ToC of the International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR), Vol. 4, Issue 1, January-March 2007

Great News: International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR) has been 
indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E).

As the first refereed, international publication featuring only the latest 
research findings and industry solutions dealing with all aspects of Web 
services and SOA technology, the International Journal of Web Services 
Research (JWSR) has been indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded 
(SCI-E) beginning with V.3(1) 2006. I would like to send my thanks to YOU 
as an author, review board member, associate editor, and technical 
community members for your high-quality contributions. 

The contents of the latest issue of:

International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR)
Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association
Volume 4, Issue 1, January-March 2007
Published: Quarterly in Print and Electronically
ISSN: 1545-7362
EISSN: 1546-5004
Published by Idea Group Inc., Hershey, PA, USA
www.idea-group.com/jwsr

Editor-in-Chief: Liang-Jie Zhang, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center USA
 
Special Issue: Web Services Discovery and Composition
 
EDITORIAL PREFACE:
 
Liang-Jie Zhang, Editor-in-Chief, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA 
 
Services discovery and composition are among the key issues that decide 
the success of Web services technology. This issue of the International 
Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR) highlights the theme of a special 
issue: ?Web Services Discovery and Composition.? Guest Editors M. Brian 
Blake, William K. Cheung, Andreas Wombacher, and Kwok Ching Tsui organized 
four articles in this special issue focused primarily on various 
approaches on services discovery and composition. In the fifth paper, ?A 
Dynamic Two-Phase Commit Protocol for Adaptive Composite Services,? Weihai 
Yu and Calton Pu propose enhancement to traditional two-phase commit 
protocol to serve Web services-based applications.
 
GUEST EDITORIAL PREFACE:
 
M. Brian Blake, Georgetown University, USA
William K. Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
Andreas Wombacher, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Kwok Ching Tsui, Hong Kong Baptist University & Hong Kong and Shanghai 
Banking Corp. Ltd., Hong Kong
 
This special issue explores several approaches to accomplishing the notion 
of web services discovery and composition. This issue is similar to recent 
venues that explore implementation issues in the form of a competition 
(Blake, 2005; WS-Challenge, 2006). This guest editorial preface discusses 
the general aspects of service discovery and composition that are 
independent of implementation details. In addition, the various 
contributions of the special issue with respect to the 
discovery/composition implementation approaches are summarized.
 
SPECIAL ISSUE PAPERS
 
PAPER ONE: 
 
?Web Service Planner (WSPR): An Effective and Scalable Web Service 
Composition Algorithm?
 
Seog-Chan Oh, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
Dongwon Lee, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
Soundar R. T. Kumara, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
 
As the emergence of service-oriented architecture provides a major boost 
for e-commerce agility, the number of available Web services is rapidly 
increasing. However, when there are a large number of Web services 
available and no single Web service satisfies the given request, one has 
to ?compose? multiple Web services to fulfill the goal. This article 
presents an AI planning-based Web service composition algorithm named Web 
Services Planner (WSPR). The efficiency and effectiveness of WSPR is 
evaluated using two publicly available test sets­EEE05 and ICEBE05. In 
addition to analyzing the two test sets, the authors also suggest several 
improvements for benchmarking Web service composition.
 
To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?id=6570
 
PAPER TWO: 
 
?Web Service Discovery and Composition for Virtual Enterprises?
 
Jürgen Dorn, EC3 -electronic Commerce Competence Center, Austria
Peter Hrastnik, EC3 -electronic Commerce Competence Center, Austria
Albert Rainer, EC3 -electronic Commerce Competence Center, Austria
 
One main characteristic of virtual enterprises are short-term 
collaborations between business partners to provide efficient and 
individualized services to customers. This article describes the MOVE 
project, which targets a methodology and software framework to support 
such flexible collaborations based on process oriented design and 
communication by Web services. MOVE?s framework supports the graphical 
design and verification of business processes, the execution and 
supervision of processes in transaction-oriented environments, and the 
dynamic composition and optimization of processes. The composition of 
processes from Web services is implemented with methods from AI-planning. 
The authors apply answer set programming (ASP) and map Web service 
descriptions and customer requests into the input language of the ASP 
software DLV. The conclusion demonstrates the performance of the program 
provides implementation details, and shares thoughtful insights.
 
To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?id=6571
 
PAPER THREE: 
 
?BITS: A Binary Tree Based Web Service Composition System?
 
Aoying Zhou, Fudan University, China 
Sheng Huang, Fudan University, China
Xiaoling Wang, Fudan University, China
 
In current service-oriented applications, typically each individual Web 
service cannot satisfy users? requests for Web services, but the 
functionalities of several Web services may be integrated to accomplish 
the requested task. The article introduces BITS, a Web service composition 
system. BITS is implemented based on a binary tree which is used to 
organize Web services. In this system, some search strategies and 
optimization techniques are developed for efficient service discovery and 
service composition. Extensive experiments are conducted for performance 
study, and the results show the efficiency and effectiveness of the 
methods adopted in BITS.
 
To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?id=6572
 
PAPER FOUR:
 
?A Flexible Directory Query Language for the Efficient Processing of 
Service Composition Queries?
 
Walter Binder, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Ion Constantinescu, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 
Switzerland
Boi Faltings, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
 
Service composition is a major challenge in an open environment populated 
by large numbers of heterogeneous services. In such a setting, the 
efficient interaction of directory-based service discovery with service 
composition engines is crucial. This article presents a Java-based 
directory that offers special functionality enabling effective service 
composition. In order to optimize the interaction of the directory with 
different service composition algorithms exploiting application-specific 
heuristics, the directory supports user-defined selection and ranking 
functions written in a declarative query language. Inside the directory 
queries are transformed and compiled to JVM bytecode which is dynamically 
linked into the directory. The compiled query enables a best-first search 
of matching directory entries, efficiently pruning the search space.
 
To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?id=6573
 
REVIEWED PAPER
 
?A Dynamic Two-Phase Commit Protocol for Adaptive Composite Services?
 
Weihai Yu, University of Tromsø, Norway
Calton Pu, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
 
Next-generation applications based on Web services impose additional 
requirements on the use of coordination protocols with various 
optimizations, such as the two-phase commit protocol (2PC). This article 
analyzes the well-known 2PC optimizations ?presumed commit? and ?presumed 
abort,? and presents an improved 2PC that is suitable for 
Web-service-based applications. More specifically, the protocol allows 
every individual service provider to dynamically choose the most 
appropriate presumption for any distributed transaction. This new 
capability is especially useful when a composite Web service is 
integrating component services that make different presumptions in their 
commit protocols. The protocol does not introduce extra overhead to the 
previous 2PC variants in terms of number of messages and log records, and 
it is easy to understand and realize. The simulation shows that the choice 
of appropriate presumption has significant influence on system 
performance, and that in some heterogeneous settings, combining different 
presumptions in individual transactions outperforms adopting only one 
single presumption.
 
To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?id=6574
 
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For full copies of the above articles, check for this issue of the 
International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR) in your 
institution's library.  If your library is not currently subscribed to 
this journal, please recommend a JWSR subscription to your librarian.
*****************************************************
 
CALL FOR PAPERS

Mission of JWSR:

Web services are among the most important emerging technologies in the 
e-business, computer software and communication industries. Web services 
technologies will redefine the way that companies do business and exchange 
information in the twenty-first century. They will enhance business 
efficiency by enabling dynamic provisioning of resources from a pool of 
distributed resources. Due to the importance of the field, there is a 
significant amount of ongoing research in the areas. In a parallel effort, 
standardization organizations are actively developing standards for Web 
services. Web services are creating what will become one of the most 
significant industries of the new century. The International Journal of 
Web Services Research is designed to be a valuable resource providing 
leading technologies, development, ideas, and trends to an international 
readership of researchers and engineers in the field of Web Services.

Coverage of JWSR:
 
Business Grid
Business process integration and management using Web Services 
Case Studies for Web Services 
Communication applications using Web Services 
Composite Web Service creation and enabling infrastructures 
Dynamic invocation mechanisms for Web Services 
E-Commerce applications using Web Services 
Frameworks for building Web Service applications 
Grid based Web Services applications (e.g. OGSA) 
Interactive TV applications using Web Services 
Mathematic foundations for service oriented computing 
Multimedia applications using Web Services 
Quality of service for Web Services 
Resource management for Web Services
Semantic services computing 
SOAP enhancements 
Solution Management for Web Services 
UDDI enhancements 
Web Services architecture 
Web Services discovery 
Web Services modeling 
Web Services performance 
Web Services security 

Interested authors should consult the journal's manuscript submission 
guidelines at http://www.idea-group.com/JWSR 

All submissions should be sent to the online system 
(http://www.servicescomputing.org/jwsr/submissions.htm).
Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Liang-Jie Zhang at zhanglj AT us.ibm.com 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Best Regards,
LJ
-----------------------------------
Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang (Ph.D.)
Research Staff Member, SOA Services
Services Computing, IBM Research
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR)
My SOA Innovations Blog on ibm.com 
19 SKYLINE DRIVE, HAWTHORNE, NY 10532
"Innovation That Matters"