Goals description and application in migrating workflow system

Goals, which can be described as states that an agent would like to realize, is an important concept for intelligent agent systems. The representation of goals and the ability to reason about them are the major problems in goal-oriented analysis and modeling techniques, especially in intelligent agent system, as goals are more stable than other abstractions (e.g. user stories). Description Logics (DLs) is a formal tool of knowledge representation and reasoning. In this paper, we construct a framework with explicit representation and formal semantics of goals-Goal Description Logics (GDLs), which integrates two aspects of goals: declarative (a description of the state of sought), and procedural (a set of plans for achieving the goal), into one concept based on Description Logics (DLs). In addition, goals reasoning, especially goal matchmaking in GDLs, is studied using its effective judgment to concept subsumption. We propose a conceptual model of goal-based migration workflow system (GMWfS) based on GDLs, and illustrate an application. We also present preliminary experimental results on an implementation of these ideas. Compared to traditional workflow methods, GOMWfS is more flexible and intelligent. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.