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

Delivering services by building and running virtual organisations

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Interface refactoring in performance-constrained web services

This paper presents the development of REF-WS an approach to enable a Web Service provider to reliably evolve their service through the application of refactoring transformations. REF-WS is intended to aid service providers, particularly in a reliability and performance constrained domain as it permits upgraded ’non-backwards compatible’ services to be deployed into a performance constrained network where existing consumers depend on an older version of the service interface. In order for this to be successful, the refactoring and message mediation needs to occur without affecting functional compatibility with the services’ consumers, and must operate within the performance overhead expected of the original service, introducing as little latency as possible. Furthermore, compared to a manually programmed solution, the presented approach enables the service developer to apply and parameterize refactorings with a level of confidence that they will not produce an invalid or ’corrupt’ transformation of messages. This is achieved through the use of preconditions for the defined refactorings

QoS model for discovery of semantic web services

Technology on semantic web services nowadays addresses only the synthetic services. These therefore provide limited sets of rigid services that cannot adapt to present contemporary changing environment. In this work, we propose an approach that would automate semantic service location, however, some conceptual model and assumptions that lead to identifying the solutions were defined. Furthermore, a thorough understanding of what a service means, various levels of abstraction and assumptions made on various elements that are involved in the location process were made. This was to ascertain the steps and kinds of descriptions that would be implemented to provide efficient and usable automated approach to web services. Additionally, we analyze the matching techniques that are of interest in locating services that would fulfil the requester’s goals. However, the proposed model those not impose any restrictions on how to implement it for specific application but some useful approach for providing such implementation.Keywords: Conceptual Model, Web Service, Semantic Web Service, Synthetic Service and We

Show Me the Money: Contracts and Agents in the Service Level Agreement Markets

Delivering real-time services (Internet telephony, video conferencing, and streaming media as well as business-critical data applications) across the Internet requires end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees, which requires a hierarchy of contracts. These standardized contracts may be referred to as Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs provide a mechanism for service providers and customers to flexibly specify the service to be delivered. The emergence of bandwidth and service agents, traders, brokers, exchanges and contracts can provide an institutional and business framework to support effective competition. This article identifies issues that must be addressed by SLAs for consumer applications. We introduce a simple taxonomy for classifying SLAs based on the identity of the contracting parties. We conclude by discussing implications for public policy, Internet architecture, and competition

Addressing the Next Wave of Internet Regulation: The Case For Equal Opportunity

In October 2009, the Federal Communications Commission released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making in which it asked for guidance on how to convert a principle of “nondiscrimination on the Internet” into a practical rule for broadband service providers. The ultimate formulation of the nondiscrimination principle could have a significant economic effect on economic welfare in the short term and on innovation. In this paper, we explain the economics of discrimination and offer a new approach for identifying anticompetitive discrimination. Discrimination raises concerns when it interferes with what is often referred to as “equality of opportunity.” However, the Commission’s proposed nondiscrimination policy, which would limit the ability of service providers and content providers to contract on terms that (1) are mutually agreeable to both parties, (2) are available to all prospective consumers, and (3) do not impose significantly externalities on third parties, is inimical to promoting equality of opportunity. Moreover, given the twosided nature of the Internet access market, a blanket rule forbidding broadband service providers from offering quality of service to content providers (and charging for it) would likely harm endusers and certain content providers.

A Broadband Access Market Framework: Towards Consumer Service Level Agreements

Ubiquitous broadband access is considered by many to be necessary for the Internet to realize its full potential. But there is no generally accepted definition of what constitutes broadband access. Furthermore, there is only limited understanding of how the quality of end-to-end broadband Internet services might be assured in today?s nascent multi-service, multi-provider environment. The absence of generally accepted and standardized service definitions and mechanisms for assuring service quality is a significant barrier to competitive broadband access markets. In the business data services market and in the core of the Internet, this problem has been addressed, in part, by increased reliance on Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These SLAs provide a mechanism for service providers and customers to flexibly specify the quality of service (QoS) that will be delivered. When used in conjunction with the new standards-based technical solutions for implementing QoS, these SLAs are helping to facilitate the development of robust wholesale markets for backbone transport services and content delivery services for commercial customers. The emergence of bandwidth traders, brokers, and exchanges provide an institutional and market-based framework to support effective competition

Two ways to Grid: the contribution of Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) mechanisms to service-centric and resource-centric lifecycles

Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) support service lifecycle tasks, including Development, Deployment, Discovery and Use. We observe that there are two disparate ways to use Grid SOAs such as the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) as exemplified in the Globus Toolkit (GT3/4). One is a traditional enterprise SOA use where end-user services are developed, deployed and resourced behind firewalls, for use by external consumers: a service-centric (or ‘first-order’) approach. The other supports end-user development, deployment, and resourcing of applications across organizations via the use of execution and resource management services: A Resource-centric (or ‘second-order’) approach. We analyze and compare the two approaches using a combination of empirical experiments and an architectural evaluation methodology (scenario, mechanism, and quality attributes) to reveal common and distinct strengths and weaknesses. The impact of potential improvements (which are likely to be manifested by GT4) is estimated, and opportunities for alternative architectures and technologies explored. We conclude by investigating if the two approaches can be converged or combined, and if they are compatible on shared resources

Inter-organizational negotiation of web-services

The web service technology allows organizations to interact through business processes. \ud However, organizations involved in cooperative business processes have different interests \ud and points of view. A negotiation allows them to discuss their interests and requirements in \ud order to reach an acceptable agreement. We propose an integrated web service negotiation \ud process that takes into account human interaction and the use of different negotiation \ud protocols. It focuses on the application of feature modelling to describe the negotiated \ud services. Our contributions include: (i) the definition of a negotiation process; (ii) the \ud definition of a conceptual model to support the negotiation of web services; (iii) reuse of \ud artefacts generated throughout the negotiation process; (iv) coverage of critical elements in \ud the negotiation of electronic contracts, such as role, properties of electronic services and \ud contract models; and (v) exploration of the process in different application scenario