Analysis of communication models in web service compositions

In this paper we describe an approach for the verification of Web service compositions dened by sets of BPEL processes. The key aspect of such a verification is the model adopted for representing the communications among the services participating in the composition. Indeed, these communications are asynchronous and buffered in the existing execution frameworks, while most verication approaches assume a synchronous communication model for efficiency reasons. In our approach, we develop a parametric model for describing Web service compositions, which allows us to capture a hierarchy of communication models, ranging from synchronous communications to asynchronous communications with complex buffer structures. Moreover, we develop a technique to associate with a Web service composition the most adequate communication model, i.e., the simplest model that is sufficient to capture all the behaviors of the composition. This way, we can provide an accurate model of a wider class of service composition scenarios, while preserving as much as possible an efficient performance in verification

Using gamification to incentivize sustainable urban mobility.

Sustainable urban mobility is an important dimension in a Smart City, and one of the key issues for city sustainability. However, innovative and often costly mobility policies and solutions introduced by cities are liable to fail, if not combined with initiatives aimed at increasing the awareness of citizens, and promoting their behavioural change. This paper explores the potential of gamification mechanisms to incentivize voluntary behavioural changes towards sustainable mobility solutions. We present a service-based gamification framework, developed within the STREETLIFE EU Project, which can be used to develop games on top of existing services and systems within a Smart City, and discuss the empirical findings of an experiment conducted in the city of Rovereto on the effectiveness of gamification to promote sustainable urban mobility

The AI4Citizen pilot: Pipelining AI-based technologies to support school-work alternation programmes

The School-Work Alternation (SWA) programme was developed (under a European Commission call) to bridge the gaps and establish a well-tuned partnership between education and the job market. This work details the development of the AI4Citizen pilot, an AI software suite designed to support the SWA programme. The AI4Citizen pilot, developed within the H2020 AI4EU project, offers AI tools to automate and enhance the current SWA process. At the same time, the AI4Citizen pilot offers novel tools to support the complex problem of allocating student teams to internship programs, promoting collaborative learning and teamwork skills acquisition. Notably, the AI4Citizen pilot corresponds to a pipeline of AI tools, integrating existing and novel technologies. Our exhaustive empirical analysis confirms that the AI4Citizen pilot can alleviate the difficulties of current processes in the SWA, and therefore it is ready for real-world deployment

Analysis of Communication Models in Web Service Compositions

In this paper we describe an approach for the verification of Web service compositions defined by sets of BPEL processes. The key aspect of such a verification is the model adopted for representing the communications among the services participating in the composition. Indeed, these communications are asynchronous and buffered in the existing execution frameworks, while most verification approaches assume a synchronous communication model for efficiency reasons. In our approach, we develop a parametric model for describing Web service compositions, which allows us to capture a hierarchy of communication models, ranging from synchronous communications to asynchronous communications with complex buffer structures. Moreover, we develop a technique to associate with a Web service composition the most adequate communication model, i.e., the simplest model that is sufficient to capture all the behaviors of the composition. This way, we can provide an accurate model of a wider class of service composition scenarios, while preserving as much as possible an efficient performance in verification

Static verification of control and data in web service compositions

The data exchanged among the web services participating to a composition are clearly very relevant for a correct behavior of the composition. Nevertheless, most of the approaches existing in the literature for the static verification of web service compositions ignore data, or require very small ranges to be associated to the data types. In this paper, we propose an approach for the verification of web service compositions that takes into account the data flows among the component process. The approach exploits abstraction techniques for modeling those aspects of data that are relevant for the correctness of the composition and hiding the aspects that are irrelevant. We show that building the right abstraction corresponds to defining those assumptions on the data manipulations performed by the component services which are crucial for the correctness of the composition

A Parametric Communication Model for the Verification of BPEL4WS Compositions

In this paper we describe an approach for the verification of Web service compositions defined by a set of BPEL4WS processes. The key aspect of such a verification task is the model adopted for representing the communications among the services participating to the composition. Indeed, these communications are asynchronous and buffered in the existing execution frameworks, while most verification approaches adopt a synchronous communication model for efficiency reasons. In our approach, we model the asynchronous nature of Web service interactions without introducing buffers, by allowing a reordering of the messages exchanged during these interactions. This way, we can provide an accurate model of a wider class of service composition scenarios, while preserving an efficient performance in verification

Analysis of Communication Models in Web Service Compositions

In this paper we describe an approach for the verification of Web service compositions dened by sets of BPEL processes. The key aspect of such a verification is the model adopted for representing the communications among the services participating in the composition. Indeed, these communications are asynchronous and buffered in the existing execution frameworks, while most verication approaches assume a synchronous communication model for efficiency reasons. In our approach, we develop a parametric model for describing Web service compositions, which allows us to capture a hierarchy of communication models, ranging from synchronous communications to asynchronous communications with complex buffer structures. Moreover, we develop a technique to associate with a Web service composition the most adequate communication model, i.e., the simplest model that is sufficient to capture all the behaviors of the composition. This way, we can provide an accurate model of a wider class of service composition scenarios, while preserving as much as possible an efficient performance in verification

A framework for integrating business processes and business requirements

Service-oriented architectures and Web service infrastructure provide the ideal framework for interconnecting organizations and for defining distributed business applications. The possibility to exploit business process definition and execution languages is particularly relevant for capturing the process-oriented nature of these applications. However, business processes by themselves are not enough to manage the changes and to allow an organization to continuously adapt its business model to the typical needs of distributed applications. To achieve this flexibility, it is of uttermost importance to link the business processes to the organizational strategy and to the business goals that motivate the need of these processes. In this paper we propose a framework for representing strategies and goals of an organization in terms of business requirements. The framework allows to describe how an organizational strategy is operationalized into activities and implemented by business processes. It also allows to represent the assumptions on the interactions between the different business applications. Finally, this framework allows for the usage of formal analysis techniques, in particular Model Checking, to pinpoint problems and to identify possible solutions in this domain. 1

Clam: Cross-layer management of adaptation decisions for service-based applications

Adaptation of service-based applications (SBA) is not trivial in their heterogeneous and dynamic execution context. While different approaches exist, most of them focus on a specific part of the SBA ignoring the overall impact of the adaptation on the whole application. In this paper we propose a cross-layer adaptation manager (CLAM) that tackles this problem