. In current practice, contracts are often designed by hand and adopted by their participants after, at best, a manual analysis. This paper motivates and formalizes two aspects of contract correctness from the perspective of the preferences of the agents participating in them. A contract is safe for a participant if participating in the contract would not leave the participant worse off than otherwise. More strongly, a contract is beneficial to a participant if participating in the contract would leave the participant better off than otherwise.

This paper seeks to partially automate reasoning about the correctness of formally modeled business contracts. It represents contracts formally as a set of commitments. It motivates constraints on how cooperative agents might value the various states of commitments. Further, it shows that such constraints are consistent and promote cooperation. Lastly, it presents algorithms for checking the safety and guaranteed benefits of a contract.

References

[1]

M. Baldoni, C. Baroglio, A. Martelli, and V. Patti. Verification of protocol conformance and agent interoperability. CLIMA VI, pp. 265--283, 2005.

Digital Library

[2]

J. Bentahar, B. Moulin, J.-J. C. Meyer, and B. Chaib-draa. A logical model for commitment and argument network for agent communication. AAMAS, pp. 792--799, 2004.

Digital Library

[3]

A. K. Chopra and M. P. Singh. Contextualizing commitment protocols. AAMAS, pp. 1345--1352, 2006.

Digital Library

[4]

N. Desai, A. K. Chopra, and M. P. Singh. Representing and reasoning about commitments in business processes. AAAI, pp. 1328--1333, 2007.

Digital Library

[5]

E³Value. 2007. http://www.e3value.com/.

[6]

Foamex, AMFS, and Foamtec. Manufacturing agreement. http://contracts.onecle.com/admat/foamtec.mfg.1998.01.30.shtml.

[7]

N. Fornara and M. Colombetti. Defining interaction protocols using a commitment-based agent communication language. AAMAS, pp. 520--527, 2003.

Digital Library

[8]

E. Giunchiglia, J. Lee, V. Lifschitz, N. McCain, and H. Turner. Nonmonotonic causal theories. Artificial Intelligence, 153(1--2):49--104, 2004.

Digital Library

[9]

G. Governatori, Z. Milosevic, and S. W. Sadiq. Compliance checking between business processes and business contracts. EDOC, pp. 221--232, 2006.

Digital Library

[10]

P. R. Krishna, K. Karlapalem, and D. K. W. Chiu. An ER^EC framework for e-contract modeling, enactment and monitoring. Data & Know. Engg., 51(1):31--58, 2004.

Digital Library

[11]

Z. Milosevic, S. W. Sadiq, and M. Orlowska. Translating business contracts into compliant business processes. EDOC, pp. 211--220, 2006.

Digital Library

[12]

C. Molina-Jiménez, S. K. Shrivastava, E. Solaiman, and J. P. Warne. Run-time monitoring and enforcement of electronic contracts. Elect. Comm. Res. Appl., 3(2):108--125, 2004.

[13]

OMG. Business process modeling notation, 2007. http://bpmn.org/.

[14]

V. Pijpers and J. Gordijn. Bridging business value models and process models in aviation value webs via possession rights. HICSS, p. 175, 2007.

Digital Library

[15]

M. P. Singh. An ontology for commitments in multiagent systems. Art. Intell. & Law, 7:97--113, 1999.

Digital Library

[16]

Texas Action Group at Austin. The causal calculator CCALC. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/tag/cc/.

[17]

F. Wan and M. P. Singh. Formalizing and achieving multiparty agreements via commitments. AAMAS, pp. 770--777, 2005.

Digital Library

[18]

M. Winikoff. Designing commitment-based agent interactions. IAT, pp. 363--370, 2006.

Digital Library

[19]

