I just gave an invited presentation on Web Services at School of Computer Science at Manchester University. I covered basic and advanced Web Services, Web 2.0, REST and Semantic Web (cramming to get all of this into an hour). The audience appeared interested and I got some good follow-up questions. But as you might imagine, it was tricky to get everything in to the allocated time slot.
However, one thing that became apparent to me over the past few days as I wrote the presentation was how difficult it is to actually cover *just* Web Services in an hour! I remember giving talks on Web Services back in 2002/2003 when there was really just SOAP, WSDL and a smattering of UDDI: that's an hour, depending on how much detail you want to go into around SOA. In the intervening years we've standardised on more aspects of the WS architecture and complexity has risen. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that we could avoid the complexity or that it's a bad thing. I've worked on a range of distributed systems architectures over the years and there really is no such thing as a free lunch: if you need advanced facilities such as session management, transactions, security and fault-tolerance then you've got to pay for them somewhere, and pushing things "behind the service endpoint" only works to a point.
Web Services started out as simple (often compared to the complexity of CORBA), but have inevitably gotten more complex as we try to do more and more with them. In some ways, the closest analogy I can come up with is Java: it started out as being "better" than C++ because it was so much simpler - none of those waste-of-space features such as multiple inheritance, pass-by-reference or templates and none of the huge libraries that you never needed (I'm joking here, because I always felt the need for such features). But look at it today: we've now got templates and the JDK is 60Meg! A simple Hello World application takes many Meg to execute!
However, one question I posed during my presentation was: Can it be simpler? What about the WWW? Technically it hasn't changed much and yet we're now working in a Web 2.0 world (I don't like the term, but I agree with the categorisation). The REST approach is often mentioned as more natural for services on the Web than Web Services (evolution rather than revolution), so what about that as the foundation on which to build a simpler and better Web service (small 's') architecture? As you may have gathered, I think the answer is no. That's not to say that I don't think some aspects of a pure REST-ful approach wouldn't be simpler (e.g., URI's have been pretty successful for the WWW, so we may not need something like WS-A), but other aspects may be more complicated (e.g., transactions - my first foray into transactions on the Web started out effectively REST-based I think and it was difficult to do in those days so it ended up quite different). However, the approach does intrigue me enough that, should I ever find any spare time, I'd like to flesh out how a REST service architecture might match up to its Web Services cousin. Anyone wanting to help, just drop me a line.
But back to Web Services! The death of Simple Web Services was signaled as soon as we wanted to do more complicated things with it. We shouldn't ignore that fact and continue as though we were still working in 2002. The S in SOA doesn't stand for, or imply, Simplicity. Whether you're talking services, objects or procedures, complex things such as transactions require complex solutions. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been working in distributed systems over the past 20+ years.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
Web Services, interoperability and portability
I've been meaning to write this entry for a couple of weeks, but just haven't had the time. The original impetus for this came about because of a recent client engagement that reminded me of previous similar interactions. At the heart of the problem lies the difference between interoperability and portability, a discussion that isn't new by any means, and neither is it a Microsoft versus everyone else argument: J2EE and CORBA both suffer too.
Where the recent confusion arises is around the hype associated with Web Services: too often people will say things like (and I'm paraphrasing) "Web Services are meant to be interoperable, allowing you to talk to other vendor implementations and hence removing vendor lockin." Now everyone working in this sector of the industry knows (I hope) what this actually means: product A from vendor 1 can interact with product B from vendor 2 because the on-the-wire representation is defined within some set of standards with which both products comply. Unfortunately what the customer/end-user tends to hear is subtly different: "blah blah blah the same application can run on different vendor deployments blah blah blah." and when you come to educate them on the difference (e.g., Web Service standards don't talk about implementation language bindings, there's still scope for proprietary extensions within standards
and there's still no agreed Web Services architecture), they either look at you as though you'd just arrived from Mars or that you've taken their favourite toy away!
In no cases I've been involved with has the customer decided to ditch the move to Web Services (though some have seen Microsoft as a better route to achieving portability and interoperability, simply because the landscape isn't so fragmented - but there are other downsides to consider!), but they've asked the question "why?". Unfortunately that's not the right question either: it should be "how?". There are a number of steps that would need to be taken, one of which could be to go down the OMG route of a single organisation defining all language bindings and everyone agreeing to use them (Java almost has it). But I don't think that's going to happen (and in some respects I think it shouldn't): there's simply never going to be enough technical or political reasons to do so.
Ultimately I think this is an education problem. We need to make sure we clearly define what we mean by interoperability and portability (straighforward to do, you would think) and try not to gloss over the differences. Interoperability is extremely important as far as Web Services are concerned (at the moment I'd say it is the single most important aspect) and correctly discussed, customers will agree.
Where the recent confusion arises is around the hype associated with Web Services: too often people will say things like (and I'm paraphrasing) "Web Services are meant to be interoperable, allowing you to talk to other vendor implementations and hence removing vendor lockin." Now everyone working in this sector of the industry knows (I hope) what this actually means: product A from vendor 1 can interact with product B from vendor 2 because the on-the-wire representation is defined within some set of standards with which both products comply. Unfortunately what the customer/end-user tends to hear is subtly different: "blah blah blah the same application can run on different vendor deployments blah blah blah." and when you come to educate them on the difference (e.g., Web Service standards don't talk about implementation language bindings, there's still scope for proprietary extensions within standards
and there's still no agreed Web Services architecture), they either look at you as though you'd just arrived from Mars or that you've taken their favourite toy away!
In no cases I've been involved with has the customer decided to ditch the move to Web Services (though some have seen Microsoft as a better route to achieving portability and interoperability, simply because the landscape isn't so fragmented - but there are other downsides to consider!), but they've asked the question "why?". Unfortunately that's not the right question either: it should be "how?". There are a number of steps that would need to be taken, one of which could be to go down the OMG route of a single organisation defining all language bindings and everyone agreeing to use them (Java almost has it). But I don't think that's going to happen (and in some respects I think it shouldn't): there's simply never going to be enough technical or political reasons to do so.
Ultimately I think this is an education problem. We need to make sure we clearly define what we mean by interoperability and portability (straighforward to do, you would think) and try not to gloss over the differences. Interoperability is extremely important as far as Web Services are concerned (at the moment I'd say it is the single most important aspect) and correctly discussed, customers will agree.
Friday, April 28, 2006
WS-FM CFP
I'm on the Program Committee for WS-FM again this year. Here's the CFP.
======================================================================
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Abstract submission deadline
May 9, 2006: Paper submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Co-Chairs
Mario Bravetti University of Bologna, Italy
Gianluigi Zavattaro University of Bologna, Italy
Board of "The Process Modelling Group"
Wil van der Aalst Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Rob van Glabbeek NICTA, Sydney, Australia
Keith Harrison-Broninski Role Modellers Ltd.
Robin Milner Cambridge University, UK
Roger Whitehead Office Futures
Other PC members
Marco Aiello University of Trento, Italy
Farhad Arbab CWI, The Netherlands
Matteo Baldoni University of Torino, Italy
Jean-Pierre Banatre University of Rennes1 and INRIA, France
Boualem Benatallah University of New South Wales, Australia
Karthik Bhargavan Microsoft research Cambridge, UK
Roberto Bruni University of Pisa, Italy
Michael Butler University of Southampton, UK
Fabio Casati HP Labs, USA
Rocco De Nicola University of Florence, Italy
Marlon Dumas Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Schahram Dustdar Wien University of Technology, Austria
Gianluigi Ferrari University of Pisa, Italy
Jose Luiz Fiadeiro University of Leicester, UK
Stefania Gnesi CNR Pisa, Italy
Reiko Heckel University of Leicester, UK
Kohei Honda Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Nickolas Kavantzas Oracle Co., USA
Leila Kloul Université de Versailles, France
Cosimo Laneve University of Bologna, Italy
Mark Little JBoss Inc
Natalia López University Complutense of Madrid, Spain
Roberto Lucchi University of Bologna, Italy
Jeff Magee Imperial College London, UK
Fabio Martinelli CNR Pisa, Italy
Manuel Mazzara University of Bolzano, Italy
Ugo Montanari University of Pisa, Italy
Shin Nakajima National Institute of Informatics and JST, Japan
Manuel Nunez University Complutense of Madrid, Spain
Fernando Pelayo University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain
Marco Pistore University of Trento, Italy
Wolfgang Reisig Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Vladimiro Sassone University of Southampton, UK
Marjan Sirjani Tehran University, Iran
Friedrich Vogt Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
Martin Wirsing Ludwig-Maximilians University Munchen, Germany
======================================================================
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Abstract submission deadline
May 9, 2006: Paper submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Co-Chairs
Mario Bravetti University of Bologna, Italy
Gianluigi Zavattaro University of Bologna, Italy
Board of "The Process Modelling Group"
Wil van der Aalst Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Rob van Glabbeek NICTA, Sydney, Australia
Keith Harrison-Broninski Role Modellers Ltd.
Robin Milner Cambridge University, UK
Roger Whitehead Office Futures
Other PC members
Marco Aiello University of Trento, Italy
Farhad Arbab CWI, The Netherlands
Matteo Baldoni University of Torino, Italy
Jean-Pierre Banatre University of Rennes1 and INRIA, France
Boualem Benatallah University of New South Wales, Australia
Karthik Bhargavan Microsoft research Cambridge, UK
Roberto Bruni University of Pisa, Italy
Michael Butler University of Southampton, UK
Fabio Casati HP Labs, USA
Rocco De Nicola University of Florence, Italy
Marlon Dumas Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Schahram Dustdar Wien University of Technology, Austria
Gianluigi Ferrari University of Pisa, Italy
Jose Luiz Fiadeiro University of Leicester, UK
Stefania Gnesi CNR Pisa, Italy
Reiko Heckel University of Leicester, UK
Kohei Honda Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Nickolas Kavantzas Oracle Co., USA
Leila Kloul Université de Versailles, France
Cosimo Laneve University of Bologna, Italy
Mark Little JBoss Inc
Natalia López University Complutense of Madrid, Spain
Roberto Lucchi University of Bologna, Italy
Jeff Magee Imperial College London, UK
Fabio Martinelli CNR Pisa, Italy
Manuel Mazzara University of Bolzano, Italy
Ugo Montanari University of Pisa, Italy
Shin Nakajima National Institute of Informatics and JST, Japan
Manuel Nunez University Complutense of Madrid, Spain
Fernando Pelayo University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain
Marco Pistore University of Trento, Italy
Wolfgang Reisig Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Vladimiro Sassone University of Southampton, UK
Marjan Sirjani Tehran University, Iran
Friedrich Vogt Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
Martin Wirsing Ludwig-Maximilians University Munchen, Germany
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
JBossWorld 2006
Come to JBoss World and hear me speak. Or, more likely, just have a good time. (Not that listening to me doesn't constitute a good time, but you know what I mean!) I'm trying to arrange some SCUBA diving while I'm there (would never have thought it possible in a desert!) Same for JavaOne, though it looks like I'll have to go to Monterey to get something in. If anyone wants to buddy up at either of these SCUBA attempts, let me know!
