Building self-manageable web service processes

本项目的目标是研究构建自管理Web服务流程的技术。Web服务是使用标准Internet协议相互通信和交互的软件组件。如果将使用不同编程语言开发并部署在不同平台上的软件组件包装为Web服务，则可以轻松调用这些组件。这是因为Internet协议（如HTTP和Web服务使用的信息格式XML）通常被许多编程语言和许多平台使用。Web服务不是供人类浏览的，而是供软件自动运行的。Web服务是新一代的中间件，已成功地用于系统集成问题，例如连接异构数据源。需要通过连接分布式Web服务来构建全自动的业务流程。当前的技术允许我们以预定义的方式构建自动Web服务流程。Web服务流程可以用Web服务流程描述语言（如XML）来定义。在这样的过程中，所有的Web服务都是固定的;它们如何相互交互是在设计过程中确定的。此进程不能在运行时更改。如果发生任何故障，该过程只是停止。如果业务流程可以自动选择最佳Web服务来实现其目标，并且如果Web服务发生故障，业务流程可以切换到其他类似的Web服务并补偿故障影响，那么这将是理想的。自管理的Web服务流程是一个完全自动化的Web服务流程，具有适应变化的机制，如运行时执行监视，复杂的故障诊断和恢复方法，运行时伙伴的选择和改变。随着Web服务在电子商务应用、科学计算和软件系统中的广泛应用，该项目将带来巨大的影响。

The objective of this project is to study the techniques for building self-manageable Web service processes. Web services are software components which communicate and interact with each other using standard Internet protocols. Software components developed in different programming languages and deployed on different platforms can easily be invoked if they are wrapped as Web services. This is because Internet protocols, such as HTTP and the information format XML used by Web services, are commonly used by many programming languages and on many platforms. Web services are not for human beings to browse, but for software to operate automatically. Web services are a new generation of middleware that have been successfully used for system integrations problems, e.g. connecting heterogeneous data sources. There is a demand to build fully automatic business processes by connecting distributed Web services. Current techniques allow us to build automatic Web service processes in a predefined manner. A Web service process can be defined in a Web service process description language such as BPEL. In such a process, all the Web services are fixed; how they interact with each other is determined at during their design. This process cannot change at run time. If any faults occur, the process simply halts. It would be ideal if the business process could automatically select the best Web services to achieve its goals and, if a Web service were to break down, the business process could switch to other similar Web services and compensate the failure effects. A self-manageable Web service process is a fully automated Web service process with mechanisms for adapting to changes, such as run time execution monitoring, sophisticated way of fault diagnosis and recovery, run time partners selection and changing. As Web services are widely used in e-business applications, scientific computing and software systems, this project will bring great impact.