Chinese Journal of Computers   Full Text
Title	A Rule-Based Approach to Supporting Adaptable Web Service Composition
Authors	SUN Xi LIU Xuan-Zhe JIAO Wen-Pin HUANG Gang MEI Hong
Address	(Institute of Software Engineering, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871)
Year	2006
Issue	No.7(1084—1094)
Abstract &   Background	Abstract Business processes built from Web services need a more adaptable composition solution. In this paper, a rule-driven approach is proposed to control the executions of business processes via agents‘ behavior rules, which can be generated automatically and modified dynamically to enable the adaptations of business processes. In the approach, the adaptations of the business process are specified in independent adaptation units and agents can load and interpret user-defined adaptation units at runtime. Thus, the executions of business processes can be adapted dynamically. This paper also describes a running support of lightweight agents on a reflective middleware, on which agents can be generated automatically according to the specifications of business processes and the adaptation units to compose Web service to support adaptable business processes. keywords Web service composition; rules; adaptation; software agent background This work is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China(973 Program) under grant No.2002CB212003; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant Nos.60233010,60303004, and 90412011. The research scopes cover several fields of software engineering, including software reuse and software component technology, domain engineering, software architecture, component operating platform, software agent technology, Internetware, etc. The team has made important progress, amongst of which is the proposition of Architecture-Based Component-Oriented(ABC) software development approach. The ABC approach proposes to offer an effective systematic solution for component-based reuse by taking advantage of both software architecture and component-based software development. Several tools and platforms have been developed, e.g. the component operating platform PKUAS. Some tools are already applied in industrial projects. The work described in the paper is aimed at composing Web services to support adaptable business processes. In the framework and implementation, the adaptations of the business process are specified in independent adaptation units, and then process specification and the units will be interpreted into behavior rules and loaded into an agent at runtime. Thus, the executions of business processes can be adapted by the agent dynamically.