Jinghai Rao

A survey of automated web service composition methods

In today’s Web, Web services are created and updated on the fly. It’s already beyond the human ability to analysis them and generate the composition plan manually. A number of approaches have been proposed to tackle that problem. Most of them are inspired by the researches in cross-enterprise workflow and AI planning. This paper gives an overview of recent research efforts of automatic Web service composition both from the workflow and AI planning research community.

Understanding and capturing people's privacy policies in a mobile social networking application

A number of mobile applications have emerged that allow users to locate one another. However, people have expressed concerns about the privacy implications associated with this class of software, suggesting that broad adoption may only happen to the extent that these concerns are adequately addressed. In this article, we report on our work on PeopleFinder, an application that enables cell phone and laptop users to selectively share their locations with others (e.g. friends, family, and colleagues). The objective of our work has been to better understand people’s attitudes and behaviors towards privacy as they interact with such an application, and to explore technologies that empower users to more effectively and efficiently specify their privacy preferences (or “policies”). These technologies include user interfaces for specifying rules and auditing disclosures, as well as machine learning techniques to refine user policies based on their feedback. We present evaluations of these technologies in the context of one laboratory study and three field studies.

Logic-based Web services composition: from service description to process model

This paper introduces a method for automatic composition of semantic Web services using Linear Logic (LL) theorem proving. The method uses semantic Web service language (DAML-S) for external presentation of Web services, while, internally, the services are presented by extralogical axioms and proofs in LL. We use a process calculus to present the composite service formally. The process calculus is attached to the LL inference rules in the style of type theory. Thus the process model for a composite service can be generated directly from the proof. The subtyping rules that are used for semantic reasoning are presented with LL inference figures. We propose a system architecture where the DAML-S translator, the LL theorem prover and the semantic reasoner can operate together to fulfill the task. This architecture has been implemented in Java.

Composition of Semantic Web services using Linear Logic theorem proving

This paper introduces a method for automatic composition of Semantic Web services using Linear Logic (LL) theorem proving. The method uses a Semantic Web service language (DAML-S) for external presentation of Web services, while, internally, the services are presented by extralogical axioms and proofs in LL. LL, as a resource conscious logic, enables us to capture the concurrent features of Web services formally (including parameters, states and non-functional attributes). We use a process calculus to present the process model of the composite service. The process calculus is attached to the LL inference rules in the style of type theory. Thus, the process model for a composite service can be generated directly from the complete proof. We introduce a set of subtyping rules that defines a valid dataflow for composite services. The subtyping rules that are used for semantic reasoning are presented with LL inference figures. We propose a system architecture where the DAML-S Translator, LL Theorem Prover and Semantic Reasoner can operate together. This architecture has been implemented in Java.

User-Controllable Security and Privacy for Pervasive Computing

We describe our current work in developing novel mechanisms for managing security and privacy in pervasive computing environments. More specifically, we have developed and evaluated three different applications, including a contextual instant messenger, a people finder application, and a phone-based application for access control. We also draw out some themes we have learned thus far for user-controllable security and privacy.

A Mixed Initiative Approach to Semantic Web Service Discovery and Composition: SAP's Guided Procedures Framework

A central element of emerging service oriented architectures (SOA) is the ability to develop new applications by composing enterprise functionality encapsulated in the form of services - whether within a given organization or across multiple ones. Semantic service annotations, including annotations of both functional and non-functional attributes, offer the prospect of facilitating this process and of producing higher quality solutions. A significant body of work in this area has aimed to fully automate this process, while assuming that all services already have rich and accurate annotations. In this article, we argue that this assumption is often unrealistic. Instead, we describe a mixed initiative framework for semantic Web service discovery and composition that aims at flexibly interleaving human decision making and automated functionality in environments where annotations may be incomplete and even inconsistent. An initial version of this framework has been implemented in SAPs guided procedures, a key element of SAPs enterperise service architecture (ESA)

Value-Added Web Services Composition Using Automatic Program Synthesis

The number of products and services available over the Internet increases dramatically during the last years and it is already beyond the human ability to analyze and combine them efficiently. At the same time if we consider works in software engineering (and, in particular, in component-based system development) then we can find quite strong similarity in problem description. The web services can be treated in a way similar to software components and service composition can be considered as problem of software synthesis and composition. Basic idea of our approach is applying the software synthesis and composition methods to value added web services composition. We also describe some technical details within the approach, in particular, a web service description language and a program synthesis method.

Symbolic Agent Negotiation for Semantic Web Service Exploitation

This paper presents an architecture and a methodology for agent-based Web service discovery and composition. We assume that Web services are described with declarative specifications like DAML-S. Based on the declarative information about services, symbolic reasoning can be applied while searching for or composing automatically new services. We propose that symbolic agent negotiation could be used for dynamic Web service discovery and composition. Symbolic negotiation, as we consider it here, is a mixture of distributed planning and information exchange. Therefore, by using symbolic negotiation for automated service composition, we support information collection and integration during service composition. The latter aspect has been largely neglected in automated service composition until now.

Implementing explanation ontology for agent system

The overall issue is to improve semantic interoperability among and across agent systems. We propose to use explanation as a way to approach that aim. The explanation process is expressed in terms of an explanation ontology shared by the agents who participate to the explanation session. The explanation ontology is defined in a way general enough to support a variety of explanation mechanisms. We describe the explanation ontology and provide a working through example illustrating how the proposed generic ontology can be used to develop specific explanation mechanism. Finally, the ontology is being integrated into a running agent platform - Agora to demonstrate the practical usefulness of the approach.

Virtual enterprise formation with agents - an approach to implementation

The formation of a virtual enterprise and the selection of its partners is an important process in the lifecycle of a virtual enterprise. In this paper, we present the virtual enterprise formation process as an agent interaction protocol and an approach to its implementation. We have focused on the selection of partners within the formation process in order to understand these interactions and the contents of the messages that are exchanged between the agents. Based on this, we describe how the AGORA multi-agent architecture can be used to support the formation of a virtual enterprise.