Execution/Simulation of Context/Constraint-aware Composite Services using GIPSY

For fulfilling a complex requirement comprising of several sub-tasks, a composition of simple web services, each of which is dedicated to performing a specific sub-task involved, proves to be a more competent solution in comparison to an equivalent atomic web service. Owing to advantages such as re-usability of components, broader options for composition requesters and liberty to specialize for component providers, for over two decades now, composite services have been extensively researched to the point of being perfected in many aspects. Yet, most of the studies undertaken in this field fail to acknowledge that every web service has a limited context in which it can successfully perform its tasks, the boundaries of which are defined by the internal constraints placed on the service by its providers. When used as part of a composition, the restricted context-spaces of all such component services together define the contextual boundaries of the composite service as a unit, which makes internal constraints an influential factor for composite service functionality. However, due to the limited exposure received by them, no systems have yet been proposed to cater to the specific verification of internal constraints imposed on components of a composite service. In an attempt to address this gap in service composition research, in this thesis, we propose a multi-faceted solution capable of not only automatically constructing context-aware composite web services with their internal constraints positioned for optimum resource-utilization but also of validating the generated compositions using the General Intensional Programming SYstem (GIPSY) as a time- and cost-efficient simulation/execution environment

A standards-based ICT framework to enable a service-oriented approach to clinical decision support

This research provides evidence that standards based Clinical Decision Support (CDS) at the point of care is an essential ingredient of electronic healthcare service delivery. A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based solution is explored, that serves as a task management system to coordinate complex distributed and disparate IT systems, processes and resources (human and computer) to provide standards based CDS. This research offers a solution to the challenges in implementing computerised CDS such as integration with heterogeneous legacy systems. Reuse of components and services to reduce costs and save time. The benefits of a sharable CDS service that can be reused by different healthcare practitioners to provide collaborative patient care is demonstrated. This solution provides orchestration among different services by extracting data from sources like patient databases, clinical knowledge bases and evidence-based clinical guidelines (CGs) in order to facilitate multiple CDS requests coming from different healthcare settings. This architecture aims to aid users at different levels of Healthcare Delivery Organizations (HCOs) to maintain a CDS repository, along with monitoring and managing services, thus enabling transparency. The research employs the Design Science research methodology (DSRM) combined with The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), an open source group initiative for Enterprise Architecture Framework (EAF). DSRM’s iterative capability addresses the rapidly evolving nature of workflows in healthcare. This SOA based solution uses standards-based open source technologies and platforms, the latest healthcare standards by HL7 and OMG, Decision Support Service (DSS) and Retrieve, Update Locate Service (RLUS) standard. Combining business process management (BPM) technologies, business rules with SOA ensures the HCO’s capability to manage its processes. This architectural solution is evaluated by successfully implementing evidence based CGs at the point of care in areas such as; a) Diagnostics (Chronic Obstructive Disease), b) Urgent Referral (Lung Cancer), c) Genome testing and integration with CDS in screening (Lynch’s syndrome). In addition to medical care, the CDS solution can benefit organizational processes for collaborative care delivery by connecting patients, physicians and other associated members. This framework facilitates integration of different types of CDS ideal for the different healthcare processes, enabling sharable CDS capabilities within and across organizations

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?” Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution

Orchestration de web services fiables

L’Informatique Orienté Services représente un paradigme pour construire des applications distribuées sur Internet. L’Architecture Orientée Services(SOA) est un style architectural qui permet le développement de ces applications à base de services. Au cours de la dernière décennie, l’orchestration des services Web est devenue un domaine très actif dans la recherche scientifique et académique. Bien que de nombreux défis liés à l’orchestration aient été abordés, la fiabilité de l’orchestration et de sa vérification restent encore un sujet ouvert, prérequis et important de fait que ces orchestrations affectent aujourd’hui plusieurs activités quotidiennes. Cette thèse focalise sur le sujet d’orchestration des Services Web Fiables. En particulier, elle contribue avec un ensemble d’approches, de techniques et d’outils pour améliorer la sélection et l’orchestration des services web fiables. Premièrement, elle affine les phases du cycle de vie d’orchestration de services web afin d’assurer une vérification continuée de fiabilité lors des phases de conception et d’exécution. En outre, elle propose une architecture conceptuelle basée sur un registre de service amélioré, pour la mise en œuvre d’orchestrations fiables. Deuxièmement, elle présente une approche de mesure de similarité entre les services web. L’approche repose sur la comparaison des interfaces WSDL de services. L’approche sert à identifier les relations de similarité, de substituabilité et de composabilité entre services. L’outil WSSIM a été développé pour mettre en œuvre l’approche proposée. Pour validation, l’outil a été expérimenté avec un ensemble important de services web réels. Troisièmement, la thèse contribue avec une approche pour l’identification des substituts de services simples et complexes. L’approche utilise les techniques de mesure de similarité, la classification de service avec FCA et l’analyse de fiabilité pour identifier et sélectionner les meilleures substitutes. Un ensemble d’algorithmes aient été proposés pour décrire le processus d’identification. Quatrièmement, pour examiner la réputation des services comme un autre critère de fiabilité, la thèse introduit un Framework et un modèle mathématique pour la gestion de réputation de service We