Workshop on Emerging Web Services Technology

The Workshop on Emerging Web Service Technology (WEWST) focuses on research contributions advancing the state of the art in Web services technologies. The wide variety of tools, techniques and technological solutions presented in WEWST share one common feature: they push the envelope of current Web services research in new directions by introducing new ideas into the field.

Example topics related to such emergent technologies include but are not limited to: Model Driven Engineering for SOA, Mobility and Services, Streaming Services and Event Driven Architectures, Dynamic Web Service Discovery and Composition, Lightweight Orchestration Engines, SLA Creation and Service Delivery, Managing Change and Service Evolution, Business Driven Development, Service-Oriented Grid Computing Middleware, Business Process Management for Web Services, Software and Service Engineering.

Acting as the natural complement to the main ECOWS conference, the main goal of the WEWST workshop is to serve as a forum for providing early exposure and much needed feedback to grow and establish such original and emerging ideas within the Web Services community.

Workshop Format and Proceedings

In addition to the opening keynote, the workshop features 12 regular papers (up to 16 pages in Springer format) which will be published in post-workshop proceedings by CEUR-WS.

The post-proceedings are now published online at http://CEUR-WS.org/Vol-234/

Workshop Program

The Workshop on Emerging Web Service Technology will be held on December 4 one day before the main ECOWS conference starts.