Friday, April 14, 2006
Flying a kite?
People who have known me a long time will know I came to be a Windows user with some reluctance. Ignoring my early computing days which included forays into the bygone worlds of punch card and tape, the Commodore PET, the BBC Model B and the Atari 520 STFM, my academic career spanned such varied systems as MTS (I think everyone should be made to use batch systems, with printouts of runs collected 6 floors below where you submit them - makes you try very hard to ensure your programs are bug free before you run them!), Whitechapel computers, PDP-11's, the Blit (fantastic machine and it looked hand-made inside!) and ultimately various Sun 3 series and Sparc machines running SunOS or Solaris variants. In there somewhere was a brief association with the Macintosh, but the lack of multithreading was a pain. As Stuart is often at pointing out (or not letting me forget!), I spent some time using OS/2; I still think it was far superior to Windows at the time.
So it's true to say that I managed to stay clear of Microsoft for a few years. That is until the arrival of Linux (Redhat ironically was most popular amongst us) and reliable PCs where is quickly became apparent that it was cheaper to "build your own" than keep paying lots of money to Sun. Obviously when you got the computers (we bought Viglen), they came with a version of Windows pre-installed and as Word became the standard for writing papers within the Department, (we used to use Interleaf or Tex/Latex), we all started to use dual operating systems, and my slide to the Dark Side had begun!
For a few years I managed to spend the majority of my time on Unix systems, but as the time went on it got less and less. Eventually, about 4 years or so ago, I was completely on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I managed to rebel a bit by using cygwin and emacs, but it wasn't the same as the "good old days". Looking back I suppose the transition had a lot to do with changes in my career, but some of it was also probably down to "look-and-feel": although I liked X windows, I found the convenience of Windows so much better. It's true to say that Linux systems these days are much better (and who knows, with the recent announcement I may try again), but I've felt reluctant to go back. This time I think it's entirely down to the things I'd lose, such as Office and Visio. I've tried alternatives such as OpenOffice, but they're just not quite there yet. But I missed Unix. So a couple of years ago I started to use Mac OS X at home and I've never looked back! It's great. I love the interface. I love the fact that it is Unix under the covers, and it runs all of the utilities I need.
However, my work machine still runs Windows XP and I'm getting tired of the interface. Compared to OS X it feels dated and clunky. And the number of times I keep going to the bottom of the screen to locate the dock is beginning to annoy me. So it was some surprise that I came across Flyakite OSX: it's an OS X look-and-feel for your PC! I just finished installing it and it's wonderful. I have to admit to not trying it on my work machine just yet, but it runs fine (maybe a little slower than Windows XP) on an old P3). So, if you're tired of the same old look-and-feel and can't wait for Vista (or perhaps don't want to take that risk), give it a go!
So it's true to say that I managed to stay clear of Microsoft for a few years. That is until the arrival of Linux (Redhat ironically was most popular amongst us) and reliable PCs where is quickly became apparent that it was cheaper to "build your own" than keep paying lots of money to Sun. Obviously when you got the computers (we bought Viglen), they came with a version of Windows pre-installed and as Word became the standard for writing papers within the Department, (we used to use Interleaf or Tex/Latex), we all started to use dual operating systems, and my slide to the Dark Side had begun!
For a few years I managed to spend the majority of my time on Unix systems, but as the time went on it got less and less. Eventually, about 4 years or so ago, I was completely on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I managed to rebel a bit by using cygwin and emacs, but it wasn't the same as the "good old days". Looking back I suppose the transition had a lot to do with changes in my career, but some of it was also probably down to "look-and-feel": although I liked X windows, I found the convenience of Windows so much better. It's true to say that Linux systems these days are much better (and who knows, with the recent announcement I may try again), but I've felt reluctant to go back. This time I think it's entirely down to the things I'd lose, such as Office and Visio. I've tried alternatives such as OpenOffice, but they're just not quite there yet. But I missed Unix. So a couple of years ago I started to use Mac OS X at home and I've never looked back! It's great. I love the interface. I love the fact that it is Unix under the covers, and it runs all of the utilities I need.
However, my work machine still runs Windows XP and I'm getting tired of the interface. Compared to OS X it feels dated and clunky. And the number of times I keep going to the bottom of the screen to locate the dock is beginning to annoy me. So it was some surprise that I came across Flyakite OSX: it's an OS X look-and-feel for your PC! I just finished installing it and it's wonderful. I have to admit to not trying it on my work machine just yet, but it runs fine (maybe a little slower than Windows XP) on an old P3). So, if you're tired of the same old look-and-feel and can't wait for Vista (or perhaps don't want to take that risk), give it a go!
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
WS-FM 2006 CFP
In my role as a member of the PC:
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
Monday, April 10, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Threads and transactions
There's an interesting discussion on TSS about threads and transactions. Maybe what I should have also added was that there's also a really good book that covers the subject too! Hmmm, now that JBoss Transactions is out, we should think about a second edition ;-)!
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
We've done it again!
I always get a kick out of a product release, and we've done it again with the release of JBoss Transactions. It's a little strange that it's not the Arjuna Transaction Service anymore, and I've got to stop saying Arjuna so much when I talk about it!
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
WS-Addressing makes further progress
Cut-and-paste from the formal W3C announcement:
"W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core" and "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - SOAP Binding"
to Proposed Recommendations:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-core-20060321/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-soap-20060321/
Please review these specifications and indicate whether you endorse them as W3C Recommendations or object to their advancement by completing the following questionnaire:
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/wsaddr-cs-pr/
There were no new Formal Objections since the transition to Candidate
Recommendation. Additional details about the transition are available in the questionnaire.
The deadline for responses is 23:59, Boston time on 2006-04-18.
For more information about the Web Services Addressing Working Group:
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/addr/"
Good news!
"W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core" and "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - SOAP Binding"
to Proposed Recommendations:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-core-20060321/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-soap-20060321/
Please review these specifications and indicate whether you endorse them as W3C Recommendations or object to their advancement by completing the following questionnaire:
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/wsaddr-cs-pr/
There were no new Formal Objections since the transition to Candidate
Recommendation. Additional details about the transition are available in the questionnaire.
The deadline for responses is 23:59, Boston time on 2006-04-18.
For more information about the Web Services Addressing Working Group:
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/addr/"
Good news!
Laugh? I nearly cried!
Ever wondered what if some of our luminaries had tried to publish today? Well I encourage you to go and see!
Thursday, March 16, 2006
WS-Eventing, WS-Transfer and WS-Enumeration to W3C
Whilst it is good to see WS-Eventing, WS-Transfer and WS-Enumeration finally go to a standards body, it not necessarily a good thing. As Paul points out on Savas' blog, these specifications have been used in yet another political game of chess, in the same way as WS-ReliableMessaging/WS-ReliableExchange or WS-CAF/WS-TX. One good thing is that this time IBM are on the receiving end, despite what they may say.
Ignoring the technical merits (or lack thereof) of these specifications, one thing that simply cannot be ignored is the fact that this will now cause more fractures within the WS-* architecture, and not less. Two competing specifications, within two different (and often competing) standards bodies, will mean yet more FUD and delay as far as vendors and customers are concerned. At least when these current specifications were purely vendor specific, customers who wanted a standard approach to events (for example), had only one choice. Now they don't have any: they've got to wait until something is sorted out.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing that these things shouldn't be in a standards body. Quite the contrary: I believe strongly that they should be. I just wish that the likes of IBM and Microsoft could have gotten together 2 years ago and sorted this out, so we had a single standard now! I think that the world of Web Services can learn a lot from the OMG in terms of how to work collaboratively. It's not perfect by any means, but it's inclusive, which the world of Web Services standards simply is not. There's a lot of rubberstamping going on.
Ignoring the technical merits (or lack thereof) of these specifications, one thing that simply cannot be ignored is the fact that this will now cause more fractures within the WS-* architecture, and not less. Two competing specifications, within two different (and often competing) standards bodies, will mean yet more FUD and delay as far as vendors and customers are concerned. At least when these current specifications were purely vendor specific, customers who wanted a standard approach to events (for example), had only one choice. Now they don't have any: they've got to wait until something is sorted out.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing that these things shouldn't be in a standards body. Quite the contrary: I believe strongly that they should be. I just wish that the likes of IBM and Microsoft could have gotten together 2 years ago and sorted this out, so we had a single standard now! I think that the world of Web Services can learn a lot from the OMG in terms of how to work collaboratively. It's not perfect by any means, but it's inclusive, which the world of Web Services standards simply is not. There's a lot of rubberstamping going on.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
RFID and security
We used to collaborate with Andy Tanenbaum and his group a lot back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, so it's nice to get an update on what they're doing these days. Very interesting.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Somethings just don't make sense
There are many things in life that just don't make sense. For example, how can you have South Park without Chef? Whatever happened to Cold Fusion? Or the entire "plot" of Highlander II! But probably the one that gets to me at the moment (because it's related to my job) is how on earth can there be such a thing as a legacy ESB?!
Since it sprang to life, the ESB term has been used to mean different things to different people. For example, to some it's JMS with a few extra bells and whistles, to others it's Web Services, and to yet others it's the saviour of EAI. However, over the past couple of years, one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that it should be an infrastructure for SOA applications. Now we all know that one of the things SOA is good for is leveraging existing infrastructural investments: letting you use your old stuff in new and interesting ways.
So it always seemed to me that a product that helps you implement SOA applications (quick note, SOA is not something you can get out of a shrink-wrapped box), shouldn't be part of the legacy problem! And yet when I was with Arjuna, I came across a number of large and small companies that were already being forced to work with legacy ESBs! These were products (names removed to protect the guilty parties) that, once integrated into the user's infrastructure, couldn't cope with changes in user requirements a matter of mere months or years later; plus they were so intertwined with that infrastructure that they simply couldn't be removed (or it wasn't worth the effort). So these companies then had to rely on yet more ESB implementations to talk to their legacy ESBs! And the vicious circle went on. Not exactly a good return on your investment!!
