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Kurzfassung auf Englisch:

This paper argues that the 'mobile agent' approach is well suited for sporadic communication in open distributed systems - especially for rather 'loose' cooperations across local and organizational borders: In an increasing number of cases, modern (workflow) management of distributed business procedures reaches beyond such borders. For most existing workflow management systems this means that cooperations partner are required to give their local autonomy. However, for cases in which business partners intend to cooperate but still need to preserve their local autonomy, process participation on the basis of mobile agents represents an attractive and appropriate mechanism. Based on an order processing example, the paper shows how such kind of process integration can be achieved. It then demonstrates how the COSM (Common Open Service Market) system software can be extended in order to use petri net based process definitions with realize mobile agents in an integrated distributed system plattform. Finally, basic design and implementation considarations of mobile agents in COSM are also described.