Xuan Thang Nguyen

WS2JADE: integrating web service with jade agents

Web services have gained popularity today for enabling universal interoperability among applications. In many scenarios, allowing software agents to access and control Web services is important and hence the integration between these two platforms. In this paper, we focus on technical aspects of an integration framework of Web services and Jade agent platform. The mismatch of description and communication between FIPA compliant agent platforms versusWeb services are two key challenges that must be addressed. Our implementation, WS2JADE, is described and compared with WSDL2JADE - a previous implementation on the same topic, and WSIGS - a recent proposal of Web service and Agent integration architecture. In contrast to other solutions, WS2JADE provides facilities to deploy and control Web services as agent services at run time for deployment flexibility and active service discovery.

Modelling and Solving QoS Composition Problem Using Fuzzy DisCSP

Web service compositions have attracted considerable efforts in the context of supporting enterprise application integrations. For a composite service, in addition to its functional requirements, QoS requirements are important and deserve a special attention. The central question to a QoS composition problem is how to compose a service from different subcomponent services so that its overall QoS can satisfy certain requirements. In this paper, we propose an agent-based method using fuzzy distributed constraint satisfaction problem (fuzzy DisCSP) techniques to solve this problem. We show that by using the composition structures, local constraints can be constructed and used with DisCSP. We also present an a new algorithm called the fuzzy constraint satisfaction algorithm for distributed environment (FADE) to solve the problem and discuss our experiment in building a prototypical system to prove the feasibility of our approach

Enabling agent-based management of Web services with WS2JADE

Web services management has attracted substantial research and industry interests in recent years. Web services technology is gaining popularity because of its well defined infrastructure aiming at enabling interoperability among heterogeneous applications. However, this interoperability promise also poses a difficulty in building a Web service management framework which can work across organizational boundaries. Software agents have been recognized as a promising technology for managing Web services. However in many proposed frameworks no agent standard is assumed. In this paper, we propose an extension of our existing Web services-agent integration toolkit WS2JADE for Web services management with FIPA compliant multi-agent systems. In particular, we relate our framework to other solutions in the area and show how new emerging Web services management technologies can be used with WS2JADE for enabling Web services management with agents.

WS2JADE: A Tool for Run-time Deployment and Control of Web Services as JADE Agent Services

Web services and software agent technologies are two areas that have attracted substantial research and industry interests in recent years. On the one hand, the Web services technology is gaining popularity because of its well-defined infrastructure aiming at enabling interoperability among heterogenous applications. On the other hand, the agent technology aims at providing intelligent autonomous capabilities for distributed components. A combination of these two technologies could create an environment where Web services and agents can employ and compliment each others’ strengths. In this chapter, we propose a framework called WS2JADE for integrating Web services and the JADE agent platform. In particular, the technical aspects of run-time deployment and control of Web services as agent services with WS2JADE are presented. We relate our framework to other solutions in the area and show how new emerging Web services management technologies can be used with WS2JADE for enabling Web services management with agents. The management capabilities are demonstrated with simple examples of using WS2JADE for service discovery, composition and deployment with JADE agents.

On Solving Distributed Fuzzy Constraint Satisfaction Problems with Agents

Fuzzy constraint satisfaction problem (FCSP) offers flexible modelling and solving of many real world problems such as scheduling and resource allocation. In this paper, we focus on distributed fuzzy constraint satisfaction problems (DisFCSP) where fuzzy constraints and variables of the problems are distributed among a set of collaborative agents. We propose two approaches to solve these problems: an iterative method and an adaptation of the asynchronous distributed constraint optimization algorithm (ADOPT) for solving DisFCSP. We also present experiments on the performance comparison of the two approaches.

Adaptive Service Agreement and Process Management

The ASAPM project aims at developing new techniques, mechanisms and software solutions for enablement of flexible, dynamic and robust management of service-oriented application provision processes to ensure collective functionality, end-to-end QoS and stateful coordination of complex services

An Agent Based QoS Conflict Mediation Framework for Web Services Compositions

Web services technology is prevailing for business- to-business integration due to its well defined infrastructure enabling interoperability among heterogeneous applications. However, this interoperability promise also poses a difficulty in building a Web service management framework which can work across organizational boundaries. In this paper, we argue that existing Web service management systems are inflexible in the way they handle QoS violations of a composite service. We suggest to use an intermediate step, called QoS conflict mediation, to make existing Web service management systems more flexible. Our mediation approach is based on a combination of two new ideas. Firstly, we propose to use techniques from the AI field of Distributed Constraint Satisfaction to intelligently mediate any QoS conflicts between services in compositions involving multiple service providers. Secondly, we propose a novel monitoring system, based on cryptography, to verify the conformance of service providers to the specification of a selected DisCSP algorithm - the Asynchronous Aggregate Search (AAS). This enables our DisCSP based QoS mediation to be used in the real Web services environment where full collaboration between providers may not always be guaranteed.

A Graph-Based Multi-Agent Planning Algorithm with QoS Guarantees

Many existing planning approaches assume the existence of a centralized planner that has complete information of its planning problem. However, with the increasing popularity of distributed paradigm today, a planning problem may span across the boundaries of different organizations. Consequently, such a problem is difficult to be managed by any single organization. In this paper, we propose a new graph based approach for distributed planning without a centralized planner. Our approach employs distributed constraint satisfaction (DisCSP) and graph planning techniques. It encompasses both of functional and non-functional plannings.

Dynamic Asynchronous Aggregate Search for Solving QoS Compositions of Web Services

There has been recently an increase of interests in distributed constraint satisfaction (DisCSP) algorithms. Most of these algorithms assume that the set of variables and constraints in a DisCSP are completely known and fixed. However, these assumptions do not hold in many open environments where unexpected events and changes can happen. Therefore this issue needs to be addressed in order for a DisCSP algorithm to be practically used in real life applications. Our contribution in this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we present an extended version of the asynchronous aggregate search (AAS), called the dynamic asynchronous aggregate search (DynAAS) - as a new algorithm for dynamic and uncertain environments. Secondly, we investigate the applicability of DynAAS in the Web service domain and argue that DynAAS is suitable for solving the QoS compositions of Web services. We also carry out the experiments to show the efficiency of our proposed algorithm in solving the QoS composition problem