A Survey on Service Composition Middleware in Pervasive Environments

The development of pervasive computing has put the light on a challenging problem: how to dynamically compose services in heterogeneous and highly changing environments? We propose a survey that defines the service composition as a sequence of four steps: the translation, the generation, the evaluation, and finally the execution. With this powerful and simple model we describe the major service composition middleware. Then, a classification of these service composition middleware according to pervasive requirements - interoperability, discoverability, adaptability, context awareness, QoS management, security, spontaneous management, and autonomous management - is given. The classification highlights what has been done and what remains to do to develop the service composition in pervasive environments

Issues about the Adoption of Formal Methods for Dependable Composition of Web Services

Web Services provide interoperable mechanisms for describing, locating and invoking services over the Internet; composition further enables to build complex services out of simpler ones for complex B2B applications. While current studies on these topics are mostly focused - from the technical viewpoint - on standards and protocols, this paper investigates the adoption of formal methods, especially for composition. We logically classify and analyze three different (but interconnected) kinds of important issues towards this goal, namely foundations, verification and extensions. The aim of this work is to individuate the proper questions on the adoption of formal methods for dependable composition of Web Services, not necessarily to find the optimal answers. Nevertheless, we still try to propose some tentative answers based on our proposal for a composition calculus, which we hope can animate a proper discussion

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Bibliometric cartography of information retrieval research by using co-word analysis

The aim of this study is to map the intellectual structure of the field of Information Retrieval (IR) during the period of 1987-1997. Co-word analysis was employed to reveal patterns and trends in the IR field by measuring the association strengths of terms representative of relevant publications or other texts produced in IR field. Data were collected from Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for the period of 1987-1997. In addition to the keywords added by the SCI and SSCI databases, other important keywords were extracted from titles and abstracts manually. These keywords were further standardized using vocabulary control tools. In order to trace the dynamic changes of the IR field, the whole 11-year period was further separated into two consecutive periods: 1987-1991 and 1992-1997. The results show that the IR field has some established research themes and it also changes rapidly to embrace new themes