Abstract. The configuration of Web services is particularly hard given the heterogeneous, unreliable and open nature of the Web. Furthermore, such composite Web services are likely to be complex services, that will require adaptation for each specific use. Current approaches to Web service configuration are often based on pre/post-condition-style reasoning, resulting in a planning-style approach to service configuration, configuring a composite web service "from scratch" every time. In this paper, we propose instead a knowledge-intensive brokering approach to the creation of composite Web services. In our approach, we describe a complex Web service as a fixed template, which must be configured for each specific use. Web service configuration can then be regarded as parametric design, in which the parameters of the fixed template have to be instantiated with appropriate component services. During the configuration process, we exploit detailed knowledge about the template and t...
Annette ten Teije, Frank van Harmelen, Bob J. Wiel