Abstract. In this paper we describe IRS-II (Internet Reasoning Service) a framework and implemented infrastructure, whose main goal is to support the publication, location, composition and execution of heterogeneous web services, augmented with semantic descriptions of their functionalities. IRS-II has three main classes of features which distinguish it from other work on semantic web services. Firstly, it supports one-click publishing of standalone software: IRS-II automatically creates the appropriate wrappers, given pointers to the standalone code. Secondly, it explicitly distinguishes between tasks (what to do) and methods (how to achieve tasks) and as a result supports capabilitydriven service invocation; flexible mappings between services and problem specifications; and dynamic, knowledge-based service selection. Finally, IRS-II services are web service compatible -standard web services can be trivially published through the IRS-II and any IRS-II service automatically appears as a standard web service to other web service infrastructures. In the paper we illustrate the main functionalities of IRS-II through a scenario involving a distributed application in the healthcare domain.

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Problem-solving methods provide reusable architectures and components for implementing the reasoning part of knowledge-based systems. The Unified Problem-solving Method description Language UPML has been developed to describe and implement such architectures and components to facilitate their semiautomatic reuse and adaptation. In a nutshell, UPML is a framework for developing knowledge-intensive reasoning systems based on libraries of generic problem-solving components. The paper describes the components and adapters, architectural constraints, development guidelines, and tools provided by UPML. UPML is developed as part of the IBROW project; which provides an internet-based brokering service for reusing problem-solving methods. 1. IBROW started with a preliminary phase under the 4th European Framework and has become a full-fledged Information Society Technologies (IST) project under the 5th European Framework Program since January 2000. Results of its initial phase are described in [

Abstract:We introduce an object-oriented language following a "process algebra" style. The idea is to define a formalism that enjoys a clean formal definition allowing the reuse of the rich algebraic theory typical of the process algebras in a context where an high level object oriented programming style is preserved. We provide an operational semantics based on a labelled transition system which allows to discuss, e.g., how different notions of equivalence, such as standard and asynchronous bisimulation, can be adapted to reason about our language. Finally, we illustrate the framework showing that an explicit receive primitive expressing a synchronization constraint or an update operation on the state of an object can be implemented in the language preserving a notion of observation equivalence among objects.

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