Ontology-based services for agents interoperability

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2006. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port

Web Services Support for Dynamic Business Process Outsourcing

Outsourcing of business processes is crucial for organizations to be effective, efficient and flexible. To meet fast-changing market conditions, dynamic outsourcing is required, in which business relationships are established and enacted on-the-fly in an adaptive, fine-grained way unrestricted by geographic distance. This requires automated means for both the establishment of outsourcing relationships and for the enactment of services performed in these relationships over electronic channels. Due to wide industry support and the underlying model of loose coupling of services, Web services increasingly become the mechanism of choice to connect organizations across organizational boundaries. This paper analyzes to which extent Web services support the dynamic process outsourcing paradigm. We discuss contract -based dynamic business process outsourcing to define requirements and then introduce the Web services framework. Based on this, we investigate the match between the two. We observe that the Web services framework requires further support for cross - organizational business processes and mechanisms for contracting, QoS management and process-based transaction support and suggest ways to fill those gaps

A Configurable Matchmaking Framework for Electronic Marketplaces

E-marketplaces constitute a major enabler of B2B and B2C e-commerce activities. This paper proposes a framework for one of the central activities of e-marketplaces: matchmaking of trading intentions lodged by market participants. The framework identifies a core set of concepts and functions that are common to all types of marketplaces and can serve as the basis for describing the distinct styles of matchmaking employed within various market mechanisms. A prototype implementation of the framework based on Web services technology is presented, illustrating its ability to be dynamically configured to meet specific market needs and its potential to serve as a foundation for more fully fledged e-marketplace frameworks

Engineering of service-oriented automation systems: a survey

The evolution of manufacturing systems and the emergence of decentralised control require flexibility at various levels of their lifecycle. New emerging methods, such as multi-agent and service-oriented systems are major research topics in the sense of revitalizing the traditional production procedures. This paper takes an overview of the serviceoriented approach in terms of platform and engineering tools, from the perspective of automation and production systems. From the basic foundation to the more complex interactions, service-oriented architectures and its implementation in form of web services provide diverse and quality proved features that are welcome to different states of the production systems’ life-cycle. Key elements are the concepts of modelling and collaboration, which enhance the automatic binding and synchronisation of individual low-value services to more complex and meaningful structures. Such interactions can be specified by Petri nets, a mathematically well founded tool with features that enhance towards the modelling of systems. The right application of different methodologies together should motivate the development of service-oriented manufacturing systems that embrace the vision of collaborative automation.The authors would like to thank the European Commission and the partners of Network of Excellence “Innovative Production Machines and Systems” (http://www.iproms.org/) and the SOCRADES project (http://www.socrades.eu) for their support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

WSMO-lite annotations for web services

and other research output

Engineering of service-oriented automation systems: a survey

The evolution of manufacturing systems and the emergence of decentralised control require flexibility at various levels of their lifecycle. New emerging methods, such as multi-agent and service-oriented systems are major research topics in the sense of revitalizing the traditional production procedures. This paper takes an overview of the serviceoriented approach in terms of platform and engineering tools, from the perspective of automation and production systems. From the basic foundation to the more complex interactions, service-oriented architectures and its implementation in form of web services provide diverse and quality proved features that are welcome to different states of the production systems’ life-cycle. Key elements are the concepts of modelling and collaboration, which enhance the automatic binding and synchronisation of individual low-value services to more complex and meaningful structures. Such interactions can be specified by Petri nets, a mathematically well founded tool with features that enhance towards the modelling of systems. The right application of different methodologies together should motivate the development of service-oriented manufacturing systems that embrace the vision of collaborative automation.The authors would like to thank the European Commission and the partners of Network of Excellence “Innovative Production Machines and Systems” (http://www.iproms.org/) and the SOCRADES project (http://www.socrades.eu) for their support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Semantic Content Mediation and Acquisition: The Challenge for Semantic e-Business Solutions

A Top Quadrant report situates the Semantic Web within the current Innovation Wave of “Distributed Intelligence”. This is one of the main innovation waves of the last centuries including textile, railway, auto, computer, distributed intelligence (1997-2061) and nanotechnology (2007-2081). The Distributed Intelligence wave started in the late nineties and is expected to peak between 2010 and 2020. The report estimates first return on investments in 2006-7, growing to a market of $40-60 billion in 2010. Funds are coming primary from governments, venture capitalists and industry commercialization. Over the next few years, this is expected to change in favour of industry commercialization