On coordinating personalized composite web services

This paper presents a research project on the coordination of personalized composite web services. By coordination, it is meant the mechanisms that specify the orchestration of the component web services of a composite web service. The orchestration is about the execution chronology of the component web services, the data that the component web services exchange, the states that the component web services take, and the actions that the component web services perform. By personalization, it is meant the integration of user preferences into the specification that orchestrates the component web services. These preferences concern when the component web services are to be executed. In this research project, the operations of coordination and personalization are entrusted to software agents, which, for instance, monitor the context surrounding users and trigger as a result the appropriate component web services. In addition, software agents engage in conversations with their peers when it comes to tracking the personalized component web services. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved