A Technique and Markup Language for Business Process Automation

In this article, we propose a technique and markup language for complementing the automation of public business processes between enterprises by an intelligent support by software agents for decision-making within an enterprise. The article first argues that the ROADMAP and RAP/AOR methodologies can be jointly used for business process modelling. The ROADMAP methodology enables to create the models of the goals to be achieved and the roles needed for achieving them, while with the RAP/AOR methodology we can model when are the goals to be achieved and how they are to be achieved. Next, we describe the markup language defined by us and show how business process models represented by means of RAP/AOR can be transformed into the markup language. Finally, we show how the business process models represented in the markup language can be executed by software agents. The approach introduced in the article constitutes an efficient way of implementing business process automation systems based on XML and software agents.