P. Yolum and M. P. Singh. Enacting Protocols by Commitment Concession. AAMAS, pp. 116--123, 2007.

Digital Library

Cited By

Telang PSingh MYorke-Smith N(2023)Maintenance commitmentsArtificial Intelligence10.1016/j.artint.2023.103993324:COnline publication date: 1-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.artint.2023.103993
Telang PSingh MYorke-Smith N(2019)A coupled operational semantics for goals and commitmentsJournal of Artificial Intelligence Research10.1613/jair.1.1149465:1(31-85)Online publication date: 1-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1613/jair.1.11494
Bataineh ABentahar JEl Menshawy MDssouli R(2017)Specifying and verifying contract-driven service compositions using commitments and model checkingExpert Systems with Applications: An International Journal10.1016/j.eswa.2016.12.03174:C(151-184)Online publication date: 15-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.eswa.2016.12.031
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Checking correctness of business contracts via commitments
1. Applied computing
  1. Electronic commerce
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence

Recommendations

Expressing and checking intended changes via software change contracts
ISSTA 2013: Proceedings of the 2013 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

Software errors often originate from incorrect changes, including incorrect program fixes, incorrect feature updates and so on. Capturing the intended program behavior explicitly via contracts is thus an attractive proposition. In our recent work, we ...
Compliance checking between business processes and business contracts
EDOC '06: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference

It is a typical scenario that many organisations have their business processes specified independently of their business contracts. This is because of the lack of guidelines and tools that facilitate derivation of processes from contracts but also ...
From Contracts to E-Contracts: Modeling and Enactment

Contracts are complex to understand, represent and process electronically. Usually, contracts involve various entities such as parties, activities and clauses. An e-contract is a contract modeled, specified, executed and enacted (controlled and ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

AAMAS '08: Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - Volume 2

May 2008

673 pages

ISBN:9780981738116

Sponsors

ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
AAAI: Association for the Advancement of Artifical Intelligence

In-Cooperation

SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence

Publisher

International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

Richland, SC

Publication History

Published: 12 May 2008

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

AAMAS08

Sponsor:

ACM
AAAI

AAMAS08: 7th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems

May 12 - 16, 2008

Estoril, Portugal

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,155 of 5,036 submissions, 23%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

16
Total Citations
View Citations
212
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)3
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 09 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Telang PSingh MYorke-Smith N(2023)Maintenance commitmentsArtificial Intelligence10.1016/j.artint.2023.103993324:COnline publication date: 1-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.artint.2023.103993
Telang PSingh MYorke-Smith N(2019)A coupled operational semantics for goals and commitmentsJournal of Artificial Intelligence Research10.1613/jair.1.1149465:1(31-85)Online publication date: 1-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1613/jair.1.11494
Bataineh ABentahar JEl Menshawy MDssouli R(2017)Specifying and verifying contract-driven service compositions using commitments and model checkingExpert Systems with Applications: An International Journal10.1016/j.eswa.2016.12.03174:C(151-184)Online publication date: 15-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.eswa.2016.12.031
Singh M(2014)Norms as a basis for governing sociotechnical systemsACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/2542182.25422035:1(1-23)Online publication date: 3-Jan-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2542182.2542203
Telang PMeneguzzi FSingh MGini MShehory OIto TJonker C(2013)Hierarchical planning about goals and commitmentsProceedings of the 2013 international conference on Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems10.5555/2484920.2485059(877-884)Online publication date: 6-May-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2484920.2485059
El Kharbili M(2012)Business process regulatory compliance management solution frameworksProceedings of the Eighth Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling - Volume 13010.5555/2523782.2523786(23-32)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2523782.2523786
Lomuscio APenczek WSolanki MSzreter M(2011)Runtime Monitoring of Contract Regulated Web ServicesFundamenta Informaticae10.5555/2361502.2361505111:3(339-355)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2361502.2361505
Lopes Cardoso HOliveira E(2011)Social control in a normative framework: An adaptive deterrence approachWeb Intelligence and Agent Systems10.5555/2019516.20195219:4(363-375)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2019516.2019521
Günay AYolum P(2011)Detecting conflicts in commitmentsProceedings of the 9th international conference on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies10.1007/978-3-642-29113-5_5(51-66)Online publication date: 3-May-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-29113-5_5
Chopra AOren NModgil SDesai NMiles SLuck MSingh M(2010)Analyzing contract robustness through a model of commitmentsProceedings of the 11th international conference on Agent-oriented software engineering10.5555/2050167.2050170(17-36)Online publication date: 10-May-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2050167.2050170
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents