A Framework for Web service negotiation

Abstract

In a survey on the theory and practice of agent system deployment, conducted by the AgentLink workgroup on networked agents, it was found that there are an increasing number of initiatives for the migration of agents research towards new Internet technologies such as the semantic web, Grid, and Web services. In fact, Grid computing and multi-agent systems research have similar objectives. They both aim to achieve “large-scale open distributed systems, capable of being able to effectively and dynamically deploy and redeploy computational (and other) resources as required, to solve computationally complex problems” [Foster and Kesselman 2003]. On the one hand, service-oriented Grid architectures need to support dynamic cooperation, negotiation, and adaptive interactions between Web services controlling Grid resources for efficient resource and task allocation and execution. On the other hand, the Grid can facilitate agent communication, life-cycle management, and access to resources for agents. Although the relevance of Grid for agent research and vice versa has been identified in several forums, actual collaborative applications are still in their infancy. In this article, we discuss our recent work on deploying multi-agent negotiation techniques to facilitate dynamic negotiation for Grid resources as a step closer to an adaptive and autonomous Grid. In particular, we describe a Web service development of the Contract Net Protocol for negotiation between insurance companies and repair companies. We evaluate our approach to show the added value of negotiable interactions between Web services as opposed to inflexible single-shot interactions that are currently the state of the art.

A Survey on Agent-Based Ontology Alignment

“…Agents use alignments between ontologies describing service interfaces (or profiles) in order to compose web services by connecting their interfaces. The aspects of ontology reconciliation with respect to Web services and their composition are elaborated in (Li and Yang, 2008), (Paurobally, Tamma and Wooldridge, 2007), (Huang, Zavala, Mendoza and Huhns, 2005). An important requirement for such systems is the capability of adaptation and integration for providing compliant access and making the use of aggregate and atomic services more convenient.…”

A Semantic Approach to Automate Service Management in the Cloud

“…Their model is limited to managing the service from the service provider"s perspective. Paurobally et al [14] have described a framework for negotiation of web services using the iterated Contract Net Protocol (CNP). However their implementation is limited to pre-existing web services and doesn"t extend to virtualized services that are composed on demand.…”

DC Proposal: Automation of Service Lifecycle on the Cloud by Using Semantic Technologies

“…Paurobally et al [12] have described a framework for web service negotiation using the iterated Contract Net Protocol [13]. However their implementation is limited to preexisting web services and does not extend to virtualized services that are composed on demand.…”