Time	Room: Newton 1008
8:30 - 10:00	Keynote: Prof. Jürgen Angele, Ontoprise: Semantic Web Technologies @ Business Abstract Talk In former days Tim Berners-Lee proposed a soon breakthrough of the Semantic Web. As a breakthrough he considered every second web page to be connected to an ontology. In the mean time we have seen a lot of applications of semantic technologies, like semantic web services, semantic information integration, and ontology based search for documents. However it seems also clear that the forecast of TBL did not (yet) arrive. While in the last years there has always been great academic interest in Semantic Web and in semantic technologies and even first industrial products appeared, we did not see the industrial breakthrough of Semantic Web technologies. On the other hand there was a strong increasing interest in other trends like SOA architectures, Web 2.0 etc. which ruled out Semantic Web in publicity and in connected activities like new product developments, foundations of new companies, and money involved. The question arises what are the reasons for that and which of these newer trends could have an influence on the further development of semantic technologies. While so far the Semantic Web was driven to a large extent from the academic side, its future acceptance and relevance to the industrial world heavily depends on whether the future development of Semantic Web technologies is influenced by industry needs rather than pure academic ones. This becomes essential and will decide whether semantic technologies are considered as relevant technology and will be used in future industrial applications and products. In actual industry applications, it was proved that the combination of trendy topics like SOA and Web 2.0 with intelligent features of semantic technologies generates large impact for the industrial and business world and thereof - the breakthrough of the Corporate Semantic Web. This talk will illustrate present work, proposals and requirements which will lead us to the next wave of semantic technology impact
10:30 - 12:00	Session 0.1: Service Management Session Chair: Spyros Voulgaris BPEL-Mora: Lightweight Embeddable Extensible BPEL Engine Thilina Gunarathne, Dinesh Premalal, Tharanga Wijethilake ,Indika Kumara, Anushka Kumar (University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka) Abstract Web Services have become the de-facto standard for architecting and implementing business collaborations within and across organization boundaries. Web service composition refers to the creation of new (Web) services by combining the functionalities provided by existing ones. A process-oriented language for service composition has been proposed as BPEL4WS. BPEL4WS specification defines an XML based formal language and provides a general overview of the framework. However no design and implementation issues are described in it. Most of the available BPEL4WS compliant process engines are heavy weight, complex and not extensible. This paper describes the design and implementation of an embeddable, scalable and extensible BPEL4WS compliant process engine. This paper highlights the concepts and strategies that were followed during the design and implementation. Primary contribution of this paper is the design of stateless process model and the design of run time core engine using a multi-processor scheduler. A Cross-Layer Approach to Performance Monitoring of Web Services Nicolas Repp, Rainer Berbner, Oliver Heckmann, Ralf Steinmetz (Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany) Abstract Talk An increasing amount of applications are currently built as Web Service compositions based on the TCP/IP+HTTP protocol stack. In case of any deviations from desired runtime-behavior, problematic Web Services have to be substituted and their execution plans have to be updated accordingly. One challenge is to detect deviations as early as possible allowing timely adaption of execution plans. We advocate a cross-layer approach to detect bad performance and service interruptions much earlier than by waiting for their propagation through the full protocol stack. This position paper describes an approach to gain detailed real-time information about Web Service behavior and performance based on a cross-layer analysis of the TCP/IP+HTTP protocols. In this paper we focus especially on TCP. The results are used to make decisions supporting service selection and replanning in service-oriented computing scenarios. Furthermore, generic architectural components are proposed implementing the functionality needed which can be used in different web-based scenarios. Employing Intelligent Agents to Automate SLA Creation Halina Kaminski, Mark Perry (University of Western Ontario, Canada) Abstract Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are commonly prepared and signed agreements that form the contracts between a service provider and its customers, defining the obligations and liabilities of the parties. Naturally, SLAs should reflect the business needs of both customer and supplier. SLAs are usually formed through either the adoption of a boilerplate agreement from the provider, or through a mediation/negotiation process between the parties. With the increasing adoption of software supply being implemented as a network service, such schemes are rigid or slow and costly, This paper proposes a system that the parties can use to facilitate both fast and flexible agreements. It proposes automation of SLA creation from a set of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), making use of software agents and adopting a social order function by incorporating it into the decision process. A flexible approach to service management-related service description in SOAs Maximilian Ahrens (Deutsche Telekom Laboratories) Philipp Offermann, Marten Schönherr, Christian Schröpfer (TU Berlin, Germany) Abstract Talk In order for service-oriented architectures (SOAs) to deliver their true value for the business, e.g. flexibility and transparency, a holistic service management needs to be set up in the enterprise. To perform all the service management tasks efficiently heavy support by automated processes and tools is necessary. This article describes a service description approach that is based on OWL-S (Web Ontology Language for Services) and focuses on nonfunctional criteria. It starts with the necessary service management tasks and explains non-functional data elements and statements for its automated support. After covering related work it explains the proposed flexible extension to OWL-S. This extension is twofold. Firstly, simple service lifecycle elements are added using the normal extension mechanism. Secondly for adding QoS (Quality of Service) capabilities, the approach com-bines this extension mechanism with UML (Unified Modeling Language) Profile for QoS. A prototype delivers the proof-of-concept.