Now I'm not saying that we're going to reverse that trend, but I'd like to think we'll try not to fall into the same holes that others have. However, it's still an interesting contradiction, sort of like military intelligence.
Since it sprang to life, the ESB term has been used to mean different things to different people. For example, to some it's JMS with a few extra bells and whistles, to others it's Web Services, and to yet others it's the saviour of EAI. However, over the past couple of years, one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that it should be an infrastructure for SOA applications. Now we all know that one of the things SOA is good for is leveraging existing infrastructural investments: letting you use your old stuff in new and interesting ways.
So it always seemed to me that a product that helps you implement SOA applications (quick note, SOA is not something you can get out of a shrink-wrapped box), shouldn't be part of the legacy problem! And yet when I was with Arjuna, I came across a number of large and small companies that were already being forced to work with legacy ESBs! These were products (names removed to protect the guilty parties) that, once integrated into the user's infrastructure, couldn't cope with changes in user requirements a matter of mere months or years later; plus they were so intertwined with that infrastructure that they simply couldn't be removed (or it wasn't worth the effort). So these companies then had to rely on yet more ESB implementations to talk to their legacy ESBs! And the vicious circle went on. Not exactly a good return on your investment!!
Now I'm not saying that we're going to reverse that trend, but I'd like to think we'll try not to fall into the same holes that others have. However, it's still an interesting contradiction, sort of like military intelligence.
Friday, March 10, 2006
WS-Policy re-release
The next (and simplified) version of WS-Policy is out. My spider-sense tells me a push for standardisation may come next.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Spotlight and Google Desktop
I've been using a Mac OS X machine at home for over a year and one of the features I really love about Tiger is spotlight. It's really easy to use and before I knew it, I'd become dependant upon it: any search for text, images etc, would drag me first and foremost to spotlight. No more using the clunky Thunderbird email search, or grep (yes, I also use emacs). It's great.
That's great for my Mac, but my main work machine is a Windows box. So I've been putting off installing Google Desktop for ages because I'd heard some bad things about it. But after checking with a few people who have actually been using it, I decided to give it a whirl. It's not as good as spotlight (indexing seems to take an age!), but it's good nonetheless. I think I'll stick with it for a while.
That's great for my Mac, but my main work machine is a Windows box. So I've been putting off installing Google Desktop for ages because I'd heard some bad things about it. But after checking with a few people who have actually been using it, I decided to give it a whirl. It's not as good as spotlight (indexing seems to take an age!), but it's good nonetheless. I think I'll stick with it for a while.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
WS-Addressing interoperability fest
We've been taking part in the WS-Addressing interoperability work during the W3C Plenary in Cannes. (We did it remotely, so no nice trips to the South of France for us.)
I produced our first WS-Addressing implementation as part of the Web Services transactions implementation, which we then tested as part of the WS-TX interoperability workshop. But that was the August 2004 version of the specification and things have moved on since then, both with WS-Addressing and our product. So this interoperability event was around the latest Candidate Recommendation from the working group, which required us to change our addressing implementation. Unlike with the Raleigh event, where we shared the effort, this time Kevin had the lion's share of the work to do. It was touch-and-go at times, but it eventually paid off and we demonstrated interoperability with IBM, Microsoft, Sun and WSO2/Apache. There's still a bit more work to do over the next week or so, but it looks like we'll have a pretty good story on the interoperability of the specification, as well as our implementation.
Thanks to everyone who participated from the various companies (within the working group and in testing), and particularly to Kevin!
I produced our first WS-Addressing implementation as part of the Web Services transactions implementation, which we then tested as part of the WS-TX interoperability workshop. But that was the August 2004 version of the specification and things have moved on since then, both with WS-Addressing and our product. So this interoperability event was around the latest Candidate Recommendation from the working group, which required us to change our addressing implementation. Unlike with the Raleigh event, where we shared the effort, this time Kevin had the lion's share of the work to do. It was touch-and-go at times, but it eventually paid off and we demonstrated interoperability with IBM, Microsoft, Sun and WSO2/Apache. There's still a bit more work to do over the next week or so, but it looks like we'll have a pretty good story on the interoperability of the specification, as well as our implementation.
Thanks to everyone who participated from the various companies (within the working group and in testing), and particularly to Kevin!
Monday, February 20, 2006
Busy week
I'm sitting in an airport on the way to the States for a number of meetings. First up is a stop-over in Seattle, where I'll take timeout to catch up with Savas; I haven't seen him since our trip to HPTS last year, so it'll be good to grab a coffee (something we used to do fairly regularly). Then it's dinner with Jim, before the real work begins. When I'm finished in Seattle, it's a flight to San Jose, and the JCP Executive Committee meeting. It's my first such meeting for JBoss, so I'm looking forward to that. After another business meeting in San Francisco, it's a redeye to Atlanta. I arrive there at 7am Friday morning, with the intention of giving a series of talks about transactions (caffeine permitting!) Then it's home on Saturday. Like I said: busy!
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Monday, February 13, 2006
An automotive interlude
A couple of years ago I traded in the then family car for a 1993 Honda Prelude VTEC SI. I'm sure psychologists could make something of the fact this move happened about a year after the birth of my youngest son! It's a lovely car: 0-60mph in just over 6 seconds, with excellent handling, a great dashboard and the perfect colour: black. Since I bought it, I've had the best driving experiences of my life and I've been driving since 1984; I definitely don't regret getting the car at all.
Now the downsides: although the boot space isn't great you can still get a family-sized shop in there (just) and there's plenty of legroom for the driver and front passenger; however, the "occasional" seats in the back aren't too bad if you're only going 10 minutes down the road or you don't want to use your legs for a few hours afterward!
Now the size of the rear passenger seats hasn't really been a problem until recently, when the kids started to grow (and unfortunately kids do complain if they can't use their legs after a ride in the car!) It's starting to get to the point where it is adversely affecting my driving experience. I've tried a lot of things, including ear plugs, loud music ("sorry, can't hear what you're saying!"), not having kids in the back seats, but none of these solutions are long term enough for them! So it's getting to the point where I'm either going to have to trade in the Honda or buy a second car. I object to the latter option because I really don't think we'd use two cars sufficiently, plus I want to do my bit for the environment. OK, I admit that the Prelude probably isn't that good for the environment as it stands, but let's not get too carried away.
Anybody have any good suggestions? One that springs to mind is that I buy bikes for the kids: it lets me keep my car, helps the environment and it's good for their health! I've toyed with the idea of a Land Rover of one sort or another, and I have several friends who rave about them (like Greg), but none of them give me the buzz I get from my 'Lude.
Now the downsides: although the boot space isn't great you can still get a family-sized shop in there (just) and there's plenty of legroom for the driver and front passenger; however, the "occasional" seats in the back aren't too bad if you're only going 10 minutes down the road or you don't want to use your legs for a few hours afterward!
Now the size of the rear passenger seats hasn't really been a problem until recently, when the kids started to grow (and unfortunately kids do complain if they can't use their legs after a ride in the car!) It's starting to get to the point where it is adversely affecting my driving experience. I've tried a lot of things, including ear plugs, loud music ("sorry, can't hear what you're saying!"), not having kids in the back seats, but none of these solutions are long term enough for them! So it's getting to the point where I'm either going to have to trade in the Honda or buy a second car. I object to the latter option because I really don't think we'd use two cars sufficiently, plus I want to do my bit for the environment. OK, I admit that the Prelude probably isn't that good for the environment as it stands, but let's not get too carried away.
Anybody have any good suggestions? One that springs to mind is that I buy bikes for the kids: it lets me keep my car, helps the environment and it's good for their health! I've toyed with the idea of a Land Rover of one sort or another, and I have several friends who rave about them (like Greg), but none of them give me the buzz I get from my 'Lude.
WWW2006 Call for Posters
WWW2006 FINAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
POSTER DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL FEB 21st 2006
The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) invite
you to participate in the Fifteenth International World Wide Web
Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22nd-26th 2006.
You are invited to participate in the conference by submitting
* Posters (deadline extended to Feb 21st)
* Developer Track Proposals (deadline March 5th)
* Workshop Papers
POSTERS - DEADLINE EXTENDED - February 21st 2006
Posters provide a forum for late-breaking research, and facilitate
feedback in an informal setting. Posters are peer-reviewed. The poster
sessions provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to
present and demonstrate their recent web-related research, and to
obtain feedback from their peers in an informal setting. It gives
conference attendees a way to learn about innovative works in progress
in a timely and informal manner. Formatting and submission
requirements are available at http://www2006.org/posters/.
Conference topics include but are not limited to:
# Browsers and User Interfaces
# Data Mining
# Hypermedia and Multimedia
# Performance, Reliability and Scalability
# Pervasive Web and Mobility
# Search
# Security, Privacy, and Ethics
# Semantic Web
# Web Engineering
# XML and Web Services
# Industrial Practice and Experience
# Developing Regions
# Applications: E-Communities, E-Learning, E-Commerce, E- Science, E-Government and E-Humanities
DEVELOPERS TRACK PROPOSALS - Deadline - March 5th 2006
The developers' community is an integral part of the WWW conference
series. It includes all those who write the code that makes the Web
work. WWW developers work at startups, IT departments, software vendors
and government, but also include researchers who have a commitment to
developing usable tools and products. The aim of the track is to showcase
the practical experimentation that accompanies both cutting-edge research
and a dedication to standards setting and adoption.
Proposals are invited for technical demonstrations, presentations and
discussions to take place within the Developers' Track throughout
the conference, in keeping with the various conference topics (above).
The proposals should concern work with significant new functionality,
capability or 'wow' factor. Submission instructions are available
at http://www2006.org/developers/.
WORKSHOPS - Deadline - Various
A wide variety of workshops address the current research issues and
future development of the World Wide Web. Papers are invited for the
following workshops. For individual deadline and submission details see
http://www2006.org/workshops/.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
BTP closes down
The official announcement from OASIS says it all:
To OASIS Members:
This is to notify you that the OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee has completed its work and is now closed. We thank
the members and leadership of the TC for their contributions and dedication to this effort. The work that the TC produced during its
tenure can be found at its public pages, which will remain accessible at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/business-transaction.
Its email archives also will remain permanently accessible at http://lists.oasis-open.org/business-transaction.
OASIS work on transactional and service coordination methods continues in a number of current projects, including the ASAP,
ebXML-BP, WSBPEL, WS-CAF and WS-TX technical committees.
I've been involved with this work from the start and although it never really caught on, I think it contributed to the overall discussions in this area and acted as a catalyst. My thanks to everyone who was ever involved with this effort.
To OASIS Members:
This is to notify you that the OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee has completed its work and is now closed. We thank
the members and leadership of the TC for their contributions and dedication to this effort. The work that the TC produced during its
tenure can be found at its public pages, which will remain accessible at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/business-transaction.
Its email archives also will remain permanently accessible at http://lists.oasis-open.org/business-transaction.
OASIS work on transactional and service coordination methods continues in a number of current projects, including the ASAP,
ebXML-BP, WSBPEL, WS-CAF and WS-TX technical committees.
I've been involved with this work from the start and although it never really caught on, I think it contributed to the overall discussions in this area and acted as a catalyst. My thanks to everyone who was ever involved with this effort.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Middleware 2006
I'm on the Program Committee for Middleware 2006. Here's the CFP:
ACM/IFIP/USENIX 7th International Middleware Conference
Melbourne, Australia
November 27 - December 1, 2006
http://2006.middleware-conference.org/
The Middleware conference is a forum for the discussion of important
innovations and recent advances in the design and construction of
middleware. Middleware is distributed-systems software that resides
between the applications and the underlying operating systems, network
protocol stacks, and hardware. Its primary role is to functionally
bridge the gap between application programs and the lower-level
hardware and software infrastructure in order to coordinate how
application components are connected and how they interoperate.
Following the success of past conferences in this series, the 7th
International Middleware Conference will be the premier event for
middleware research and technology in 2006. The scope of the
conference is the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation
of distributed system platforms and architectures for future computing
and communication environments. Highlights of the conference will
include a high quality technical program, tutorials, invited speakers,
poster presentations, and workshops.
Submissions on a diversity of topics are sought, particularly ones
that identify new research directions. Middleware 2006 is not limited
to topics discussed in previous Middleware conferences. Authors
concerned about the appropriateness of a topic may communicate by
electronic mail with the program chairs prior to submission.
The proceedings of Middleware 2006 will be published as a Springer-Verlag
volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series.
Topics:
The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:
Platforms and Architectures:
* Middleware for Web services and Web-service composition
* Middleware for cluster and grid computing
* Peer-to-peer middleware solutions
* Event-based, publish/subscribe, and message-oriented middleware
* Communication protocols and architectures
* Middleware for ubiquitous and mobile computing
* Middleware for embedded systems and sensor networks
* Service-oriented architectures
* Reconfigurable, adaptable, and reflective middleware approaches
Systems issues:
* Reliability, fault tolerance, and quality-of-service in general
* Scalability of middleware: replication and caching
* Systems management, including solutions for autonomic and self-managing middleware
* Middleware feedback control solutions for self-regulation
* Real-time solutions for middleware platforms
* Information assurance and security
* Evaluation techniques for middleware solutions
* Middleware support for multimedia streaming
* Middleware solutions for (large scale) distributed databases
Design principles and tools:
* Formal methods and tools for designing, verifying, and evaluating middleware
* Model-driven architectures
* Software engineering for middleware
* Engineering principles and approaches for middleware
* Novel development paradigms, APIs, and languages
* Existing paradigms revisited: object models, aspect orientation, etc.
* On-the-fly management and configuration of middleware
Organization:
General Chairs:
Joe Sventek (Glasgow University, UK)
Shanika Karunasekera (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Program Chairs:
Michi Henning (ZeroC, USA)
Maarten van Steen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Local Arrangements Chairs:
Aaron Harwood and Lars Kulik (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Workshops Chair:
Antony Rowstron (Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK)
Doctoral Symposium Chair:
Karen Henricksen (University of Queensland, Australia)
Publicity Chair:
Egemen Tanin (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Program Committee:†
* Christiana Amza (Toronto University, Canada)
* Ozalp Babaoglu (University of Bologna, Italy)
* Mark Baker (independent consultant)
* Alberto Bartoli (University of Trieste, Italy)
* Yolande Berbers (Leuven University, Belgium)
* Gordon Blair (Lancaster University, UK)
* Michele Colajanni (University of Modena, Italy)
* Geoff Coulson (Lancaster University, UK)
* Fred Douglis (IBM Watson, USA)
* Pascal Felber (University of Neufchatel, Switzerland)
* Indranil Gupta (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
* Franz Hauck (Ulm University, Germany)
* Bettina Kemme (McGill University, Canada)
* Anne-Marie Kermarrec (INRIA Rennes, France)
* Fabio Kon (IME/USP, Brazil)
* Ihor Kuz (NICTA, Australia)
* Doug Lea (Oswego State University, USA)
* Mark Little (Arjuna Technologies, UK)
* Ted McFadden (Latent Ventures, USA)
* Philip McKinley (Michigan State University, USA)
* Jishnu Mukerji (HP, USA)
* Bernard Normier (ZeroC, USA)
* Tamer Ozsu (University Waterloo, Canada)
* Gian Pietro Picco (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
* Frank Pilhofer (Mercury Computer Systems, USA)
* Misha Rabinovich (Case Western University, USA)
* Alexander Reinefeld (ZIB, Berlin)
* Luis Rodrigues (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
* Peter Steenkiste (CMU, USA)
* Stefan Tai (IBM Watson, USA)
* Amin Vahdat (UCSD, USA)
* Aad van Moorsel (Newcastle University, UK)
* Steve Vinoski (IONA, USA)
* Craig Wills (Worchester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Important dates:
Submission deadline: April 3
Notification of acceptance: July 10
Camera-ready copies: September 1
Submission guidelines:
Research papers:
Research papers are to be submitted electronically via the online submission system:
http://subm2006.middleware-conference.org/
Through this system, you will be requested to upload the file of your
paper (PDF format) to the conference server (please avoid bitmaps!)
Papers must not exceed 20 pages, including abstract, all figures, all
tables, and references. Papers should include a short abstract and up
to 6 keywords. Please also fill in the appropriate information in the
online form.
Submitted papers should follow the formating instructions of the
Springer LNCS Style (please check the Information for Authors page at
Springer at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs for style and formatting
guidelines).
Submitted papers may not be submitted for conference publication,
journal publication, or be under review for any other conference or
journal.
ACM/IFIP/USENIX 7th International Middleware Conference
Melbourne, Australia
November 27 - December 1, 2006
http://2006.middleware-conference.org/
The Middleware conference is a forum for the discussion of important
innovations and recent advances in the design and construction of
middleware. Middleware is distributed-systems software that resides
between the applications and the underlying operating systems, network
protocol stacks, and hardware. Its primary role is to functionally
bridge the gap between application programs and the lower-level
hardware and software infrastructure in order to coordinate how
application components are connected and how they interoperate.
Following the success of past conferences in this series, the 7th
International Middleware Conference will be the premier event for
middleware research and technology in 2006. The scope of the
conference is the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation
of distributed system platforms and architectures for future computing
and communication environments. Highlights of the conference will
include a high quality technical program, tutorials, invited speakers,
poster presentations, and workshops.
Submissions on a diversity of topics are sought, particularly ones
that identify new research directions. Middleware 2006 is not limited
to topics discussed in previous Middleware conferences. Authors
concerned about the appropriateness of a topic may communicate by
electronic mail with the program chairs prior to submission.
The proceedings of Middleware 2006 will be published as a Springer-Verlag
volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series.
Topics:
The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:
Platforms and Architectures:
* Middleware for Web services and Web-service composition
* Middleware for cluster and grid computing
* Peer-to-peer middleware solutions
* Event-based, publish/subscribe, and message-oriented middleware
* Communication protocols and architectures
* Middleware for ubiquitous and mobile computing
* Middleware for embedded systems and sensor networks
* Service-oriented architectures
* Reconfigurable, adaptable, and reflective middleware approaches
Systems issues:
* Reliability, fault tolerance, and quality-of-service in general
* Scalability of middleware: replication and caching
* Systems management, including solutions for autonomic and self-managing middleware
* Middleware feedback control solutions for self-regulation
* Real-time solutions for middleware platforms
* Information assurance and security
* Evaluation techniques for middleware solutions
* Middleware support for multimedia streaming
* Middleware solutions for (large scale) distributed databases
Design principles and tools:
* Formal methods and tools for designing, verifying, and evaluating middleware
* Model-driven architectures
* Software engineering for middleware
* Engineering principles and approaches for middleware
* Novel development paradigms, APIs, and languages
* Existing paradigms revisited: object models, aspect orientation, etc.
* On-the-fly management and configuration of middleware
Organization:
General Chairs:
Joe Sventek (Glasgow University, UK)
Shanika Karunasekera (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Program Chairs:
Michi Henning (ZeroC, USA)
Maarten van Steen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Local Arrangements Chairs:
Aaron Harwood and Lars Kulik (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Workshops Chair:
Antony Rowstron (Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK)
Doctoral Symposium Chair:
Karen Henricksen (University of Queensland, Australia)
Publicity Chair:
Egemen Tanin (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Program Committee:†
* Christiana Amza (Toronto University, Canada)
* Ozalp Babaoglu (University of Bologna, Italy)
* Mark Baker (independent consultant)
* Alberto Bartoli (University of Trieste, Italy)
* Yolande Berbers (Leuven University, Belgium)
* Gordon Blair (Lancaster University, UK)
* Michele Colajanni (University of Modena, Italy)
* Geoff Coulson (Lancaster University, UK)
* Fred Douglis (IBM Watson, USA)
* Pascal Felber (University of Neufchatel, Switzerland)
* Indranil Gupta (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
* Franz Hauck (Ulm University, Germany)
* Bettina Kemme (McGill University, Canada)
* Anne-Marie Kermarrec (INRIA Rennes, France)
* Fabio Kon (IME/USP, Brazil)
* Ihor Kuz (NICTA, Australia)
* Doug Lea (Oswego State University, USA)
* Mark Little (Arjuna Technologies, UK)
* Ted McFadden (Latent Ventures, USA)
* Philip McKinley (Michigan State University, USA)
* Jishnu Mukerji (HP, USA)
* Bernard Normier (ZeroC, USA)
* Tamer Ozsu (University Waterloo, Canada)
* Gian Pietro Picco (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
* Frank Pilhofer (Mercury Computer Systems, USA)
* Misha Rabinovich (Case Western University, USA)
* Alexander Reinefeld (ZIB, Berlin)
* Luis Rodrigues (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
* Peter Steenkiste (CMU, USA)
* Stefan Tai (IBM Watson, USA)
* Amin Vahdat (UCSD, USA)
* Aad van Moorsel (Newcastle University, UK)
* Steve Vinoski (IONA, USA)
* Craig Wills (Worchester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Important dates:
Submission deadline: April 3
Notification of acceptance: July 10
Camera-ready copies: September 1
Submission guidelines:
Research papers:
Research papers are to be submitted electronically via the online submission system:
http://subm2006.middleware-conference.org/
Through this system, you will be requested to upload the file of your
paper (PDF format) to the conference server (please avoid bitmaps!)
