WORKSHOP: Web Services Discovery and Composition Systems Challenge (WSC2007) July 2007 in Toyko, Japan

尽管面向服务的环境和技术在学术界和企业界都受到了极大的关注，但自动发现此类服务并将其组合成更高级别功能的能力仍然难以捉摸。 这是用于支持第三届国际Web服务发现和组合竞赛（WS-Challenge）的资金，该竞赛的目标是确定、评估和确定解决该问题的基线方法。 首两项比赛分别于2005年在香港及2006年在弗朗西斯科举行（后者获得国家科学基金资助），取得成功。在此基础上，首席信息官将组织2007年比赛的规划和制定工作，该比赛将与7月在东京举行的IEEE电子技术、电子商务和电子服务国际会议（2007年）一起举行。 第一个竞赛仅限于使用Web服务描述语言（WSDL）进行语法匹配;参赛者需要根据WSDL文档目录中指定的输入和输出消息来识别和组合WSDL指定的服务。 在2006年，比赛的重点是使用基于XML的语义符号的Web服务的语义链接。 2007年的比赛将进一步探讨这些主题。 NSF的资金将支持来自美国的最多7个团队参加比赛，每个团队由2-3名学生组成。 一小部分资金将用于支持一名兼职本科生在活动前的夏季参加比赛，以及支付PI及其学生参加比赛的旅费。IEEE电子技术、电子商务和电子服务国际会议汇集了来自不同计算领域的研究人员和开发人员。 这些会议为开发人员和从业人员提供了一个场所，以探索和解决围绕电子技术的具有挑战性的研究问题，以便为电子商务和电子商务制定共同的研究议程和愿景。 重点是两方面的：研究促进新一代电子转型的技术;以及推广在电子商务、电子学习、电子政府、电子金融等主题方面的应用和部署经验。由于研讨会集中讨论电子服务的应用，涉及多个“电子领域”，更广泛的影响：研讨会和由此产生的工件将作为一个集中的存储库，在一个及时出现的领域中存储算法、软件和技术。 讲习班将为参加者提供一个机会，让他们在社区中了解自己的创新工作，并从研究界的高级成员那里获得反馈和指导。 这将进一步帮助培养这些年轻研究人员的社区意识，使他们能够在自己之间以及在其专业发展的关键阶段与高级研究人员建立社会网络。 研讨会的经验将与软件工程教育的目标很好地结合起来，因为参与者除了他们的方法的性能外，还对他们的设计进行评估。 为了在今年的活动中吸引更广泛的观众，PI将扩大他以前成功的努力，从代表性不足的大学招募团队。

Although service-oriented environments and technologies are receiving a great deal of attention in both academic and corporate arenas, the ability to automate the discovery and composition of such services into higher-level capabilities remains elusive. This is funding to support the third international web service discovery and composition competition, the WS-Challenge, whose objective is to identify, evaluate and baseline approaches to solving that problem. Building on the success of the first two competitions, which were held in 2005 in Hong Kong and in 2006 in San Francisco (the latter with NSF funding), the PI will organize the planning and enactment of the 2007 competition to be held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce, and e-Services (EEE'07), which will take place in Tokyo in July. The first competition was limited to syntactical matching using the Web Services Description Language (WSDL); participants were required to identify and compose WSDL-specified services based on their input and output messages as specified in a directory of WSDL documents. In 2006, the competition focused additionally on the semantic linking of web services using XML-based semantic notations. The 2007 competition will further explore these topics. NSF funding will support participation in the competition of up to 7 teams from the United States, consisting of 2-3 students apiece. A small amount is earmarked for support of the competition by one part-time undergraduate student during the summer prior to the event, as well as to cover the cost of travel by the PI and his students to the competition.The IEEE International Conferences on e-Technology, e-Commerce and e-Service bring together researchers and developers from diverse areas of computing. The conferences provide a venue for developers and practitioners to explore and address challenging research issues surrounding e-technology, in order to develop a common research agenda and vision for e-commerce and e-business. The focus is two-fold: to investigate enabling technologies to facilitate next generation e-transformation; and to disseminate application and deployment experience in e-themes such as e-business, e-learning, e-government, e-finance, etc. The EEE conferences are particularly timely and relevant because they focus on the application of electronic services as they cut across several "e-domains", whereas other conferences tend to either focus on a specific technology or on a single domain.Broader Impacts: The workshop and resulting artifacts will serve as a centralized repository of algorithms, software, and techniques in a timely emerging area. The workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to gain exposure in the community for their innovative work, and to obtain feedback and guidance from senior members of the research community. It will further help foster a sense of community among these young researchers, by allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. The workshop experience will integrate well with the goals of a software engineering education, as participants are evaluated on their design in addition to the performance of their approaches. To engage a broader audience in this year's event, the PI will expand his previously successful efforts to solicit teams from under-represented universities.