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Showing papers on "Services computing published in 2002"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the nature of the services that respond to protocol messages and propose a set of services that can be aggregated in various ways to meet the needs of virtual organizations, which themselves can be defined by the services they operate and share.
Abstract: Increasingly, computing addresses collaboration, data sharing, and interaction modes that involve distributed resources, resulting in an increased focus on the interconnection of systems both within and across enterprises. These evolutionary pressures have led to the development of Grid technologies. The authors' work focuses on the nature of the services that respond to protocol messages. Grid provides an extensible set of services that can be aggregated in various ways to meet the needs of virtual organizations, which themselves can be defined in part by the services they operate and share.

1,816 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between Web services and the management of business processes is worked out and presented in a tutorial-like manner.
Abstract: Web services based on the service-oriented architecture framework provide a suitable technical foundation for making business processes accessible within enterprises and across enterprises. But to appropriately support dynamic business processes and their management, more is needed, namely, the ability to prescribe how Web services are used to implement activities within a business process, how business processes are represented as Web services, and also which business partners perform what parts of the actual business process. In this paper, the relationship between Web services and the management of business processes is worked out and presented in a tutorial-like manner.

560 citations


Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Aug 2002
TL;DR: This paper describes the design and implementation of a system through which existing Web services can be declaratively composed, and the resulting composite Services can be executed following a peer-to-peer paradigm, within a dynamic environment.
Abstract: The development of new services through the integration of existing ones has gained a considerable momentum as a means to create and streamline business-to-business collaborations. Unfortunately, as Web services are often autonomous and heterogeneous entities, connecting and coordinating them in order to build integrated services is a delicate and time-consuming task. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a system through which existing Web services can be declaratively composed, and the resulting composite services can be executed following a peer-to-peer paradigm, within a dynamic environment. This system provides tools for specifying composite services through. statecharts, data conversion rules, and provider selection, policies. These specifications are then translated into XML documents that can be interpreted by peer-to-peer inter-connected software components, in order to provision the composite service without requiring a central authority.

443 citations


Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: This work expands on previous work by showing how DAML-S Service Profiles, that describe service capabilities within DAML, can be mapped into UDDI records providing therefore a way to record semantic information within U DDI records, and shows how this encoded information can be used within the UDDi registry to perform semantic matching.
Abstract: The web is moving from being a collection of pages toward a collection of services that interoperate through the Internet. A fundamental step toward this interoperation is the ability of automatically locating services on the bases of the functionalities that they provide. Such a functionality would allow services to locate each other and automatically interoperate. Location of web services is inherently a semantic problem, because it has to abstract from the superficial differences between representations of the services provided, and the services requested to recognize semantic similarities between the two.Current Web Services technology based on UDDI and WSDL does not make any use of semantic information and therefore fails to address the problem of matching between capabilities of services and allowing service location on the bases of what functionalities are sought, failing therefore to address the problem of locating web services. Nevertheless, previous work within DAML-S, a DAML-based language for service description, shows how ontological information collected through the semantic web can be used to match service capabilities. This work expands on previous work by showing how DAML-S Service Profiles, that describe service capabilities within DAML-S, can be mapped into UDDI records providing therefore a way to record semantic information within UDDI records. Furthermore we show how this encoded information can be used within the UDDI registry to perform semantic matching.

403 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper builds on an understanding of services and their interactions, to outline the non-functional properties of Services and their uses.
Abstract: A proper understanding of the general nature, potential and obligations of electronic services may be achieved by examining existing commercial services in detail. The everyday services that surround us, and the ways in which we engage with them, are the result of social and economic interaction that has taken place over a long period of time. If we attempt to provide electronic services, and do not take this history into account, then we will fail. Any attempt to provide automated electronic services that ignores this history will deny consumers the opportunity to negotiate and refine, over a large range of issues, the specific details of the actual service to be provided. To succeed, we require a rich and accurate means of representing services. An essential ingredient of service representation is capturing the non-functional properties of services. These include the methods of charging and payment, the channels by which the service is requested and provided, constraints on temporal and spatial availability, service quality, security, trust and the rights attached to a service. Not only are comprehensive descriptions essential for useful service discovery, they are also integral to service management, enabling service negotiation, composition, and substitution. This paper builds on an understanding of services and their interactions, to outline the non-functional properties of services and their uses.

