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

Demand driven web services

Web services are playing a pivotal role in e-business, service intelligence, and service science. Demand-driven web services are becoming important for web services and service computing. However, many fundamental issues are still ignored to some extent. For example, what is the demand theory for web services, what is a demand-driven architecture for web services and what is a demand-driven web service lifecycle remain open. This chapter addresses these issues by examining fundamentals for demand analysis in web services, and proposing a demand-driven architecture for web services. It also proposes a demand-driven web service lifecycle for the main players in web services: Service providers, service requestors and service brokers, respectively. It then provides a unified perspective on demand-driven web service lifecycles. The proposed approaches will facilitate research and development of web services, e-services, service intelligence, service science and service computing

Software architecture style for interoperable databases

We propose a layered and component based software architecture style which supports interoperability in multiple databases (DB). The architectural style's building blocks and its constraints are described and the deployment of two design patterns outlined. Components placed in our architectural layers exhibit a linear topology and request/reply processing style. The constraints include communications between components which are not in the adjacent architectural layers and extension of the intuitive many : one bindings between components towards many : many. We comment on similarities with mediation architectures and outline some implementation issues

C6 : A Holistic Model for Decision Making in Web Services

Web services are playing a pivotal role in e-business, service intelligence, service science and information systems. This article will examine how the main players make decisions for activities in web service lifecycle (WSLC) and propose a holistic model for decision making in web services. More specifically, this article first examines main players in web services. It also reviews the existing web service lifecycles and proposes a demand-driven web service lifecycle for web service requesters. It will then examine six driving factors for web services, look at their interrelationships and propose a holistic model for decision making in web services, C6, which consists of six Cs: communication, competition, coordination, collaboration, cooperation and control, taking into account the main players in web services and web service lifecycle (WSLC). The proposed approach will facilitate research and development of web services, e-services, service intelligence, service science and service computing

A Transaction-oriented architecture for enterprise systems

Many enterprises risk business transactions based on information systems that are incomplete or misleading, given that 80-85% of all corporate information remains outside of their processing scope. It highlights that the bulk of information is too unstructured for these systems to process, but must be taken into account if those systems are to provide effective support. Computer technology nonetheless continues to become more and more predominant, illustrated by SAP A.G. recognising that 65-70% of the world's transactions are run using their technology. Using SAP as an illustrative case study, and by bringing in the benefits of technologies such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Architecture Frameworks (EA) and Conceptual Structures, a practical roadmap is identified to a Transaction-Oriented Architecture (TOA) that is predicated on the Transaction Concept. This concept builds upon the Resources-Events-Agents (REA) modelling pattern that is close to business reality. Enterprise systems can thus better incorporate that missing 80-85% of hitherto too-unstructured information thereby allowing enterprise systems vendors such as SAP, their competitors, customers, suppliers and partners to do an ever better job with the world's transactions

Appropriating signs and meaning: The elusive economics of trademark

This paper deals with economic analysis of trademark. Its presence in markets is originally connected with the problem of information asymmetries and the need to provide information for assisting exchanges, so as to avert the market failure brought about by adverse selection. However this information-conveying function is also accompanied by a differentiation effect, arising from the power of persuasion that signs can exert on individuals. The exploitation of differentiation has given rise to the practice of branding, which ties markets and consumption to the realms of meaning and experience. Branding is so all-pervasive in today's economy as to have somehow transfigured it, so that the role of persuasion is now pre-eminent. Nonetheless, the mainstream economic theory tends to resist acknowledging this change, which would to a large extent call into question well-established hypotheses and theoretical tools. The general response has therefore been to assume that the informational role of trademark predominates, and to use this hypothesis to construct models, welfare evaluations and policy prescriptions that bear little or no relation to the actual markets. The opposing approach - in the shadow of the Nelson's and Arrow's seminal papers on economics of information - is recognising the idiosyncratic character of information, and therefore drawing conclusions and devising solutions that, while still based upon the welfare criterion, also incorporate a wider awareness and a deeper representation of the scenario under study. The present work attempts to move in this direction, showing how different disciplines can provide some key epistemological tools for enabling economists to effectively evaluate the welfare outcomes of the introduction and progressive alteration of a particular intellectual property right within the realm of signs and meanings.trademark, brand, intellectual property, economics of information, signs,economic welfare