Search

SEEMP is a European Project that promotes increased partnership between labour market actors and the development of closer relations between private and public Employment Services, making optimal use of the various actors’ specific characteristics, thus providing job-seekers and employers with better services. The need for a flexible collaboration gives rise to the issue of interoperability in both data exchange and share of services. SEEMP proposes a solution that relies on the concepts of services and semantics in order to provide a meaningful service-based communication among labour market actors requiring a minimal shared commitment.

This paper presents a subsystem of a comprehensive platform dedicated to data transformation, linking and extension of large data sets. Furthermore, we detail and discuss both the main requirements that have led to the design and development of the platform, and the devised approach, which is a direct outcome of the requirement elicitation and discussion phase. In particular, the platform supports both design and run time aspects of the data transformation process, which is reflected in the architecture. Some initial tests have been carried out on a prototype implementation of our architecture on data sets of ~1TB featuring promising performance.

Web services are increasingly used as an effective means to create and streamline processes and collaborations among governments, businesses, and citizens. As the number of available Web services is steadily increasing, there is a growing interest in providing methodologies that address the design of Web services according to specific qualities of service (QoS) rather than functional descriptions only. In this paper, we present WSMoD (Web Services MOdeling Design), a methodology that explicitly addresses this issue. Furthermore, we exploit general knowledge available on services, expressed by ontologies describing services, their qualities, and the context of use, to help the designer in expressing service requirements. Ontologies are used to acquire knowledge among the entities involved in service design and to check the consistency of the Web service. The discussion of a QoS-based Web service design within a real case study bears evidence of the potentials of WSMoD.

Web services promise universal interoperability through integration of services developed by independent providers. The coming of the Cloud Computing paradigm extends the need to share resources (e.g., platform, infrastructure, data) that are accessible as Web services. This means that a key factor to build complex and valuable business processes among cooperating organizations relies on the efficiency of automate the discovering of appropriate Web services. The increasing availability of Web services that offer similar functionalities requires mechanisms to go beyond the pure functional discovery. This chapter proposes the evaluation of Web service contracts, which define non-functional properties (NFPs) and applicability conditions associated with Web services, as a solution to automate process composition and enactment. Today, there is a lack of tools and algorithms that fully support this solution due to several open issues. First, existing languages don't provide the right constructs for the specification of Web service contracts. Second, the lack of standard languages determines heterogeneity in Web service contract specifications raising interoperability issues. Third, Web service contract evaluation is only partially supported by existing discovery engines and composition tools when combining different services from different providers. This chapter proposes some research efforts on addressing these open issues.

The composition of Web APIs provides a great opportunity to Web engineers that can reuse existing software components available on the Web. Finding the best API, ful lling a set of user requirements, among the many described on the Web is a key step in order to de- velop an e ective Web application; however, Web engineers have little support in solving this problem due to poor search mechanisms and to the heterogeneity of sources and descriptions. Semantic technologies and matching algorithms provide accurate methods to match user require- ments against a set of descriptions. Nonetheless, semantic descriptions of APIs are not available in practice. In this paper, we propose a method to extract information on Web APIs published in several Web sources and create semantic descriptions that can be then fused to deliver com- prehensive descriptions associated with APIs. During the extraction pro- cess, we take into account that collected information has di erent levels of accuracy, currency, and trustworthiness to state a con dence level of the results. The method is based on the evaluation of the quality of the involved sources, the extracted values, and the overall descriptions. The resulting semantic descriptions are then matched with expressive user requirements to address the API selection problem.

Currently, rich and diverse data types have been increasingly provided using the Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) model, a form of cloud computing services. However, data offered by DaaS are constrained by several data concerns that, if not automatically being reasoned properly, will lead to a wrong way of using them. In this paper, we support the assumption that data concerns should be explicitly modeled and specified in data contracts to support concern-aware data selection and utilization. Instead of relying on a specific definition of data contracts, we analyze contemporary data contracts and we present an abstract model for data contracts. Based on the abstract model, we propose several techniques for evaluating data contracts that can be integrated into data service selection and composition frameworks. We also illustrate our approach with some real world scenarios.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the SEEMP marketplace of employment mediators, detailing the business objectives and main features of the SEEMP integrated technology platform. The purpose of SEEMP is to enable the meeting of Job Offers from employers and CVs of job seekers by developing an e-marketplace, improving the business activity of brokers in an employment market currently characterised by: Multiplicity of the players on the market and diversity of the distribution networks: Job Seekers and CVs are distributed across many online databases, brokers and intermediaries. In order to be sufficiently visible, a candidate or an enterprise has to contact several intermediaries, for example temporary work agencies, employment websites, with a redundancy of information and multiplication of the effort needed to correctly classify, qualify and maintain their data. Lack of common standard for Job Offer and CV: The lack of standardized descriptions and search criteria shared by the intermediaries prevents them to exchange information easily and effectively. Insufficient information sharing among the players on the labour market: Inspite of various existing information systems for e-employment, data sharing between entities of intermediary networks remains insufficient. The same holdsfor the cooperation aspects among players in the market, which need cooperative information systems technology. This paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, we state the overall objectives of the SEEMP project and state the market vision of the project. In Sect. 3, we present the methodologies adopted in SEEMP in terms of minimal shared commitment that drives the SEEMP policies, and we describe the adopted best practices which help to clarify the agreement levels established for SEEMP and the SEEMP architecture used to implement the interoperability framework. In Sect. 4, we provide a demonstrative use case of the elements described in the paper; this use case is rather simple but proves difficult to solve at a European scale. Finally, in Sect. 5 we introduce some elements of discussion such as a comparison between SEEMP with EURES and other job boards and employment search engines, and set the stage for evaluating the SEEMP benefits for its intended actors; finally we give the concluding remarks.

The increasing availability of massive information on the Web causes the need for information aggregation by filtering and ranking according to user's goals. In the last years both industrial and academic researchers have investigated the way in which quality of services can be described, matched, composed and monitored for service selection and composition. However, very few of them have considered the problem of evaluating and certifying the quality of the provided service information to reduce irrelevant information for service consumers, which is crucial to improve the efficiency and correctness of service composition and execution. This paper discusses several problems due to the lack of appropriate way to manage quality and context in service composition and execution, and proposes a research roadmap for reducing irrelevant service information based on context and quality aspects. We present a novel solution for dealing with irrelevant information about Web services by developing information quality metrics and by discussing experimental evaluations.

Web service evaluation is a phase in Web service selection where discovered Web services are evaluated with respect to user requests, which means that the non functional properties (NFPs) offered by Web services are compared with the non functional properties requested by users. NFPs cover Quality of Service (QoS) aspects, but also other business-related properties, such as pricing, and properties not directly related to the service functionalities. The fact that users and providers can express their NFPs in very flexible ways makes the management of NFP a very complex task. The Policy Centered Meta-model (PCM) is a semantic-oriented model for sophisticated NFP descriptions that can be exploited to support Web service evaluation. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on Hierarchical Constraint Logic Programming to handle PCM-based NFP descriptions along the Web service evaluation phase. © 2009 IEEE.

Web service evaluation is a phase of the Web service selection,in which discovered Web services are evaluated with,respect to user request, which means that the non functional,properties (NFPs) offered by Web services are compared,with the non functional properties requested by users. The,fact that users and providers can express their NFPs in very,flexible ways makes the management of NFPs a very complex,task. In this paper we propose a computing-oriented,description of NFPs and a novel approach to NFP-based,service evaluation based on Hierarchical Constraint Logic,Programming. This proposal extends our previous work on,Policy Centered Meta-model (PCM) [2]. © 2009 IEEE.

The increasing availability of Web Services asked for investigating ways to automate the discovery process. Discovery processes enhanced with semantics can be recognize to be general, but often they lack the flexibility needed in specific domains. In this paper, we propose the flexible architecture of the discovery engine Glue 2, which comes with a powerful set of discovery components (for functional matching, non-functional matching, data fetching, etc.) that can be executed in different order as required by specific execution workflows. © 2008 IEEE.

The Semantic Web Service Challenge is one of the major ini- tiative dedicated to work on Semantic Web Service (SWS) discovery and selection. It represents an e®ective manner for evaluating the functional- ity of SWS technologies. In this paper, we provide a new SWS-Challenge scenario proposal with new interesting problems to be solved on the basis of an analysis of a real world shipment scenario in the logistic operators domain. In the discussion a number of aspects concerning the discovery and selection processes are emphasized. In particular, we focus on the problem of considering the heterogeneity between the provider and the requester perspectives, and on the di®erences between functional and non functional speci-cations both on the requester and provider side. Key words: Semantic Web Services Discovery, Semantic Web Services Selection, Non-functional properties, Semantic Matching, SWS-Challenge.

The discovery of a semantic web service (SWS) is the act of locating a machine-processable description of a SWS-related resource that may have been previously unknown and that meets certain functional criteria. The increasing availability of services that offer similar functionalities requires the discovery process to be enhanced with a selection phase that considers non-functional properties (NFPs) of services. This paper proposes a model to describe these properties and a novel approach to service selection. Our approach is based on the design of matching rules by means of mediators defined by sets of rules stating the condition for successful matches. These rules are based on the ontological description of objects representing NFPs that are required and offered. In particular, we define a set of rule schemas to support mediation and matching for a class of user-defined NFP-constraints clustered according to specified constraint operators. Rules support matching for both qualitative and quantitative non-functional properties

One of the key factors for successful SOC-based systems is the ability to assure the achievement of Quality of Services. The knowledge and the enforcement of the Quality of Services allows for the defi- nition of agreements that are the basis for any business process. In this paper we discuss a method for the evaluation of qualities associated with services. This method is based on a set of quality evaluation rules that state the relations between Web services quality dimensions and process structure. The method is part of a design methodology that addresses quality issues along the service life-cycle. A case study in the e-placement field is presented to illustrate a practical use of the approach.

In this paper we distinguish between two spatially oriented system design paradigms: weak and strong augmented reality. The weak augmented reality paradigm is then applied in the design of a system supporting co-operation and knowledge creation within a design centre. The system has been designed on the hints we got from two subsequent ethnographies of the work practice of creative designers. Since the design centre moved to a new location between our two sets of observations, we clearly focused our attention on the impact that space arrangements had on the practice of its members. The comparison between the two settings in terms of layout, ICT equipment, changes occurred in the practices and attitudes of the designers throughout these years, lead us to design a collaborative environment weakly augmenting the place where designers are working.

Currently, rich and diverse data types have been increasingly provided using the dataas- a-service (DaaS) model, a form of cloud computing services and the core element of data marketplaces. This facilitates the on-the-fly data composition and utilisation for several data-intensive applications in e-science and business domains. However, data offered by DaaS are constrained by several data concerns that, if not automatically being reasoned properly, will lead to a wrong way of using them. In this paper, we support the view that data concerns should be explicitly modelled and specified in data contracts to support concern-aware data selection and utilisation. We perform a detailed analysis of current techniques for data contracts in the cloud. Instead of relying on a specific representation of data contracts, we introduce an abstract model for data contracts that can be used to build different types of data contracts for specific types of data. Based on the abstract model, we propose several techniques for evaluating data contracts that can be integrated into data service selection and composition frameworks. We also illustrate our approach with some real-world scenarios and show how data contracts can be integrated into data agreement exchange services in the cloud.

This paper describes the work done in the project MoseForAgrofood (Ms4A) whose goal is to take advantage of mobile technologies to develop augmented Web services for the agrofood domain. The use of personal devices, such as smart phones and tablets, brings in specific issues such as the need to consider quality of protection, quality of services, quality of data at any stage of the service life cycle. In this paper we propose a conceptual model that aims to support the service development and provisioning addressing the above issues by managing suitable non-functional properties.

Many available services have been designed for a single-channel world, Web and Internet typically. In a real world scenario, an ever-growing number of users take advantage of different kinds of communication channels and devices. In this paper, we propose a methodology to formalize the re-design process of these services to support multi-channel access in different contexts. The methodology considers the channel characteristics, the location of users and the context of use to characterize the new services. It has been tested in a case study: the Italian National Project of Identification and Registration of Bovine Animals. Copyright 2004 ACM.

This chapter presents a first attempt to realize a methodological framework supporting the most relevant phases of the design of a value-added service. A value-added service is defined as a functionality of an adaptive and multichannel information system obtained by composing services offered by different providers. The framework has been developed as part of the multichannel adaptive information systems (MAIS) project. The MAIS framework focuses on the following phases of service life cycle: requirements analysis, design, deployment, and run-time use and negotiation. In the first phase, the designer elicits, validates, and negotiates service requirements according to social and business goals. The design phase is in charge of modeling services with an enhanced version of UML, augmented with new features developed within the MAIS project. The deployment phase considers the network infrastructure and, in particular, provides an approach to implement and coordinate the execution of services from different providers. In the run-time use and negotiation phase, the MAIS methodology provides support to the optimal selection and quality renegotiation of services and to the dynamic evaluation of management costs. The chapter describes the MAIS methodological tools available for different phases of service life cycle and discusses the main guidelines driving the implementation of a service management architecture called reflective architecture that complies with the MAIS methodological approach.