Composing Web Services Using an Agent Factory

  • Debbie Richards
  • Sander van Splunter
  • Frances M.T. Brazier
  • Marta Sabou
Chapter
Part of the Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations book series (MASA, volume 13)

Abstract

Web service composition can provide a value-chain between customers and suppliers. The increasing number of services, and thus possible combinations, demands the development of dynamic and automatic techniques for their composition. Current commercial solutions are limited and are primarily static and manual. Automation requires reasoning about (semantic descriptions of) the services. This paper describes our initial work which brings together agents, Web service and semantic Web technology. Our knowledge-based software engineering approach to the design of agents, known as the Agent Factory, is applied to the composition of Web services. Using semantic descriptions of Web services written in DAML-S, the design process in our Agent Factory derives a Web service configuration. This paper also includes some observations regarding our experiences with DAML-S, UDDI and WSDL for this purpose.

Keywords

Resource Description Framework Domain Ontology Coordination Pattern Configuration Process Semantic Description 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. [1]
    Ankolekar, A., Huch, F. and Sycara, K. Concurrent Execution Semantics for DAML-S with Subtypes, The First International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), Sardinia (Italy), pp. 318–332 June, 2002.Google Scholar
  2. [2]
    Bellifemine, F., Poggi, A., and Rimassa, G., Developing multi-agent systems with a FIPA-compliant agent framework. Software — Practice and Experience 31(2): 103–128, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. [3]
    Brazier, F.M.T., Jonker, C.M., Treur, J.: Principles of Component-Based Design of Intelligent Agents. Data and Knowledge Engineering 41, pp.1–28, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. [4]
    Brazier, F.M.T., Wijngaards, N.J.E. Automated Servicing of Agents AISB Journal, Special Issue on Agent Technology, 1:1, pp. 5–20, 2001.Google Scholar
  5. [5]
    Brazier, F.M.T, Van Langen, P.H.G., Ruttkay, Zs. and Treur, J. On formal specification of design tasks In Proc. of the AAAI Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing: State of the Art and Practice, AAAI Press, pp. 30–39, 1994.Google Scholar
  6. [6]
    Bryson, J., Martin, D., McIlraith, S. and Stein, L.A., Agent-Based Composite Services in DAML-S: The Behavior-Oriented Design of an Intelligent Semantic Web. In N. Zhong, J. Liu and Y. Yao (eds.), Web Intelligence, ISBN 4-540-44384-3, Springer, pp. 37–58, 2003.Google Scholar
  7. [7]
    Buhler, P. A. and Vidal, J. M. (b) Semantic Web services as Agent Behaviors. In B. Burg, J. Dale, T. Finin, H. Nakashima, L. Padgham, C. Sierra, and S. Willmott (eds.), Agentcities: Challenges in Open Agent Environments, Springer-Verlag, pp. 25–31, 2003.Google Scholar
  8. [8]
    Cossentino, M. Burrafato, P., Lombardo, S. and Sabatucci, L. Introducing Pattern Reuse in the Design of Multi-Agent Systems. AITA'02 workshop at NODe02 — 8–9 October — Erfurt, Germany, 2002.Google Scholar
  9. [9]
    DAML Services Coalition. DAML-S: Semantic Markup for Web services. DAML-S v. 0.7 White Paper, October 2002.Google Scholar
  10. [10]
    DAML-S Coalition. Describing Web services using DAML-S and WSDL. DAML-S Coalition working document, http://www.daml.org/services/daml-s/0.7/daml-s-wsdl.html, August 2002.Google Scholar
  11. [11]
    Handschuh, S., Staab, S. and Maedche, A. CREAM-Creating Relational Metadata with a Component-Based, Ontology-Driven Annotation Framework, 1st Int. Conf: on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP'2001), Workshop on Semantic Markup and Annotation, Victoria, BC, Canada, October 2001.Google Scholar
  12. [12]
    Lopes, A., Gaio, S. and Botelho, L.M.,. From DAML-S to Executable Code. In Proc. of the Workshop Challenges in Open Agent Systems AAMAS 2002.Google Scholar
  13. [13]
    McIlraith, S., Son, T.C. and H. Zeng, H., Mobilizing the Semantic Web with DAML-Enabled Web services, Proc. Second Int'l Workshop Semantic Web (SemWeb'2001), Hongkong, China, May, 2001.Google Scholar
  14. [14]
    Nwana, H.S., Ndumu, D.T., Lee, L.C. ZEUS: An Advanced Tool-Kit for Engineering Distributed Multi-Agent Systems. Applied AI 13:1/2, 129–185, 1998.Google Scholar
  15. [15]
    Paolucci M., Payne T., Sycara K. and Zeng H. DAML-S: Semantic markup for Web services. In Proc. of the International Semantic Web Working Symposium (SWWS), Stanford, CA, pp. 411–430, 2001.Google Scholar
  16. [16]
    Sabou, M., Richards, D. and van Splunter, S. An experience report on using DAML-S. In Proceedings of WWW 2003 Workshop on E-Services and the Semantic Web (ESSW'03), Budapest, Hungary, May 2003.Google Scholar
  17. [17]
    Schreiber, G., Akkermans, H., Anjewierden, A., de Hoog, R., Shadbolt, N., van de Velde, W., Wielinga, B.: Knowledge Engineering and Management, the CommonKADS Methodology. MIT Press, 2000.Google Scholar
  18. [18]
    Sirin, E., Hendler, J. and Parsia, B. Semi-automatic Composition of Web services using Semantic Descriptions. Accepted to Web services: Modeling, Architecture and Infrastructure workshop (WSMAI) in conjunction with ICEIS2003, pp. 17–24, 2002.Google Scholar
  19. [19]
    Splunter, S. van, Wijngaards, N.J.E., Brazier, F.M.T., Structuring Agents for Adaptation In Alonso, E., Kudenko, D., Kazakov, D. (eds.) Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) 2636, Springer-Verlag Berlin, pp. 174–186, 2003.Google Scholar
  20. [20]
    Splunter, S. van, Sabou, M., F.M.T. Brazier and Richards, D. Configuring Web services, using Structuring and Techniques from Agent Configuration. In Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC International Confeirence on Web Intelligence (WI'03), pp. 153–160, 2003.Google Scholar
  21. [21]
    Vargas-Vera, M, Motta, E., Domingue, J, Lanzoni, M., Stutt, A. and Ciravegna, F. MnM: Ontology Driven Tool for Semantic Markup. European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2002). In proceedings of the Workshop Semantic Authoring, Annotation & Knowledge Markup (SAAKM 2002). Lyon France, July 22–23, 2002.Google Scholar
  22. [22]
    Wroe, C., Stevens, R., Goble, C., Roberts, A. and Greenwood, M., A Suite of DAML+OIL Ontologies to Describe Bioinformatics Web services and Data Journal of Cooperative Information Science, 12(2), pp. 197–224, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2004

Authors and Affiliations

  • Debbie Richards
    • 1
    • 2
  • Sander van Splunter
    • 1
    • 2
  • Frances M.T. Brazier
    • 1
    • 2
  • Marta Sabou
    • 1
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of ComputingMacquarie UniversitySydneyAustralia
  2. 2.Department of Computer ScienceVrije Universiteit AmsterdamThe Netherlands

Personalised recommendations