Papers must not exceed 20 pages, including abstract, all figures, all
tables, and references. Papers should include a short abstract and up
to 6 keywords. Please also fill in the appropriate information in the
online form.
Submitted papers should follow the formating instructions of the
Springer LNCS Style (please check the Information for Authors page at
Springer at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs for style and formatting
guidelines).
Submitted papers may not be submitted for conference publication,
journal publication, or be under review for any other conference or
journal.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Another Arjuna leaver
My friend and ex-colleague Dave Ingham is leaving Arjuna at the end of this week to take up a Program Manager job with Microsoft. He's joining the relatively new Connected Systems Division and I wish him all the best in the future.
Monday, January 30, 2006
A new place to submit articles
If you're looking for somewhere to publish articles or papers on general middleware problems, JEE, Web Service, or something you think the community at large may find interesting, then you might want to check out the JBoss Architect's Library.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Twilight Zone article
WebServices.org has published another of my blog entries, so take a look. Unfortunately in the translation they stripped out several of the references to the Twilight Zone, but hopefully it doesn't detract from the central message: that WS-Context should be more widely adopted for session management in preference to the WS-Addressing approach. Be warned, the article is deliberately more anti-WS-Addressing than I am in reality, but that's simply to try to hammer home the argument.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Jim Johnson on writing a transactional resource
Jim is going to write a series of blog entries on writing transactional resources. Worth a look.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Time for a change
Just a note to say that I've altered the look-and-feel of the blog. Not reason other than I felt like a change.
Arjuna mortgages
One of the things Arjuna has been involved with for sometime finally went live yesterday. Bundles is a mortgage auction facility for which Arjuna is providing the software and support. It's a shame that none of the articles, including The Times mention them, but I do know from the involvement I had when working there, that the Arjuna staff have put in a lot of time and effort. Finger's crossed that it all works out for them. If it does, it'll be amusing to consider how it all started: 18+ months ago Bundles came to talk to Steve and I about a "little bit of contract work"!
Monday, January 16, 2006
WWW 2006 PC meeting
Just back from the WWW2006 Program Committee meeting in Edinburgh. Santosh and I joined the other track chairs to decide which of the record breaking number of submissions, should be accepted to the conference. In some cases it was an easy decision to make, but in others it was very difficult. Although judging the quality of papers within a given track is usually straightforward, in some cases we had to judge between tracks and that's not easy. However, at the forefront of everyone's minds at this stage was not protecting individual tracks, but ensuring that overall the quality of the conference was high. Sometimes this meant that uniformly excellent papers were rejected in favour of papers that had generated a lot of discussion within the review process, on the assumption that they would continue to generate good discussion within the conference.
It was tough. We had two sites for the track chairs going concurrently: Edinburgh and Boston. Because of the time difference we started at 9am and were going until 8pm. But as you can see, our host the National E-Science Institute, had some good surroundings.
In the end, of the record breaking 700+ submissions, we accepted about 11%. That's not 11% from each track, though. Some tracks had more accepted than others simply because of the quality differences between tracks.
One final comment: for my own track, it was nice to see more Web Services papers this year.
It was tough. We had two sites for the track chairs going concurrently: Edinburgh and Boston. Because of the time difference we started at 9am and were going until 8pm. But as you can see, our host the National E-Science Institute, had some good surroundings.
In the end, of the record breaking 700+ submissions, we accepted about 11%. That's not 11% from each track, though. Some tracks had more accepted than others simply because of the quality differences between tracks.
One final comment: for my own track, it was nice to see more Web Services papers this year.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
I want one!
I don't think I'd ever break my rule of not buying first generation, but this looks so sweet!!
WSDL 2.0
Several years (5?) after WSDL 1.1 came out, WSDL 2.0 is finally a candidate recommendation. Check out the Primer for a start. There's also the SOAP 1.1 Binding, the Adjuncts, SOAP 1.1 binding schema and HTTP binding schema.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Arjuna Technologies lives!
There have been quite a few articles in the media since the Arjuna and JBoss announcement. Most of them have been pretty accurate, but one or two have inadvertently and incorrectly stated that JBoss acquired Arjuna Technologies. That isn't the case. JBoss acquired the transaction product and related material, plus a couple of employees (myself included). However, Arjuna Technologies is still an independent company which continues to own the rights to, and market, its JMS implementation, amongst other things. In fact, Arjuna Technologies is to forge a stronger relationship with JBoss in the future as it provides consultancy and training in the area of high-end transaction deployments.
Friday, December 16, 2005
JBI and SCA
Since I'm now the Development Manager for JBossESB (amongst my roles), I'm obviously interested in things such as JBI and SCA and how they might relate. So I've been collecting articles.
Here's a nice discussion by Edwin Khodabakchian. Another by JJ (BTW, congratulations on the more to SAP JJ).
Obviously both Oracle and SAP are co-authors on SCA, so for those people who thing the above articles may not be 100% objective, there's an interesting one here, that makes a stronger statement concerning the overlap between JBI and SCA.
There are some Gartner comments here and here.
And finally one analysts take on a fairly obvious missing co-author, with which I agree.
Any more, please post to the comments.
Here's a nice discussion by Edwin Khodabakchian. Another by JJ (BTW, congratulations on the more to SAP JJ).
Obviously both Oracle and SAP are co-authors on SCA, so for those people who thing the above articles may not be 100% objective, there's an interesting one here, that makes a stronger statement concerning the overlap between JBI and SCA.
There are some Gartner comments here and here.
And finally one analysts take on a fairly obvious missing co-author, with which I agree.
Any more, please post to the comments.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Why JBoss?
So why have I moved across to JBoss? Well it hasn't been an easy choice, as quite a few people out there will know. Firstly I was one of the founders of the company. I was also a director of Arjuna Technologies and being a director of any company imposes certain obligations on you that don't come with normal employment contracts. I want Arjuna Technologies to succeed, because I believe in what we've been trying to do and also for the many shareholders who have supported us over the years.
We've been working on having a closer relationship between Arjuna Technologies and JBoss almost from the start. The fact that Bob Bickel is on our advisory board and also works for JBoss is a happy coincidence (we like to point out that Bob joined us first!) When the opportunity finally arose, it was simply too good for the company to pass up. Also to be honest, the way open source has burst onto the software scene, if the likes of IBM are feeling the pinch then you can bet that either every other middleware vendor is too, or is feeling OSS breathing down their necks! Nuff said.
The way JBoss operates when getting involved with any project, be it cacheing or transactions, is that they need to have a critical mass of knowledge as well as the software. So, as well as the transaction software that we have developed over the past 20 years, they needed the knowledge to compliment it. And that's where I came in.
I think this is an exciting opportunity for JBoss and Arjuna. It's also an extremely important deal for both companies. Which is why I, along with many other people in Arjuna, worked hard to ensure it happened. In some ways it hasn't been an easy decision to make, but in others it was the only thing that made sense.
We've been working on having a closer relationship between Arjuna Technologies and JBoss almost from the start. The fact that Bob Bickel is on our advisory board and also works for JBoss is a happy coincidence (we like to point out that Bob joined us first!) When the opportunity finally arose, it was simply too good for the company to pass up. Also to be honest, the way open source has burst onto the software scene, if the likes of IBM are feeling the pinch then you can bet that either every other middleware vendor is too, or is feeling OSS breathing down their necks! Nuff said.
The way JBoss operates when getting involved with any project, be it cacheing or transactions, is that they need to have a critical mass of knowledge as well as the software. So, as well as the transaction software that we have developed over the past 20 years, they needed the knowledge to compliment it. And that's where I came in.
I think this is an exciting opportunity for JBoss and Arjuna. It's also an extremely important deal for both companies. Which is why I, along with many other people in Arjuna, worked hard to ensure it happened. In some ways it hasn't been an easy decision to make, but in others it was the only thing that made sense.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
End of an era?
By now you may have heard about the Arjuna and JBoss deal: basically JBoss acquires the transaction technology that Arjuna has developed independently or when working in Hewlett-Packard, which we then acquired from them when we span out. A consequence of this acquisition is that I now work for JBoss. I'll blog on the deal itself later, but for now I wanted to say a few things about leaving Arjuna Technologies.
This isn't exactly the end I had in mind when we span out of HP and started Arjuna Technologies Ltd (ATL). I've always seen ATL as a logical extension of my original start-up, Arjuna Solutions, and I think deep down I thought company acquisition was a good possibility too. Being a director, obviously the exit-strategy benefits to the shareholders were always upmost in my mind, but there's always a selfish component (and no, it's not monetary): I've been in the enviable position to have worked with the same group of friends for the best part of twenty years (if we're counting, then it's 18+ years for Stuart and I) and I would like to have had that continue. Of course we've all had our disagreements and ups-and-downs over the years (who hasn't?!), but it's always been fun and interesting.
Although we're not moving far (literally down one floor and across a corridor!) that daily interaction will be something I'll miss a lot. After I received word that the deal had completed, my first thought wasn't about the work ahead, but it was "It's not my company any more :-(". Strange.
I obviously wish everyone at ATL the best of luck in the future, but particularly Stuart, Barry, Steve and Dave. It has been fun (most of the time) and it's a period in my life I wouldn't change. I've learnt a lot from Arjuna Solutions and Arjuna Technologies and I only wish the "exit strategy" had been more inclusive!
With any luck our paths will continue to cross.
This isn't exactly the end I had in mind when we span out of HP and started Arjuna Technologies Ltd (ATL). I've always seen ATL as a logical extension of my original start-up, Arjuna Solutions, and I think deep down I thought company acquisition was a good possibility too. Being a director, obviously the exit-strategy benefits to the shareholders were always upmost in my mind, but there's always a selfish component (and no, it's not monetary): I've been in the enviable position to have worked with the same group of friends for the best part of twenty years (if we're counting, then it's 18+ years for Stuart and I) and I would like to have had that continue. Of course we've all had our disagreements and ups-and-downs over the years (who hasn't?!), but it's always been fun and interesting.
Although we're not moving far (literally down one floor and across a corridor!) that daily interaction will be something I'll miss a lot. After I received word that the deal had completed, my first thought wasn't about the work ahead, but it was "It's not my company any more :-(". Strange.