322 citations


Book
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: This concise book gives programmers both a concrete introduction and a handy reference to XML web services, first by explaining the foundations of this new breed of distributed services, and then by demonstrating quick ways to create services with open-source Java tools.
Abstract: From the Publisher: As a developer new to Web Services, how do you make sense of this emerging framework so you can start writing your own services today? This concise book gives programmers both a concrete introduction and a handy reference to XML web services, first by explaining the foundations of this new breed of distributed services, and then by demonstrating quick ways to create services with open-source Java tools. Web Services make it possible for diverse applications to discover each other and exchange data seamlessly via the Internet. For instance, programs written in Java and running on Solaris can find and call code written in C# that run on Windows XP, or programs written in Perl that run on Linux, without any concern about the details of how that service is implemented. A common set of Web Services is at the core of Microsoft's new .NET strategy, Sun Microsystems's Sun One Platform, and the W3C's XML Protocol Activity Group. In this book, author Ethan Cerami explores four key emerging technologies: XML Remote Procedure Calls (XML-RPC) SOAP - The foundation for most commercial Web Services development Universal Discovery, Description and Integration (UDDI) Web Services Description Language (WSDL) For each of these topics, Web Services Essentials provides a quick overview, Java tutorials with sample code, samples of the XML documents underlying the service, and explanations of freely-available Java APIs. Cerami also includes a guide to the current state of Web Services, pointers to open-source tools and a comprehensive glossary of terms. If you want to break through the Web Serviceshype and find useful information on these evolving technologies, look no further than Web Services Essentials.

319 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Examining the emerging field of Web Services and how it is integrated into existing enterprise infrastructures suggests that web services should be considered as an integrated service rather than a standalone product.
Abstract: Examining the emerging field of Web Services and how it is integrated into existing enterprise infrastructures.

268 citations


Patent
24 Apr 2002
TL;DR: The Interactive Flow Assembler as mentioned in this paper is a process-centric, scenario-driven business service assembly software environment that uses encapsulated, iconographic building blocks to logically depict service processes as well as complex relationships between these processes, their audiences, and means of deployment.
Abstract: The invention provides a process-centric, scenario-driven business service assembly software environment that uses encapsulated, iconographic building blocks—each representing a discrete Web Service component to be executed within a business service—to logically depict service processes as well as complex relationships between these processes, their audiences, and means of deployment. Fundamental to the invention are an Interactive Flow Assembler, an Interactive Flow Engine, a design-time Service Manager, and an implicit XML-based data and process model. Business users employ the Interactive Flow Assembler to create online business services that are executed by the Interactive Flow Engine by chaining a series of logical business steps that codify business rules, collect data, and take actions. The Services Manager leverages Web Service standards to provide collaborating business analysts and IT resources with an environment in which to centralize business-relevant decisions such as business rules, authorized data sources, design-time and runtime roles and profiles, and deployment characteristics to change the appearance and behavior of applications built using the Interactive Flow Assembler. The invention's intrinsic data and process model facilitate easy integration of networked business services built using the invention as well as the underlying datasets captured by the online business services.

241 citations


Proceedings Article
Drew McDermott1
23 Apr 2002
TL;DR: A preliminary implementation of the proposed Estimated-regression planners for web-services domain requires extending classical notations in various ways, and further tests are underway.
Abstract: "Web services" are agents on the web that provide services to other agents. Interacting with a web service is essentially a planning problem, provided the service exposes an interface containing action definitions, which in fact is an elegant representation of how web services actually behave. The question is what sort of planner is best suited for solving the resulting problems, given that dealing with web services involves gathering information and then acting on it. Estimated-regression planners use a backward analysis of the difficulty of a goal to guide a forward search through situation space. They are well suited to the web-services domain because it is easy to relax the assumption of complete knowledge, and to formalize what it is they don't know and could find out by sending the relevant messages. Applying them to this domain requires extending classical notations (e.g., PDDL) in various ways. A preliminary implementation of these ideas has been constructed, and further tests are underway.

233 citations


Patent
17 Dec 2002
TL;DR: The system for the supply chain management of network services, preferably virtual private network services as mentioned in this paper, provides hardware, processes and application tools useful in configuring and/or delivering substantially measurable virtual private networks services.
Abstract: The system for the supply chain management of network services, preferably virtual private network services, provides hardware, processes and application tools useful in configuring and/or delivering substantially measurable virtual private network services.

218 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The paper discusses current standards for Web services, directory services and the Semantic Web, and considers how agents extend Web services in several important ways.
Abstract: Web services are extremely flexible. Most advantageously, a developer of Web services need not know who or what will use the services being provided. The paper discusses current standards for Web services, directory services and the Semantic Web. It considers how agents extend Web services in several important ways.

01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: This paper discusses special needs of Grid services, and presents the Grid Services Flow Language (GSFL), which addresses them for Grid services within the OGSA framework.
Abstract: The Open Grid Services Architecture(OGSA) tries to address the challenge of integrating services spread across distributed, heterogenous, dynamic virtual organizations, using the concepts and technologies from both the Grid and Web service communities. The Web service community has realized that Web services can reach their full potential only if there exists a mechanism to describe the various interactions between the services and dynamically compose new services out of existing ones. This is true in the case of Grid services as well. In this paper, we analyze existing technologies that address workflow for Web services, and try to leverage them for Grid services, which have different needs from standard Web services. We discuss these special needs, and present the Grid Services Flow Language (GSFL), which addresses them for Grid services within the OGSA framework.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Location-dependent information services have great promise for mobile and pervasive computing environments as discussed by the authors and can provide local and nonlocal news, weather, and traffic reports as well as directory services.
Abstract: Location-dependent information services have great promise for mobile and pervasive computing environments. They can provide local and nonlocal news, weather, and traffic reports as well as directory services. Before they can be implemented on a large scale, however, several research issues must be addressed.

Patent
13 Sep 2002
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a method and system for repurposing a physical structure to enable the delivery of interactive services and, more specifically, to create a competitive gaming environment within a repurposed movie theater structure.
Abstract: The present invention provides a method and system for repurposing a physical structure to enable the delivery of interactive services and, more specifically, to a method and system of creating a competitive gaming environment within a repurposed movie theater structure. The modification of existing facilities in accordance with the present invention creates an Interactive Services Facility with an operational environment capable of delivering interactive services, such as competitive gaming, to users. The operational environment is enabled by the present invention through novel systems and methods of modifying the infrastructure of an Existing Facility and providing novel operational systems for the delivery of interactive services. The present invention therefore provides a method and system for repurposing existing facilities to create environments within which gaming services and other informational services could be provided and maximally uses the existing facilities to avoid crating redundant or under utilized infrastructure and to avoid the introduction of operational inefficiencies.

Book ChapterDOI
20 Aug 2002
TL;DR: The SELF-SERV platform for rapid composition of Web services, in which Web services are declaratively composed, and the resulting composite services are executed in a peer-to-peer and dynamic environment is developed.
Abstract: The automation of Web services interoperation is gaining a considerable momentum as a paradigm for effective Business-to-Business collaboration [2]. Established enterprises are continuously discovering new opportunities to form alliances with other enterprises, by offering value-added integrated services. However, the technology to compose Web services in appropriate time-frames has not kept pace with the rapid growth and volatility of available opportunities. Indeed, the development of integrated Web services is often ad-hoc and requires a considerable eort of low level programming. This approach is inadequate given the size and the volatility of the Web. Furthermore, the number of services to be integrated may be large, so that approaches where the development of an integrated service requires the understanding of each of the underlying services are inappropriate. In addition, Web services may need to be composed as part of a short term partnership, and disbanded when the partnership is no longer profitable. Hence, the integration of a large number of Web services requires scalable and flexible techniques, such as those based on declarative languages. Also, the execution of an integrated service in existing approaches is usually centralised, whereas the underlying services are distributed and autonomous. This calls for the investigation of distributed execution paradigms (e.g., peer-to-peer models), that do not suffer of the scalability and availability problems of centralised coordination [3]. Motivated by these concerns, we have developed the SELF-SERV platform for rapid composition of Web services [1]. In SELF-SERV, Web services are declaratively composed, and the resulting composite services are executed in a peer-to-peer and dynamic environment. In this paper we overview the design and implementation of the SELF-SERV system.

