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However, formal approaches are not always able to represent all concepts that com-
pose an agent organization. Using the current proposals it is not possible to completely
define a paradigm for developing agent systems such as Virtual Organizations (VO)
[6], which are sets of individuals and institutions that need to coordinate resources and
services. Thus, they are open systems [7] formed by the grouping and collaboration
of heterogeneous entities, and allowing model systems at a high level of abstraction.
They include the integration of organizational and individual perspectives and also the
dynamic adaptation of models to organizational and environmental changes.
OCMAS can be structured by splitting them in different dimensions [8]. Concretely,
VOs can be structured by means of the Organizational Dimensions [9], which should be
considered when modeling an organization. These dimensions describe all the entities
that compose the organization, distributed by the functionality of the entities that they
are providing to it. These dimensions are:
structural
,
functional
,
dynamical
,
environ-
ment
and
normative
. Current formal proposals only define a subset of the dimensions
and concepts presented in the Organizational Dimensions. Thus, it seems necessary to
be provided with a formalization that clearly models the Organizational Dimensions,
making a clear difference between them.
The objective of this work is to present a formal framework to define a VO, tak-
ing the Organizational Dimensions as a basis. Using this representation, we are able to
verify the correctness and completeness of the defined VOs, by means of techniques
based on logical and mathematical approaches like model checking. Additionally, this
formalization will be useful when dealing with self-adaptive and self-organization con-
cepts, since it will be established how the system changes through time. The rest of
this work is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the Organizational Dimensions.
Section 3 describes formal frameworks related with our work. Section 4 presents the
Virtual Organization Formalization
(VOF), a formal framework to define VOs. Section
5 presents a discussion between our proposal and the analyzed frameworks. Finally,
section 6 gives our conclusions and future work on this work.
2
Organizational Dimensions
When modeling an organization, the following dimensions should be taken into account
[9]: (i)
structural
, describing the entities that structure the system; (ii)
functional
,which
details the functions, goals and services of the organization; (iii)
dynamical
, which con-
siders the interactions between elements, and their effects; (iv)
environment
, describing
the elements that surround the system; and (v)
normative
, which defines the mecha-
nisms used by the society to influence the behavior of its members.
The
Structural Dimension
comprises all the elements of the organization that are
independent from the agents that are part of it. Thus, it is based on roles, groups and
their patterns of interrelationship (inheritance, compatibility, communication, and so
on). Additionally, the topology of the system is established.
The
Functional Dimension
specifies the global goals of the organization, its offered
functions and services, the goals followed by different components of the organization
and the tasks and plans that must be executed to reach these goals.