I obviously wish everyone at ATL the best of luck in the future, but particularly Stuart, Barry, Steve and Dave. It has been fun (most of the time) and it's a period in my life I wouldn't change. I've learnt a lot from Arjuna Solutions and Arjuna Technologies and I only wish the "exit strategy" had been more inclusive!
With any luck our paths will continue to cross.
Friday, November 18, 2005
WS-TX face-to-face meeting
I'm on my way back from the inaugral OASIS WS-TX face-to-face meeting. I think the two day meeting went well - certainly better than expected. Eric is one of the chairs, along with Ian, who I've worked with before on the CORBA Activity Service and it's J2EE equivalent. It's a small world!
Eric has some interesting comments on the face-to-face. I'd just like to add that after the meeting I'm even more convinced that WS-CAF has a lot to offer this new TC, both in terms of experiences gained and as a place to do additional work, such as heuristics.
Greg also has something to say on the subject, but I think WS-Coordination isn't the right building block for sessions: it should be WS-Context. Greg also has a reference to the XML 2005 presentation he just presented, based on our paper.
Eric has some interesting comments on the face-to-face. I'd just like to add that after the meeting I'm even more convinced that WS-CAF has a lot to offer this new TC, both in terms of experiences gained and as a place to do additional work, such as heuristics.
Greg also has something to say on the subject, but I think WS-Coordination isn't the right building block for sessions: it should be WS-Context. Greg also has a reference to the XML 2005 presentation he just presented, based on our paper.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Interesting statistics for WWW 2006 submissions
This year we've got 13 tracks for paper submissions. Here are the statistics:
Browsers and User Interfaces: 51 papers
Data Mining: papers 98 papers
E* Applications: papers 105
Hypermedia and Multimedia: 23 papers
Performance, Reliability and Scalability: 34 papers
Pervasive Web and Mobility: 14 papers
Search: 128 papers
Security: 37 papers
Semantic Web: 75 papers
Web Engineering: 61 papers
XML and Web Services: 67 papers
Developing Regions: 0 papers
Industrial Practice and Experience: 5 papers
Update: overall, paper submissions are up 25% on WWW2005.
Browsers and User Interfaces: 51 papers
Data Mining: papers 98 papers
E* Applications: papers 105
Hypermedia and Multimedia: 23 papers
Performance, Reliability and Scalability: 34 papers
Pervasive Web and Mobility: 14 papers
Search: 128 papers
Security: 37 papers
Semantic Web: 75 papers
Web Engineering: 61 papers
XML and Web Services: 67 papers
Developing Regions: 0 papers
Industrial Practice and Experience: 5 papers
Update: overall, paper submissions are up 25% on WWW2005.
And so it begins!
The submission deadline for WWW2006 finally passed this morning (10am my time). We got 67 paper for the XML & Web Services track that I'm chairing. This year we're using the OpenConf system for paper reviews and assignments. It's pretty good and certainly better than most of the ones I've used over the years. However, there are still issues with it that made my role of assigning papers more problematical than it should have been. Maybe if I ever find some spare time I'll sit down and write the ulimate paper reviewing system; with 20 years of reviewing experience behind me, how hard can it be ;-)?
Anyway, the assignments are done. We ended up with a couple more papers per reviewer than I expected, due to the high number of submissions and the fact that a couple of PC members dropped out at the very last minute. Now we've got until the 24th of December to do the reviews :-(
Anyway, the assignments are done. We ended up with a couple more papers per reviewer than I expected, due to the high number of submissions and the fact that a couple of PC members dropped out at the very last minute. Now we've got until the 24th of December to do the reviews :-(
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
WS-TX presentation
The first face-to-face meeting of the new OASIS WS-TX technical committee is next week. As one of the co-authors I'd try to attend anyway, but as luck would have it, I'm also giving one of the presentations: on WS-AtomicTransaction. Hopefully there'll be discussion around WS-CAF, as I strongly believe that there is scope for collaborative work between these two committees. I'm in the process of writing a blog entry on that subject for WebServices.org, so watch this space.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Friday, November 04, 2005
WWW 2006 submission deadline extended
Extension: The submission deadline for WWW2006 refereed papers has been extended to Friday November 11 11:59PM Hawaii time (hard deadline).
As you may know, on Sunday October 30 there was a significant fire at the site hosting the www2006 server. No one will be allowed into the building until Christmas and half the research labs are completely destroyed.
We attempted to mask the failure with a temporary site and have restored the site as quickly as possible in order to maintain the original deadline. But we have become aware that DNS and routing problems are still causing locations to be unable to reach the site even as late as Friday November 4th 2005.
Given these technical difficulties, the fairest thing to do seems to be to grant a blanket 1-week extension, until November 11th 2005.
In fairness to those who submitted on time and managed to find the web site, we will allow revised versions of papers to be uploaded up to the new deadline.
We apologize unreservedly for the confusion stemming from this fire and its aftermath - its been an interesting exercise in network complexity, and at least nobody was hurt - and we thank you for very much for submitting your work to WWW2006.
TEMPORARY WWW2006 WEBSITE: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~lac/ but SHOULD be visible at www2006.org
DIRECT ACCESS to the paper submission website: http:// www.openconf.org/www2006/
TEMPORARY EMAIL FOR ENQUIRIES: lescarr@gmail.com
Information about the fire can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm.
---
WWW2006 Co-chairs: Les Carr, Dave De Roure, Arun Iyengar
WWW2006 PC Chairs: Carole Goble, Mike Dahlin
As you may know, on Sunday October 30 there was a significant fire at the site hosting the www2006 server. No one will be allowed into the building until Christmas and half the research labs are completely destroyed.
We attempted to mask the failure with a temporary site and have restored the site as quickly as possible in order to maintain the original deadline. But we have become aware that DNS and routing problems are still causing locations to be unable to reach the site even as late as Friday November 4th 2005.
Given these technical difficulties, the fairest thing to do seems to be to grant a blanket 1-week extension, until November 11th 2005.
In fairness to those who submitted on time and managed to find the web site, we will allow revised versions of papers to be uploaded up to the new deadline.
We apologize unreservedly for the confusion stemming from this fire and its aftermath - its been an interesting exercise in network complexity, and at least nobody was hurt - and we thank you for very much for submitting your work to WWW2006.
TEMPORARY WWW2006 WEBSITE: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~lac/ but SHOULD be visible at www2006.org
DIRECT ACCESS to the paper submission website: http:// www.openconf.org/www2006/
TEMPORARY EMAIL FOR ENQUIRIES: lescarr@gmail.com
Information about the fire can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm.
---
WWW2006 Co-chairs: Les Carr, Dave De Roure, Arun Iyengar
WWW2006 PC Chairs: Carole Goble, Mike Dahlin
Thursday, November 03, 2005
URGENT WWW2006 update
---------------------------------------------------------
WWW2006 Web Site affected by serious fire
---------------------------------------------------------
Due to a serious fire at the University of Southampton, UK, the www2006.org website and mailing lists are temporarily unavailable.
THE SUBMISSION PROCESSES have been unaffected by this fire, only information about the submission url, deadlines, tracks, document formatting etc has been affected. A temporary replacement website has been set up with all the information for submitting papers, panels and tutorials.
The deadline for paper submission is UNCHANGED. It remains 4th November 2005 midnight Hawai'i time. The panel and tutorial submission deadlines are also unchanged.
Access to the format instructions on the web site has been patchy. We therefore WAIVE the formatting regulations. Submitting a 10 page pdf document in any format is sufficient.
TEMPORARY WWW2006 WEBSITE: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~lac/ SHOULD be visible at www2006.org but we know that this isn't always the case due to networking irregularities.
DIRECT ACCESS to the paper submission website: http:// www.openconf.org/www2006/
TEMPORARY EMAIL FOR ENQUIRIES: lescarr@gmail.com
Information about the fire can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm.
---
WWW2006 Co-chairs: Les Carr, Dave De Roure, Arun Iyengar
WWW2006 PC Chairs: Carole Goble, Mike Dahlin
WWW2006 Web Site affected by serious fire
---------------------------------------------------------
Due to a serious fire at the University of Southampton, UK, the www2006.org website and mailing lists are temporarily unavailable.
THE SUBMISSION PROCESSES have been unaffected by this fire, only information about the submission url, deadlines, tracks, document formatting etc has been affected. A temporary replacement website has been set up with all the information for submitting papers, panels and tutorials.
The deadline for paper submission is UNCHANGED. It remains 4th November 2005 midnight Hawai'i time. The panel and tutorial submission deadlines are also unchanged.
Access to the format instructions on the web site has been patchy. We therefore WAIVE the formatting regulations. Submitting a 10 page pdf document in any format is sufficient.
TEMPORARY WWW2006 WEBSITE: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~lac/ SHOULD be visible at www2006.org but we know that this isn't always the case due to networking irregularities.
DIRECT ACCESS to the paper submission website: http:// www.openconf.org/www2006/
TEMPORARY EMAIL FOR ENQUIRIES: lescarr@gmail.com
Information about the fire can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm.
---
WWW2006 Co-chairs: Les Carr, Dave De Roure, Arun Iyengar
WWW2006 PC Chairs: Carole Goble, Mike Dahlin
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Friday, October 21, 2005
Spot the difference?
For her birthday, I bought my wife a new mobile phone, after much background research. She wanted one with a camera, but the fact it also runs Java games is a bonus. She's a Tetris fanatic, but unfortunately that game didn't come on the phone by default. So, I spent some time last night looking for a good implementation and came across this version, which downloaded first time and plays like a charm.
However, this got me thinking. The jar is small, at only 18.29K. There are versions designed for the PC that are larger (e.g., this one is 744K), but not huge in the grand scheme of things. Yet when I run the game on the mobile phone, the resources it takes are tiny compared to when I run it on my PC! I know it's the difference between J2ME and J2SE environments, but you've got to wonder: how much of the latter do you really need to run your everyday projects?
I know there's a lot of work going on around Java microcontainers, but maybe we also need effort in micro-JVMs, similar to micro-kernels of old! Time for the big monolithic JVM to bow out, I think.
However, this got me thinking. The jar is small, at only 18.29K. There are versions designed for the PC that are larger (e.g., this one is 744K), but not huge in the grand scheme of things. Yet when I run the game on the mobile phone, the resources it takes are tiny compared to when I run it on my PC! I know it's the difference between J2ME and J2SE environments, but you've got to wonder: how much of the latter do you really need to run your everyday projects?