Journal Article
TL;DR: This paper builds on an understanding of services and their interactions, to outline the non-functional properties of Services and their uses.
Abstract: A proper understanding of the general nature, potential and obligations of electronic services may be achieved by examining existing commercial services in detail. The everyday services that surround us, and the ways in which we engage with them, are the result of social and economic interaction that has taken place over a long period of time. If we attempt to provide electronic services, and do not take this history into account, then we will fail. Any attempt to provide automated electronic services that ignores this history will deny consumers the opportunity to negotiate and refine, over a large range of issues, the specific details of the actual service to be provided. To succeed, we require a rich and accurate means of representing services. An essential ingredient of service representation is capturing the non-functional properties of services. These include the methods of charging and payment, the channels by which the service is requested and provided, constraints on temporal and spatial availability, service quality, security, trust and the rights attached to a service. Not only are comprehensive descriptions essential for useful service discovery, they are also integral to service management, enabling service negotiation, composition, and substitution. This paper builds on an understanding of services and their interactions, to outline the non-functional properties of services and their uses.

Patent
Thomas Schaeck1, Ajamu A. Wesley1
22 Feb 2002
TL;DR: In this paper, the role-specific views of a particular sub-service from the aggregation with the role(s) to which that view pertains are presented. And role-aware views of users having particular roles can be programmatically presented with different views into an aggregated service.
Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products are disclosed for providing role-specific views from a business web portal which supports one or more aggregated web services, where a “business web portal” is a collection of one or more portals which may be hosted by potentially disparate, autonomous service providers. This may be useful, for example, to extend the services of a particular business by programmatically including services of other enterprises. The disclosed techniques enable heterogeneous user profiles to be federated and exchanged in the dynamic, run-time web services integration environment. In this manner, users having particular roles can be programmatically presented with different views into an aggregated service. XML Linking language (“XLink”) is preferably used to associate role-specific views of a particular sub-service from the aggregation with the role(s) to which that view pertains.

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: This paper presents a design methodology for web services and business processes and discusses how business process should be described so that services can be properly identified and provide strategies and principles regarding functional and non-functional aspects of web service design.
Abstract: E-business is shifting attention from component based to web service based applications. Most enterprises spend most of their time assembling applications by consuming web services rather than worrying about the design principles underlying them, their granularity or the development of components that implement them. In this paper we present a design methodology for web services and business processes. We discuss how business process should be described so that services can be properly identified and provide strategies and principles regarding functional and non-functional aspects of web service design.

Patent
12 Mar 2002
TL;DR: In this article, a customer computer connects to an online service provider by phone, Internet, or other telecommunications link, and the link gives the customer access to additional processing and storage resources such as virtual storage, processing power and/or additional software or data through interaction between the customer computer and an online services provider computer over the link.
Abstract: A customer computer connects to an online service provider by phone, Internet, or other telecommunications link. The link gives the customer access to additional processing and storage resources such as virtual storage, processing power and/or additional software or data through interaction between the customer computer and an online service provider computer over the link. The additional resources made available to the customer computer enhance the customers' local needs through access to virtual storage, a more powerful processor of similar type for program execution, and/or online support services such as software rental, software sales, release update services, anti-viral services, data backup and recovery services, diagnostic services and/or repair services.

