Web-based decision support system for industrial operations management

To maintain sustainability in today’s’ global economy industrial companies must have well managed systems and operations to keep up with competition. For this they can take advantage of using Web and Internet based technologies. Such can be achieved by accessing good management resources and methods through the Internet which otherwise would not be available and, at the same time, take advantageous of collaboration provided by networks of partners and users. Due to operations management complexity when a company does not have access to good algorithms it usually draws upon simple and empirical procedures whose quality of solutions provided tends to be poor. This is a situation that can be avoided if companies have easy access to good operations management algorithms or services. This can be possible because a pool of knowledge on industrial operations management, which has been developed by academia and industry over the years, can be made available, through the Internet, to a large community of users. This idea is explored towards development of a web-based system for Industrial Operation Management, based on a P2P network of operations management algorithms providers and users. Thus, the paper describes a web system for aiding the resolution of Operations Management problems through collaboration based on a network of distributed resources and users, web services and other Internet technology. The system adopts a P2P network architecture to create and enable a decentralized and global industrial operations management environment. It includes a set of functionalities accessed through the P2P network, which holds algorithms for solving different types of Operations Management problems. The algorithms are selected through a user-friendly interface, which is automatically generated for each specific problem context, including loading existing XML problem data documents, and searching and running algorithms on the peers belonging to the P2P network.Universidade do MinhoFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

A conceptual architecture of distributed web services for service ecosystems

The classical nature of centralized web services client/server architecture brings about many associated problems such as performance, bottlenecks, and scalability. Meanwhile some peer-to-peer research proposals have not respected the existing web services standards, thus leaving the compatibility and feasibility issue open. Hence existing web services architecture is not designed to accommodate large-scale, distributed, internet-wide applications. In this paper, we propose a conceptual architecture for distributed web services to enable web services-based software systems to "work well" in the heterogeneous and highly distributed service ecosystem environment

Context and time based riskiness assessment for decision making

In an e-commerce interaction carried out in a Peer-to-Peer environment it is rational for the trusting peer to analyze the Risk that could be involved in dealing with a trusted peer as there is a lack of central management in these type of interactions. Risk analysis can be done by assimilating recommendations from other peers if there is no previous interaction history between the trusting peer and the trusted peer. But the assimilated recommendations might be according to the criteria of the recommending peer with the trusted peer, and it is not necessary for the trusting peer to have the same criteria in its interaction with the trusted peer as that of the recommending peer even thought it is interacting in the same context. Further it might interact in a different time as that of the recommending peer. The Risk that was present in a particular context and at a particular time might not be the same at a different time. Hence in this paper we discuss the process of the trusting peer assimilating the recommendations from the recommending peers according to the context, criteria and time of its interaction in order to determine the Riskiness value of the trusted peer, which would help it considerably in decision making

Quantifying risk in financial terms according to context and time for decision making

One of the characteristic of Risk is the possible loss that could be incurred in an interaction. In a peer-topeer financial interaction the loss incurred is usually the financial loss to the resources of the trusting peer that are involved in the interaction. Hence a way for the trusting peer to analyse the Risk in interacting with any trusted peer in order to decide wether to interact with it or not, is to determine the possible loss to its resources that are involved in the interaction. In this paper we will propose a methodology by which the trusting peer can determine the possible loss that could be incurred to it in interacting with a trusted peer

Ad-UDDI: An Active and Distributed Service Registry

Abstract. In SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), web service providers use service registries to publish services and requestors use registries to find them. The major current service registry specifications, UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), has the following drawbacks. First, it replicates all public service publications in all UBR (Universal Business Registry) nodes, which is not scalable and efficient, and second, it collects service information in a passive manner, which means it waits for service publication, updating or discovery request passively and thus cannot guarantee the real-time validity of the services information. In this paper, we propose an active and distributed UDDI architecture called Ad-UDDI, which extends and organizes the private or semi-private UDDIs based on industry classifications. Further, Ad-UDDI adopts an active monitoring mechanism, so that service information can be updated automatically and the service requestors may find the latest service information conveniently. We evaluate Ad-UDDI by comprehensive simulations and experimental results show that it outperforms existing approaches significantly.

A methodology for risk measurement in e-transactions

Risk is present in almost every activity. Alternately speaking, almost every activity may have some undesired outcomes which the person doing the activity hopes that they do not occur when it undertakes that particular activity. The quantification of those undesired outcomes can be termed as Risk. Risk is associated with Trust, Security and Privacy. Risk is also associated with transactions, businesses, information systems, environments, networks, partnerships, etc. Generally speaking, Risk signifies the likelihood of financial loss, human casualties, business destruction and environmental damages. It is important to define Risk according to the context of the transaction in order to understand and analyse it better. In the literature Risk has been defined and discussed in areas such as security, health, finance, environment and social life, but there is no systematic study of Risk in decentralized communications, which involves e-business, computer networks and service oriented environments. Hence in this paper, a particular attention is given to define and analyse Risk in the area of Peer-to-Peer business communications, where Risk is every individual and organization?s concern. Also in this paper we develop a risk indicator scale and develop a methodology by which the Riskiness of the peer can be rated according to its behaviour in an interaction. Risk indicator gives an early warning to the party involved and helps avoid disasters

Integrating peer-to-peer into web services

The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is emerging as a new standard for building large loosely coupled systems. Web Services, the dominant implementation platform for SOA, use a server-centric approach to manage all components. This limits the deployment of Web Services to static domains, since a service invocation will fail if the server component changes its availability or location. This research focuses on the possibilities of integrating P2P technology into the Web Services environment as a means of increasing its robustness. A P2P-Web Services architecture is presented that enables service discovery and service invocations in dynamic environments. The corresponding experiments on the reference system and the simulation system present the characteristics and improvements of the hybrid system