I know there's a lot of work going on around Java microcontainers, but maybe we also need effort in micro-JVMs, similar to micro-kernels of old! Time for the big monolithic JVM to bow out, I think.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
A message from the twilight zone
Normally Jason Bloomberg speaks for ZapThink in the real world. However, his latest comments about Oracle's Fusion middleware are definitely from another reality.
To call it Frankenstein shows a strange lack of understanding about how large middleware offerings really develop. I can't put my finger on a single one (including IBM's) that has been entirely developed in-house and from scratch. These things develop in leaps and bounds as requirements change. As companies acquire other companies, it's also inevitable that some kind of cross-pollination will occur. But to suggest that it's not uniform or cohesive in some way is very strange indeed. Maybe he just had an off day?
It's also the case that this kind of evolution rather than revolution approach happens throughout the industry. Many large organisations we've come across, have grown by acquisition and are forced to leverage all of their infrastructural investments simply because they can't afford to migrate to a homogeneous environment. That's where SOA and Web Services really come into play these days.
Now whether IBM will see Oracle as a threat in this space is a different matter.
Note also that Frankenstein was trying to advance science and defeat death. Not such a bad goal!
To call it Frankenstein shows a strange lack of understanding about how large middleware offerings really develop. I can't put my finger on a single one (including IBM's) that has been entirely developed in-house and from scratch. These things develop in leaps and bounds as requirements change. As companies acquire other companies, it's also inevitable that some kind of cross-pollination will occur. But to suggest that it's not uniform or cohesive in some way is very strange indeed. Maybe he just had an off day?
It's also the case that this kind of evolution rather than revolution approach happens throughout the industry. Many large organisations we've come across, have grown by acquisition and are forced to leverage all of their infrastructural investments simply because they can't afford to migrate to a homogeneous environment. That's where SOA and Web Services really come into play these days.
Now whether IBM will see Oracle as a threat in this space is a different matter.
Note also that Frankenstein was trying to advance science and defeat death. Not such a bad goal!
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Thursday, October 13, 2005
OASIS WS-TX announcement
The WS-TX specifications have finally made it into OASIS, with the formation of the WS-TX Technical Committee. It's been a long time getting here!
WARNING: Reference Parameters considered bad for your health
There's been a discussion going on over at the WS-Addressing public forum around Reference Parameters, which degenerated into the need for session semantics. The specification is already more complex than it probably needs to be: not a good example of Occam's Razor. I hate to sound like a broken record, but use WS-Context. The argument for it is pretty compelling.
Just back from JBoss World 2005
We're a JBoss partner and have been for a few years. We went to JBoss Two a couple of years ago and there were maybe 100 people, so it was interesting to see the much larger attendance at this year's JBoss World in Barcelona. I'm not sure what the official figures are, but I'd reckon that there was in excess of 300 people, crammed into 3 presentation rooms. There were some good presentations and it was interesting to see the enthusiasm on the faces of the attendees.
The most interesting presentation I saw still confuses me slightly: it was presented by a group of belly dancers at the Elephant. I think they were trying to demonstrate vertical sector take-up of JBossAS, but something got lost in translation. It was definitely the most well attended presentation of the whole conference!
OK, it was a party! I admit it!
Update
I love Barcelona, but the airport is definitely not designed for the rapid transit of passengers. It's as if someone built a city highstreet and remembered after the fact that they hadn't put on the departure gates! Good exercise I suppose.
The most interesting presentation I saw still confuses me slightly: it was presented by a group of belly dancers at the Elephant. I think they were trying to demonstrate vertical sector take-up of JBossAS, but something got lost in translation. It was definitely the most well attended presentation of the whole conference!
OK, it was a party! I admit it!
Update
I love Barcelona, but the airport is definitely not designed for the rapid transit of passengers. It's as if someone built a city highstreet and remembered after the fact that they hadn't put on the departure gates! Good exercise I suppose.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Did H.G. Wells predict 21st Century Computer Science Students?
Back in 1895 H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, a story about a man who invents a time machine, travels far into the future and the experiences he has. There've been two movies: the 1960 George Pal version and the more recent 2002 version. Despite the fact that Guy Pearce is a relative (on my wife's side), I prefer the original with Rod Taylor; and any director who can bring something like The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao to the screen always has an edge anyway!
But I digress. When the Time Traveller reaches 802701 A.D. he finds that the human race has fragmented into two species: the Eloi and the Morlocks. They are markedly different in appearance, with the Eloi as smaller, more beautiful humans who live above ground, and the Morlocks as grotesque creatures who live in the perpetual darkness below ground. It turns out that the Eloi have evolved past the point where they could understand or use the advanced machinery of their ancestors and rely on the Morlocks to provide them with food; the Morlocks maintain much of the machinery which helps both species and eat the Eloi. In essence, the Eloi spend all their time playing and appreciating nature and life without knowing why things work the way they do, whereas the Morlocks spend all their time ensuring things work and can't appreciate anything else.
Over the years, the School of Computing here at the University of Newcastle has had a world class reputation for both its undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. But one of the things I've noticed is a gradual change in the subjects that undergraduates learn from when I did my degree back in the mid 1980s. Back then, we learnt software languages such as Pascal, C, 6502 assembler, 68000 assembler, did hardware design (e.g., VLSI) as well as operating systems (using Concurrent Euclid strangely enough) and network programming. For a software course, it covered a lot of depth and breadth: we were taught why things work as well as how they work.
These days, with the advent of languages such as Java, GUIs and even the Web, students are taught at a much higher level, with little or no experience of hardware or operating system principles /architecture. (Note, I've reason to believe that this is not purely a local phenomenon.) That's because industry needs a new set of skills. However, if you ever get a chance to talk to successful graduates these days, there's a definite lack of understanding about why things work at any level below the virtual machine. Now I'm not saying that everything I was taught all those years ago is still useful to me today, but it gave me (and others) an appreciation of so many different aspects that it is often surprising when something from left-field will be useful. I realise there's a trade-off to be made between time and subjects (there are a lot more topics today in computer science than there were 20 years ago), but I wonder: are we breeding a race of Eloi?
But I digress. When the Time Traveller reaches 802701 A.D. he finds that the human race has fragmented into two species: the Eloi and the Morlocks. They are markedly different in appearance, with the Eloi as smaller, more beautiful humans who live above ground, and the Morlocks as grotesque creatures who live in the perpetual darkness below ground. It turns out that the Eloi have evolved past the point where they could understand or use the advanced machinery of their ancestors and rely on the Morlocks to provide them with food; the Morlocks maintain much of the machinery which helps both species and eat the Eloi. In essence, the Eloi spend all their time playing and appreciating nature and life without knowing why things work the way they do, whereas the Morlocks spend all their time ensuring things work and can't appreciate anything else.
Over the years, the School of Computing here at the University of Newcastle has had a world class reputation for both its undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. But one of the things I've noticed is a gradual change in the subjects that undergraduates learn from when I did my degree back in the mid 1980s. Back then, we learnt software languages such as Pascal, C, 6502 assembler, 68000 assembler, did hardware design (e.g., VLSI) as well as operating systems (using Concurrent Euclid strangely enough) and network programming. For a software course, it covered a lot of depth and breadth: we were taught why things work as well as how they work.
These days, with the advent of languages such as Java, GUIs and even the Web, students are taught at a much higher level, with little or no experience of hardware or operating system principles /architecture. (Note, I've reason to believe that this is not purely a local phenomenon.) That's because industry needs a new set of skills. However, if you ever get a chance to talk to successful graduates these days, there's a definite lack of understanding about why things work at any level below the virtual machine. Now I'm not saying that everything I was taught all those years ago is still useful to me today, but it gave me (and others) an appreciation of so many different aspects that it is often surprising when something from left-field will be useful. I realise there's a trade-off to be made between time and subjects (there are a lot more topics today in computer science than there were 20 years ago), but I wonder: are we breeding a race of Eloi?
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
WWW 2006 CFP
============================================================
WWW2006 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
http://www2006.org/
============================================================
The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) invites
you to participate in the Fifteenth International World Wide Web
Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22nd-26th 2006.
The conference is the prime venue for dissemination of Web research
and is held in association with ACM, BCS, ECS, IFIP and W3C.
*** REFEREED PAPERS (Submission Deadline: November 4, 2005)
WWW2006 seeks original papers describing research in all areas of the
web. Topics include but are not limited to
# E* Applications: E-Communities, E-Learning, E-Commerce, E-Science,
E-Government and E-Humanities
# Browsers and User Interfaces
# Data Mining
# Hypermedia and Multimedia
# Performance, Reliability and Scalability
# Pervasive Web and Mobility
# Search
# Security, Privacy, and Ethics
# Semantic Web
# Web Engineering
# XML and Web Services
# Industrial Practice and Experience (Alternate track)
# Developing Regions (Alternate track)
Detailed descriptions of each of these tracks appear
at http://www2006.org/tracks/
Submissions should present original reports of substantive new
work. Papers should properly place the work within the field, cite
related work, and clearly indicate the innovative aspects of the work
and its contribution to the field. We will not accept any paper which,
at the time of submission, is under review for or has already been
published or accepted for publication in a journal or another
conference.
New for WWW2006: We solicit submissions of "position papers"
articulating high-level architectural visions, describing challenging
future directions, or critiquing current design wisdom. Accepted
position papers will be presented at the conference and appear in the
proceedings. Both "regular papers" and "position papers" are subject
to the same rigorous reviewing process, but the emphasis may differ
--- regular papers should present significant reproducible results
while position papers may present preliminary work rich in
implications for future research.
All papers will be peer-reviewed by reviewers from an International
Program Committee. Accepted papers will appear in the conference
proceedings published by the Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM), and will also be accessible to the general public via
http://www2006.org/. Authors of all accepted papers will be required
to transfer copyright to the IW3C2.
*** TUTORIALS (Submission Deadline: EXTENDED to November 1)
A program of tutorials will cover topics of current interest to web
design, development, services, operation, use, and evaluation. These
half and full-day sessions will be led by internationally recognized
experts and experienced instructors using prepared content. For more
information and submission details see
http://www2006.org/tutorials/ .
*** PANELS (Submission Deadline: November 4th 2005)
Panels provide an interactive forum that will engage both panelists
and the audience in lively discussion of important and often
controversial issues. For more information and submission details see
http://www2006.org/panels/.
*** POSTERS (Submission Deadline: February 14th 2006)
Posters provide a forum for late-breaking research, and facilitate
feedback in an informal setting. Posters are peer-reviewed. The poster
area provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to
present and demonstrate their recent web-related research, and to
obtain feedback from their peers in an informal setting. It gives
conference attendees a way to learn about innovative works in progress
in a timely and informal manner. Formatting and submission
requirements are available at http://www2006.org/posters/.
