Frédérique Biennier

Enhancing web service selection by QoS-based ontology and WS-policy

The Service Oriented Architecture enables the development of flexible large scale-applications in open environments by dynamically combining Web services. Nevertheless, current techniques fail to address the problem of selecting adequate services to meet service consumer needs. Service selection must take into account non-functional parameters especially the Quality of Service (QoS). In this work we propose a Web service selection approach based on QoS attributes. We extend the WS-Policy to represent QoS policies. We apply ontological concepts to WS-policy in order to enable semantic matching. Publishing QoS policies is also examined in this work. We propose to extend the UDDI register to handle QoS-based policies.

The Integration of Corporate Security Strategies in Collaborative Business Processes

In response to increasing economical constraints, enterprise organization has evolved toward new structures such as networked enterprise, supply chains, virtual enterprise, or collaborative business organizations. This structural organization requires the interoperability of business processes (BPs)and information systems. Dealing with interoperability often leads to the deployment of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to design agile collaborative BPs and publish and compose new services. In order to protect each partners own interests, security strategies must be developed and integrated in the service environment. Unfortunately, traditional security approaches deal with security concerns from a technical perspective (i.e., data transmission or authentication, etc.) and do not support end-to-end security in a distributed environment of business services and collaborative processes. In this paper, we attempt to improve end-to-end security by annotating service descriptions with security objectives used to generate convenient quality of protection (QoP) agreements between partners. Conversely, agreements are processed by a dedicated matching module with respect to security requirements and preferences to select business services, and then, compose their appropriate technical security services.

Collaborative business and data privacy: toward a cyber-control?

The pervasive use of communication and information technologies can be seen as a driving force to develop distributed organisations. As far as collaborative business is concerned, short-term e-collaboration can be developed. In this case, security policies must be integrated in the common business process (BP) organisation so that trusted co-operation can be established. For this purpose we propose to couple a generic authorisation workflow to the business process own workflow and to report all the actions on the shared information systems. Nevertheless, reporting tools can be seen as threats on data privacy. We propose here a multi-level architecture to provide both a sufficient security level and a personal data privacy protection.

A security policy framework for context-aware and user preferences in e-services

In todays dynamic and distributed markets a large spectrum of services is delivered through information and communication technologies. Emerging markets of e-services lie at the intersection of non-traditional user behaviour, and cyber-partnerships of enterprises to deliver innovative services. Current approaches to manage and control security demonstrate lacks in terms of security policy matching and integration in heterogeneous e-service environments. In this paper, we introduce a framework to support role-based access control for distributed services focusing on the integration of customer preferences. The framework aims to collect and generate policy-based security measures in cross-organisational scenarios. In addition to catering to specifications of security and business policies, the ability to integrate contextual information and user preferences make the role-based framework flexible and express a variety of access policies that provide a just-in-time permission activation.

Service farming: an ad-hoc and QoS-aware web service composition approach

The missing point so far in the Web service composition is a proper support for composing services without a complete and predefined composition plan. As in some cases such as the crisis management, the composition plan can only be partially defined or cannot be defined in advance. Composing web services with a partial composition plan raises a particular challenge. In this paper, we propose an ad-hoc Web service composition approach, called Service Farming, which aims at constructing an optimal composite service in a reasonable time without a predefined composition plan and satisfying various requirements. Our approach is ad-hoc in the sense that it composes services by simultaneously selecting atomic services and inferring the composition patterns between the selected services so as to ensure services are composed in the best way with regard to QoS aggregation. Experimentations examine the performance of the Service Farming in different cases and show promising results.

Digital ecosystems: challenges and prospects

Mimicking biological ecosystems, digital ecosystems refer to complex and interdependent systems and their underlying infrastructures by which all constituents interact and exhibit as a whole self-organizing, scalable and sustainable behaviors. This emerging topic is of great interest to scholars. Nevertheless, we observe a divergence of opinions and a disagreement about what Digital Ecosystems are, how they are designed, and what their applications should be. In this paper, we present an overall view of the concept of Digital Ecosystem and provide background for a common understanding. Firstly, we identify four factors that have lead to the emergence of Digital Ecosystems and present their definitions, characteristics and categories. Secondly, we discuss models and simulation tools to show current achievements and limitations. Finally, we illustrate the main challenges and shed light on further work in the field of Digital Ecosystems.

Towards lean service bus architecture for industrial integration infrastructure and pull manufacturing strategies

The Lean Manufacturing approach requires advanced and efficient manufacturing technologies in order to meet customer demands. Manufacturing companies have increased their productivity and efficiency over time by implementing new strategies, business processes and IT solutions. Best practices also allow companies to achieve on-demand manufacturing through the integration of pull flow production strategy. In order to achieve agility to meet business needs, a key for success is a flexible integration of different information system components to enable the flow of exchanged data and information. To insure the agility of an enterprise’s organization, ISA S-95 standard can be used to determine which information has to be exchanged between system components. We propose an Industrial System Integration Architecture, a Lean Enterprise Service Bus which relies on Lean Manufacturing constraints based on semantic aspects with respect to the ISA S-95 standard. This architecture aims at enhancing the interoperability between the production system and the global enterprise information system in terms of business and manufacturing requirements and establishes semantic interoperability to achieve an industrial semantic.

Extended Service Integration: Towards “Manufacturing” SLA

Market constant evolution towards more and more customisation and call for “product/service” increases to need of agile and lean organisations, making an heavy use of information and communication technologies. To bring the necessary openness, interoperability and agility features to the enterprises information systems, one can use fruitfully Service Oriented Architecture. Already used at a business level as a potential interoperable and integrating framework, this technology must be adapted to define manufacturing services and to take into account manufacturing constraints, namely time constraint and security integration. In this paper, we propose a global framework to define a “manufacturing service bus”, paying a particular attention to the manufacturing service definition. We also show how mobile agents can be used to set dynamically monitoring systems

Security integration in inter-enterprise business process engineering

New organisational trends as alliances, virtual enterprises or extended enterprises make an heavy use of the information and communication technologies. This involves both the integration of the enterprises “personal” information systems, which exhibits important security requirement, and the definition of dedicated inter-enterprises business processes, respecting each enterprise autonomy and bringing an efficient collaborative framework. Based on actors models, our approach to couple closely a multi-levels workflow description of the distributed business processes and access controls descriptions on the information system so that a global and consistent security policy can be set.

Towards integrating security services in e-learning platforms

E-learning has become of great importance nowadays, starting at the point of simplifying and improving learning in the academic institutions, to saving time and money by providing special training in the companies. E-learning platforms are evolving in a rapid way into modular platforms based on service-oriented architectures providing flexibility and services reusability. In this work, in one hand, we highlight the importance of securing e-learning platforms: we start a review of the first e-learning generation where the focus was on sharing learning content, the second generation that added sharing of learning objects between different platforms, and the third generation based on service-oriented architecture, where content, tools, and functionalities are available for reuse in a dynamic environment. On the other hand, we explain the security challenges, both, the first and the second e-learning generations might be facing, we then discuss the service-oriented architecture security challenges in distributed environments, and finally, as a conclusion, we propose a security service-based architecture to securing third e-learning generation.