Patent
11 Dec 2002
TL;DR: Application services gateways as mentioned in this paper are elements in a services delivery system that execute application programs/services that control or otherwise interact with systems and devices of a home or business such as a heating and cooling system or a security system.
Abstract: Application services gateways that execute electronic application programs/services allows the application programs/services to be managed and administered out of a network rather than locally. The application services gateways are elements in a services delivery system that execute application programs/services that control or otherwise interact with systems and devices of a home or business such as a heating and cooling system or a security system. The application services gateways have a LAN connection to a communication gateway that in turn communicates over a WAN to a remote services gateway. The remote services gateway channels data from a remote service platform to provide application programs/services and management services over the WAN to the communications gateway where it is then channeled to the application services gateways. The installation and management of the application programs/services residing and/or being executed at the local site on the application services gateways relieves the consumer of such responsibilities.

Book ChapterDOI
07 Oct 2002
TL;DR: This paper presents a framework for building reliable Web service compositions on top of heterogeneous and autonomous Web services, and criticizes the current models and solutions for this task.
Abstract: The recent evolution of internet technologies, mainly guided by the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and its related technologies, are extending the role of the World Wide Web from information interaction to service interaction. This next wave of the internet era is being driven by a concept named Web services. The Web services technology provides the underpinning to a new business opportunity, i.e., the possibility of providing value-added Web services. However, the building of value-added services on this new environment is not a trivial task. Due to the many singularities of the Web service environment, such as the inherent structural and behavioral heterogeneity of Web services, as well as their strict autonomy, it is not possible to rely on the current models and solutions to build and coordinate compositions of Web services. In this paper, we present a framework for building reliable Web service compositions on top of heterogeneous and autonomous Web services.

01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: The Building Finder application is an example application that integrates information from several web services by modeling the web services as information sources in a mediator-based architecture by generating an integration plan to integrate information from the existing web services.
Abstract: The power of web services can only be realized when web services are utilized as building blocks to dynamically compose new web services. The Building Finder application is an example application that integrates information from several web services by modeling the web services as information sources in a mediator-based architecture. The paper also describes a mediator framework to dynamically compose new web services, similar to the Building Finder, by generating an integration plan to integrate information from the existing web services.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
16 Nov 2002
TL;DR: The adoption within ICENI of web services to enable interoperability with the recently proposed Open Grid Services Architecture is described.
Abstract: The move towards Service Grids, where services are composed to meet the requirements of a user community within constraints specified by the resource provider, present many challenges to service provision and description. To support our research activities in the autonomous composition of services to form a Semantic Service Grid we describe the adoption within ICENI of web services to enable interoperability with the recently proposed Open Grid Services Architecture.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The paper considers Web services, a set of platform-neutral technologies designed to ease the delivery of network services over intranets and the Internet, and lists some WS Web sites and discusses Java-based initiatives.
Abstract: The paper considers Web services (WS). WS comprises a set of platform-neutral technologies designed to ease the delivery of network services over intranets and the Internet. Cross-platform capabilities are one of WS's key attractions because interoperability has been a dream of the distributed computing community for years. The paper lists some WS Web sites and discusses Java-based initiatives.

Journal ArticleDOI
S. Aissi, P. Malu1, K. Srinivasan1
TL;DR: A process coordination framework for Web services and the building blocks required for e-business automation are outlined, which helps in understanding the roles of various standards and in identifying overlaps, gaps, and opportunities for convergence.
Abstract: The authors propose a process coordination framework for Web services and outline the building blocks required for e-business automation. Their framework helps in understanding the roles of various standards and in identifying overlaps, gaps, and opportunities for convergence.

Patent
13 May 2002
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a method and system for providing and managing a ubiquitous financial services account for provision, interpretation, and evaluation of mortgage services by way of online automatic online services.
Abstract: The invention provides a method and system for providing and managing a ubiquitous financial services account for provision, interpretation, and evaluation of mortgage services by way of online automatic online services. The method can include automatic online services that are consultative in nature, i.e., services that coach a user to alter input in fashions that maximize the display of potential financial services products to the customer. For instance, the customer can be prompted to alter inputs relating to either his desired financial services products, or to his personal financial characteristics, in order to alter or favorably influence the display of financial services products for which he qualifies. As examples of the financial services products in connection with which the invention can be implemented, the invention can provide enhance borrower and lender options within a consumer mortgage shopping, application, and initiation transaction, though the range of financial service products (which can include multiple disparate or complementary products within an ongoing account or portfolio) that can be integrated in the invention is not limited to mortgage or credit-related products.

Book ChapterDOI
27 Aug 2002
TL;DR: This paper looks at the issue of developing fault-tolerant service-based distributed systems, and proposes an infrastructure to implement fault tolerance capabilities transparent to services.
Abstract: Service-based architectures enable the development of new classes of Grid and distributed applications. One of the main capabilities provided by such systems is the dynamic and flexible integration of services, according to which services are allowed to be a part of more than one distributed system and simultaneously serve different applications. This increased flexibility in system composition makes it difficult to address classical distributed system issues such as fault-tolerance. While it is relatively easy to make an individual service fault-tolerant, improving fault-tolerance of services collaborating in multiple application scenarios is a challenging task. In this paper, we look at the issue of developing fault-tolerant service-based distributed systems, and propose an infrastructure to implement fault tolerance capabilities transparent to services.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A reference model for electronic services is sketched and several phases of a typical citizen-government transaction are identified, and a checklist of the various requirements for Electronic Services Delivery is provided.
Abstract: Efforts to improve the delivery of public services with ICT are older than the recent explosion of the Internet and the emergence of the concept of e-Government. Innovative Electronic Service Delivery could well become a driver of the modernisation process in government. The opportunities are still clouded by a lack of clear visions and of generic reference models of Electronic Service Delivery. Also, instead of taking a joined-up approach to citizen services, parochial approaches still prevail in many countries. This contribution deals first with some of the early efforts to create one-stop government services. From there a reference model for electronic services is sketched. It identifies several phases of a typical citizen-government transaction, and it provides a checklist of the various requirements for Electronic Services Delivery. It furthermore comprises an organisational architecture for citizens' services which enables single-window access to all administrative services via targeted "front offices".

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The paper first analyses some representative definitions of digital libraries in order to establish the need for personalised services, and provides a brief overview of the various online reference and information services currently available on the Web.
Abstract: Reference services have taken a central place in library and information services. They are also regarded as personalised services since in most cases a personal discussion takes place between a user and a reference librarian. Based on this, the librarian points to the sources that are considered to be most appropriate to meet the specific information need(s) of the user. Since the Web and digital libraries are meant for providing direct access to information sources and services without the intervention of human intermediaries, the pertinent question that appears is whether we need reference services in digital libraries, and, if so, how best to offer such services. Current digital libraries focus more on access to, and retrieval of, digital information, and hardly lay emphasis on the service aspects. This may have been caused by the narrower definitions of digital libraries formulated by digital library researchers. This paper looks at the current state of research in personalised information services in digital libraries. It first analyses some representative definitions of digital libraries in order to establish the need for personalised services. It then provides a brief overview of the various online reference and information services currently available on the Web. The paper also briefly reviews digital library research that specifically focuses on the personalisation of digital libraries and the provision of digital reference and information services. Finally, the paper proposes some new areas of research that may be undertaken to improve the provision of personalised information services in digital libraries.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
29 Jan 2002
TL;DR: These components leverage the substantial body of “Grid” services and protocols developed within the Globus project and by its collaborators, and are being used in a number of data-intensive application projects.
Abstract: We describe work being performed in the Globus project to develop enabling protocols and services for distributed data-intensive science. These services include: * High-performance, secure data transfer protocols based on FTP, plus a range of libraries and tools that use these protocols * Replica catalog services supporting the creation and location of file replicas in distributed systems These components leverage the substantial body of “Grid” services and protocols developed within the Globus project and by its collaborators, and are being used in a number of data-intensive application projects.