Web Services-Based Composite Business Process Management

Web services are software applications that provide specific services on the Web and are accessible through standards-based protocols and interfaces, which allow cross-organizational composition of Web services into complex e-business processes. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are negotiated between service consumers and service providers to ensure Quality of Service of composite processes. While server-side management is crucial to ensure SLAs, client-side management is becoming increasingly important to facilitate the various steps for service composition. The book presents the two sides of Web service management, some basic concepts, standards, major tasks and challenges in composite process management including an extensive study of the current practices to highlight their limitations, which finally leads to the definition of a Comprehensive Service Management Middleware for autonomic process management. To connect the two sides of service management, SLA negotiation and monitoring are given special focus in the book through detailed discussion of the current work and presentation of the Negotiation Broker and Performance Monitor frameworks.