IMPORTANT DATES
Conference: May 22nd-26th 2006
Submission Deadlines:
Workshop proposal: October 1, 2005
Tutorial proposal: November 1, 2005
Paper (regular): November 4, 2005
Paper (alternate track): November 4, 2005
Panel proposal: November 4, 2005
Poster: February 14, 2006
Acceptance Notification:
Workshop proposal: November 1, 2005
Tutorial proposal: December 1, 2005
Paper (regular): January 27, 2006
Panel proposal: January 27, 2006
Paper (alternate track): February 10, 2006
Poster: March 21, 2006
WWW2006 COMMITTEES AND CHAIRS
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS
Leslie Carr (University of Southampton, UK)
Dave De Roure (University of Southampton, UK)
Arun Iyengar (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA)
PROGRAM COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS
Mike Dahlin (University of Texas, USA)
Carole Goble (University of Manchester, UK)
TRACK VICE CHAIRS AND DEPUTY VICE CHAIRS
E* Applications: E-Communities, E-Learning, E-Commerce, E-Science,
E-Government, and E-Humanities
E-Government, E-Humanities
Mark Manasse (Microsoft Research, USA)
Bertram Ludaescher (UC Davis/SDSC, USA)
Wolfgang Nejdl Universitat Hannover, Germany)
Browsers and User Interfaces
Yoelle Maarek (IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel)
Krishna Bharat (Google)
Data Mining
Ramakrishnan Srikant (IBM Almaden Research Center, USA)
Soumen Chakrabarti (IIT Bombay, India)
Hypermedia and Multimedia
Lloyd Rutledge (CWI, Netherlands)
Wei-Ying Ma (Microsoft Research, China)
Performance, Reliability and Scalability
Misha Rabinovich (AT&T, USA)
Jeff Chase (Duke University, USA)
Pervasive Web and Mobility
Venkat Padmanabhan (Microsoft, USA)
Jason Nieh (Columbia University, USA)
Search
Junghoo Cho (UCLA, USA)
Torsten Suel (Polytechnic University, USA)
Security, Privacy, and Ethics
Ari Juels (RSA, USA)
Angelos Keromytis (Columbia University, USA)
Semantic Web
Frank van Harmelen (Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands)
Mike Uschold (Boeing)
Web Engineering
David Lowe (UTS, Australia)
Luis Olsina (Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Argentina)
XML and Web Services
Mark Little (Arjuna, UK)
Santosh Shrivastava (University of Newcastle, UK)
Industrial Practice and Experience
Marc Najork (Microsoft Research, USA)
Andy Stanford-Clark (IBM Hursley Laboratory, UK)
Developing Regions
Eric Brewer (UC Berkeley, USA)
Krithi Ramamritham (IIT Bombay, India)
TUTORIAL AND WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS:
Robin Chen (AT&T, USA)
Ian Horrocks (University of Manchester, UK)
Irwin King (Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
PANELS CO-CHAIRS:
Marti Hearst (UC Berkeley, USA)
Prabhakar Raghavan (Yahoo!, USA)
DEVELOPER'S TRACK CHAIR
Jeremy Carroll (HP Labs, UK)
Mark Baker (Coactus)
POSTERS CHAIR
Bebo White (SLAC)
WWW2006 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
http://www2006.org/
============================================================
The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) invites
you to participate in the Fifteenth International World Wide Web
Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22nd-26th 2006.
The conference is the prime venue for dissemination of Web research
and is held in association with ACM, BCS, ECS, IFIP and W3C.
*** REFEREED PAPERS (Submission Deadline: November 4, 2005)
WWW2006 seeks original papers describing research in all areas of the
web. Topics include but are not limited to
# E* Applications: E-Communities, E-Learning, E-Commerce, E-Science,
E-Government and E-Humanities
# Browsers and User Interfaces
# Data Mining
# Hypermedia and Multimedia
# Performance, Reliability and Scalability
# Pervasive Web and Mobility
# Search
# Security, Privacy, and Ethics
# Semantic Web
# Web Engineering
# XML and Web Services
# Industrial Practice and Experience (Alternate track)
# Developing Regions (Alternate track)
Detailed descriptions of each of these tracks appear
at http://www2006.org/tracks/
Submissions should present original reports of substantive new
work. Papers should properly place the work within the field, cite
related work, and clearly indicate the innovative aspects of the work
and its contribution to the field. We will not accept any paper which,
at the time of submission, is under review for or has already been
published or accepted for publication in a journal or another
conference.
New for WWW2006: We solicit submissions of "position papers"
articulating high-level architectural visions, describing challenging
future directions, or critiquing current design wisdom. Accepted
position papers will be presented at the conference and appear in the
proceedings. Both "regular papers" and "position papers" are subject
to the same rigorous reviewing process, but the emphasis may differ
--- regular papers should present significant reproducible results
while position papers may present preliminary work rich in
implications for future research.
All papers will be peer-reviewed by reviewers from an International
Program Committee. Accepted papers will appear in the conference
proceedings published by the Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM), and will also be accessible to the general public via
http://www2006.org/. Authors of all accepted papers will be required
to transfer copyright to the IW3C2.
*** TUTORIALS (Submission Deadline: EXTENDED to November 1)
A program of tutorials will cover topics of current interest to web
design, development, services, operation, use, and evaluation. These
half and full-day sessions will be led by internationally recognized
experts and experienced instructors using prepared content. For more
information and submission details see
http://www2006.org/tutorials/ .
*** PANELS (Submission Deadline: November 4th 2005)
Panels provide an interactive forum that will engage both panelists
and the audience in lively discussion of important and often
controversial issues. For more information and submission details see
http://www2006.org/panels/.
*** POSTERS (Submission Deadline: February 14th 2006)
Posters provide a forum for late-breaking research, and facilitate
feedback in an informal setting. Posters are peer-reviewed. The poster
area provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to
present and demonstrate their recent web-related research, and to
obtain feedback from their peers in an informal setting. It gives
conference attendees a way to learn about innovative works in progress
in a timely and informal manner. Formatting and submission
requirements are available at http://www2006.org/posters/.
IMPORTANT DATES
Conference: May 22nd-26th 2006
Submission Deadlines:
Workshop proposal: October 1, 2005
Tutorial proposal: November 1, 2005
Paper (regular): November 4, 2005
Paper (alternate track): November 4, 2005
Panel proposal: November 4, 2005
Poster: February 14, 2006
Acceptance Notification:
Workshop proposal: November 1, 2005
Tutorial proposal: December 1, 2005
Paper (regular): January 27, 2006
Panel proposal: January 27, 2006
Paper (alternate track): February 10, 2006
Poster: March 21, 2006
WWW2006 COMMITTEES AND CHAIRS
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS
Leslie Carr (University of Southampton, UK)
Dave De Roure (University of Southampton, UK)
Arun Iyengar (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA)
PROGRAM COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS
Mike Dahlin (University of Texas, USA)
Carole Goble (University of Manchester, UK)
TRACK VICE CHAIRS AND DEPUTY VICE CHAIRS
E* Applications: E-Communities, E-Learning, E-Commerce, E-Science,
E-Government, and E-Humanities
E-Government, E-Humanities
Mark Manasse (Microsoft Research, USA)
Bertram Ludaescher (UC Davis/SDSC, USA)
Wolfgang Nejdl Universitat Hannover, Germany)
Browsers and User Interfaces
Yoelle Maarek (IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel)
Krishna Bharat (Google)
Data Mining
Ramakrishnan Srikant (IBM Almaden Research Center, USA)
Soumen Chakrabarti (IIT Bombay, India)
Hypermedia and Multimedia
Lloyd Rutledge (CWI, Netherlands)
Wei-Ying Ma (Microsoft Research, China)
Performance, Reliability and Scalability
Misha Rabinovich (AT&T, USA)
Jeff Chase (Duke University, USA)
Pervasive Web and Mobility
Venkat Padmanabhan (Microsoft, USA)
Jason Nieh (Columbia University, USA)
Search
Junghoo Cho (UCLA, USA)
Torsten Suel (Polytechnic University, USA)
Security, Privacy, and Ethics
Ari Juels (RSA, USA)
Angelos Keromytis (Columbia University, USA)
Semantic Web
Frank van Harmelen (Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands)
Mike Uschold (Boeing)
Web Engineering
David Lowe (UTS, Australia)
Luis Olsina (Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Argentina)
XML and Web Services
Mark Little (Arjuna, UK)
Santosh Shrivastava (University of Newcastle, UK)
Industrial Practice and Experience
Marc Najork (Microsoft Research, USA)
Andy Stanford-Clark (IBM Hursley Laboratory, UK)
Developing Regions
Eric Brewer (UC Berkeley, USA)
Krithi Ramamritham (IIT Bombay, India)
TUTORIAL AND WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS:
Robin Chen (AT&T, USA)
Ian Horrocks (University of Manchester, UK)
Irwin King (Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
PANELS CO-CHAIRS:
Marti Hearst (UC Berkeley, USA)
Prabhakar Raghavan (Yahoo!, USA)
DEVELOPER'S TRACK CHAIR
Jeremy Carroll (HP Labs, UK)
Mark Baker (Coactus)
POSTERS CHAIR
Bebo White (SLAC)
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Web Services sessions
It was funny and gratifying the number of times I either heard about the need for Web Services sessions or talked with people about that subject during HPTS, and from some widely diverse individuals. No one I talked to disputed the requirement and everyone wanted standardisation. Maybe we're not doing a good enough job of advertising or it's an affect of insular company policies, but only about 50% of them had heard of WS-Context. Fortunately it didn't take long to describe what it is and to convert more people to The Cause. Let's hope it leads to some wider adoption of the technology.
One of the common (though not exclusive) themes that seemed to lead people to WS-Context was trying to use Reference Parameters and WS-Addressing in general, to achieve sessions with more than one participant and which spanned multiple invocations. It reminded me a lot of the paper we wrote on Web Services sessions. Greg, Anish, Hal and I have been finishing up the two papers on the subject that were accepted for XML 2005 and ECOWS 2005. More good opportunities to spread the word.
One of the common (though not exclusive) themes that seemed to lead people to WS-Context was trying to use Reference Parameters and WS-Addressing in general, to achieve sessions with more than one participant and which spanned multiple invocations. It reminded me a lot of the paper we wrote on Web Services sessions. Greg, Anish, Hal and I have been finishing up the two papers on the subject that were accepted for XML 2005 and ECOWS 2005. More good opportunities to spread the word.
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