13:30 - 15:00	Session 0.2: Model Driven Engineering for Web Service Composition and Discovery Session Chair: Alain Leger Model Centric Approach of Web Services Composition Ricardo Quintero, Victoria Torres, Vicente Pelechano (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain) Abstract Talk The development of composite Web Services is being specified in a more declarative way than imperative programming. In this context, conceptual modeling has been the most accepted solution. Conceptual modeling of Web services has been done using behavioral models (like activity diagrams) consi-dering mainly the dynamic view. We believe that, besides the dynamic aspects, the models should capture structural requirements between web service opera-tions. In this way, behavioral models could be complemented with a structural model. In this paper we introduce a Web service composition modeling solu-tion, following the MDA approach, considering both –structural and dynamic properties- enriched with semantic constraints in order to automatically genera-te composite Web services implemented in BPEL. Model Driven Design of Web Service Operations using Web Engineering Practices Marta Ruiz, Vicente Pelechano (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain) Abstract Talk The design of Web Services is nowadays emerging as one of the most important tasks in the development of a Service Oriented Application. Web service designers need some guidelines to achieve a design of quality. In this paper we provide a methodological guide in the context of a Web engineering method called OOWS. Our approach allows identifying the operations of Web services following a model driven approach, taking the OOMethod / OOWS conceptual models as the source. To document our approach, we apply our ideas to a real case study of a Web application to manage University Research Groups A Logic based Approach for Service Discovery with Composition Support Adina Sırbu, Ioan Toma (DERI, Innsbruck) Abstract Talk Web service discovery given a user request becomes a fundamental challenge in a service-oriented world. The overall success of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) however will very much depend on automatic and accurate solutions for the discovery problem. Furthermore such solutions need to be efficiently integrated with other service related tasks (e.g. service composition). In this paper we propose a logic based approach for service discovery with composition support. First, we provide a formal model for service discovery based on semantic description of services and then we show how such approach can be integrated with service composition. Furthermore we provide a prototype implementation that validates our theoretical solution.
15:30 - 17:00	Session 0.3: Web Service Technology Challenges Session Chair: Cesare Pautasso Mobile and Dynamic Web Services Elena Sánchez-Nielsen, Sandra Martín-Ruiz, Jorge Rodríguez-Pedrianes (Universidad de La Laguna, Spain) Abstract Talk Making mobile phones capable of consuming Web services over wireless networks is a challenging task because of the different issues to be addressed and the limited resources of mobile devices. In this paper, we focus on the issue of how to perform dynamic discovery and invocation of Web services from mobile phones when a J2ME wireless middleware is used. In order to solve the limitations of the middleware platform when mobile phones act as Web services requestor we propose a Web service based dynamic proxy between service providers and mobile consumers. With this approach, we provide the following features to mobile devices: (1) support of dynamic binding, (2) support of UDDI specification, (3) support of SOAP messages with encoded representation and (4) handling of complex data types. The paper includes the description of the dynamic proxy, implementation and experimental results with the performance of the approach proposed. Software Metrics for the Efficient Execution of Mobile Services Pablo Rossi, Zahir Tari (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia) Abstract Talk This paper presents a suite of software code metrics, developed specifically for service-oriented systems with a well-defined methodology, which can be used as indicators of runtime efficiency. Existing literature on software metrics is mainly focused on centralized systems, while work in the area distributed systems, particularly in service-oriented systems, is scarce. Firstly, a critical analysis of the problem domain identifies a number of software attributes which are likely to have an impact on efficiency. Secondly, concrete metrics are defined and evaluated (theoretically and empirically) for all identified attributes, with results showing that these software metrics are strongly correlated to typical efficiency metrics. Finally, a simple algorithm, which facilitates the runtime adaptation of service-oriented systems via service re-deployment, illustrates a practical application of the metrics. Dynamically Adapting Clients to Web Services Changing Mehdi Ben Hmida, Serge Haddad (Université Paris 9 Dauphine, France) Valerie Monfort (Université Paris 1 Sorbonne, France) Abstract Talk Web Service is the ¯tted technical solution which provides the required loose coupling to achieve Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). However, there is still much to be done in order to increase °exibility and adaptability to SOA-based applications. In previous re- searches, we proposed approaches based on Aspect Oriented Program- ming (AOP) and Process Algebra (PA) to address °exibility and client generation issues in theWeb Service context. In this paper, we extend our previous formalism de¯ned for abstract BPEL processes, with three AOP constructs. The new formalism allows to specify dynamic change-prone BPEL processes. We also de¯ne the extended interaction relation which characterizes the concept of correct interaction between the adaptable BPEL process and its client. Then, we propose an algorithm to generate a client which dynamically adapt itself to the service changing. Web Services Standards: Do We Need Them? Tosca Lahiri, Mark Woodman (Middlesex University, UK) Abstract There is a three-fold argument that there are too many overlapping web service standards, they are not constraining enough and they exhibit too much proprietary interest. These criticisms suggest a dilemma of whether web service standards are worth investing time in – which raises the question of whether we should use standards or not. This dichotomy raises issues critical to both software engineering and business. Deciding which standards to adhere to is difficult from the viewpoints of the software developer and the perspective of the business arm. We discuss standards’ benefits and downfalls, looking at the implications for stakeholders. For successful uptake standards need precision and flexibility in solutions to common development challenges. Whether there are enough rigorous standards, or whether there are not sufficient robust standards is at the heart of the matter. We will expose different facets of an argument pointing to a standards marshalling framework for easier adherence.

Workshop Dates

Camera-ready Submission: 14th November 2006
Workshop date: 4th December 2006
Revised Camera-ready Submission: 26 January 2007
Post-Proceedings: February 2007

Organizing Committee

Cesare Pautasso, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (co-chair)
Chris Bussler, Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA (co-chair)
Thomas Gschwind, IBM Research, Zurich, Switzerland
Abraham Bernstein, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Wolf Zimmermann, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Registration

To participate in the workshop, you should first register through the ECOWS2006 Registration Site.
Make sure you choose the 'Workshop: Emerging Web Services Technology" in the Additional Registration options.

Paper Submission

Please mail the final camera ready version of your papers (in PDF format) to pautasso@inf.ethz.ch. Papers received after January 26th will not be updated in the final workshop proceedings.

Contact Information

For more information and inquiries about the workshop, please contact Cesare Pautasso (pautasso@inf.ethz.ch).

Sponsor

Workshop website kindly hosted by the Information and Communications Systems Research Group, at the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich