Software Agent Technologies Integration With Web Services - Literature review Example

Software Agent Technologies Integration with Web Services Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. Discussion 4 Foundations 4 New Directions 6 References 9 I. Introduction This paper examines the literature on web services, software agent technologies, and their integration, focusing on new areas of research relating to their integration, and areas of further study. The literature notes that technologies tied to web services enable one to automate the way one discovers, invokes, and composes services. Software agents, meanwhile, are singular in their provision of mediation capabilities between the goals of the users and the invocation of web services. Software agents/entities are characterized by their autonomy in the discovery, invocation, composition, and monitoring of web services, outside of the interventions of users. They do these without the users intervening. Apart from these, the software agents are said to be able to deal effectively with the dynamic nature of the environments for web services. Problems inherent in the separate treatment of web services on the one hand and software agents on the other have the effect of limiting the way they function, when those two are considered in their individual aspects. This is because web services have accepted standards, and within those standards software agents are marked by compatibility issues. The older literature proposes integration frameworks between web services on the one hand, and the incompatible protocols of software agents, via the use of middle ware to address those incompatibilities, and acting as the middleman to mediate the interactions between the two. The differences in the nature of both are handled interactively by the proposed middle ware, recognizing that though web services are pretty straightforward in their mechanisms of operations, software agents are marked by autonomy, proactive and intelligent action, and a higher level of complexity of action and reaction to events relating to web services. The idea is the middle ware taking care of the complex interactions and the incompatibilities between the two, in ways that allow each to operate without modifications. The question is how else has theory and practice evolved, relative to the integration of web services on the one hand, and software agents on the other? (Ketel n.d., pp. 1-5). Taking a step back, the large role of software agents in the future of services on the web has been identified in academic circles as early as 2002, with the introduction of the notion of the evolution of the world wide web into an entity that is more friendly to users, and makes larger and larger uses of progress in the creation of the semantic web. The thinking even then was that web services would play an increasingly large role in the evolution of the web, and that web services themselves would further evolve to take on aspects that are akin to autonomous software agents. Systems that are deemed as consisting of multiple agents are the preferred conceptions of the Internet and the web services that are to form the backbone of the future web (Huhns 2003). II. Discussion Foundations There is work from the standards front to bring IEEE standards to bear on some of the most important advances in both software agents technologies and web services technologies as well as their integration. The work from 2007, for instance, can be gleaned as providing the foundation on which further progress on these can be assessed and measured. As early as 2007, for instance, there has been recognition of the central role of web services in being able to provide the functionalities needed for many computing tasks based on the web. On the other hand, there have also been advances in the understanding of the use of software agents that web services can be further enhanced with the extension of functionalities of such software agents into the latter. The escalation in the number and quality of endeavors tied to promoting standards in both arenas indicate the intense interest in both and in their further integration. From 2007 there have been serious discussions and proposals, as well as emerging theories, relating to the consolidation of those various emerging approaches into unified specifications for the merging of software agent systems compliant with so-called IEEE FIPA standards on the one hand, and web services compliant to W3C standards, on the other. Together, the joint work on these two, and their integration, have been touted to form the backbone of a so-called integration of web services and software agent specifications (Greenwood et al. 2007, pp. 1407-1413). Literature exists that deals with the use of intelligent software agents to interface with web services in critical booking contexts, such as in the case of tourism applications involving the booking of tickets online (Sujatha 2010). There is also earlier literature that details the use of software agents and web services in the formation of virtual enterprises, with the software agents implementing the virtual enterprises, and making use of an architecture where multiple agents interact with each other named AGORA. Software agent protocols of interaction are used in their conception to implement the virtual enterprises as software agents, together with web services and technologies tied to the semantic web (Petersen et al. 2008). Elsewhere, theories and practice relating to autonomous software agents and their application in web services are being extended into the mobile space, with the extension and development of theories and paradigms for so-called mobile software agents to be used in conjunction with semantic web and semantic web services. These are undertaken in the context of mobile devices being access points for the Internet and for web services in general (Baousis et al. n.d.). Literature from 2008, meanwhile, have detailed proposals for architectures that are termed decoupled, which allows for the inter-operation of web services on the one hand and software agents on the other, making use of extant technologies at that time. The use of common, in-use technologies was aimed at a practical implementation of solutions to real-world problems, with tangible business and operational benefits. The architecture, as implemented in one paper, is termed EWSA, for embedded web services architecture, which in theory had in it the necessary conditions for the use of software agents in applications for the enterprise. The common-technology under girding of this framework and implementation is detailed in the following terms (Vadivelou 2008): The Web service architecture is widely understood as “a software system” designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machineprocessable format (specifically WSDL (W3C, 2001)). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP-messages (W3C, 2003a), typically conv eyed using HTTP with an XML (W3C, 2000) serialization in conjunction with other Web related standards” (Vadivelou 2008) New Directions As can be gleaned from the preceding discussion of studies relating to the use of software agents and web services, the trend has been toward the use of such underlying technologies to implement and evolve multl-agent systems, with software agents being used in architectures that leverage web services to enable new paradigms for computing in such multiple agent settings (Vadivelou 2008; Sujatha 2010; Baousis et al. n.d.). This trend continues all the way to 2012, with discussions on multiple agent systems being suffused with technologies tied to web services, in appropriate architectures, to hurdle problems with inter-operating those disparate elements of an information technology infrastructure, as is used in different real-world services contexts. The implementation of such an architecture is detailed in the following terms (Karaenke et al. 2012): The architecture integrates Web service technology into multiagent systems to overcome the technical interoperability problem of current multiagent systems in the fast growing service-oriented environments. We integrate Semantic Web technology to make multiagent systems semantically interoperable. We address the problem of interoperability regarding interfaces, messaging protocols, data exchanged, and security whilst considering a dynamic e-business environment. The proposed architecture enables service virtualization, secure service access across organizational boundaries, service-to-agent communication, and OWL reasoning within agents (Karaenke et al. 2012). There are also emerging perspectives of the use of software agents and web services in the context of the continuing movement of applications away from their traditional silos and individual installations and into the cloud, enabling a new wave of innovation and research surrounding the use of such web services in the context of cloud computing, and how those impact the use of software agents to interact with cloud-enabled web services. Such will become increasingly relevant and fraught with new challenges with the proliferation and increasing use of mobile devices to access services and the cloud. The emerging literature makes mention of the use of open architectures and open protocols to implement these newly evolving paradigms of the interactions between software agents and cloud-enabled web services (Ardissono et al. 2012): The management of such collaborative service clouds is enabled by an open architecture, which provides services and data synchronization coupled with a set of core applications supporting essential aspects of the functionality of the environment, such as workspace awareness, user groups definition, and user cooperation to the management of shared tasks involving the usage of heterogeneous services (Ardissono et al. 2012). One sees too, that the convergence of cloud computing, web services, and software agents is giving rise to new paradigms for understanding and implementing applications and the enablement of applications in this evolving space (Yassine 2011). The same message is to bed had from literature looking at cloud computing and the role that underlying nuts and bolts technologies such as software agents and the use of appropriate architecture, the message being that true evolution of the web to include hosted applications will have profound implications for how those nuts and bolts will have to evolve and work together in order for the benefits of such technological advancements to lead to improvements in productivity and the ability of people to work effectively in those contexts. One of the key insights is that in the real world, the hype of theory and promise with regard to interoperability for instance, will have to give way to pragmatic considerations about what works and how well things work in actuality. This means hunkering down to work in order for software agents and web services, for instance, to actually work together properly. The preceding literature notes that such is not easy, and needs extensive work to achieve. What is clear is that the literature will have to evolve too, from a theoretical point of view, harnessing the progress that has been made before, to solve the remaining problems in interoperability and the like. Service orientation, multiple agents, and the web are all to be harnessed to work on cloud computing platforms that are meant to scale, and are meant to handle complex interactions mamong different agents. This is how the future is shaping up, not less simple and less complicated than what came before, but on the contrary, promises to multiply in complexity and criticality as cloud computing takes an increasingly larger slice of the attention of the world (Panetto et al. 2011). References Ardissono, L. et al. (2012). Integration of Cloud Services for Web Collaboration: A User-Centered Perspective. Models for Capitalizing on Web Engineering Advancements. [online] Avaiable at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Baousis, V. et al. (n.d.). Semantic Web Services and Mobile Agents integration for efficient Mobile Services. University of Athens. [online] Avaiable at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Greenwood, D. et al. (2007). The IEEE FIPA Approach to Integrating Software Agents and Web Services. The Sixth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 07). [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Huhns, M. (2003). Software Agents: The Future of Web Services. Agent Technology Workshops. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Karaenke, P. et al. (2012). Inter-Organizational Interoperabiity through Integration of Multiagent, Web Service, and Semantic Web Technologies. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing 98. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Ketel, M. (n.d.). Integration of Software Technologies and Web Services. School of Information Technology, University of Baltimore. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Panetto, H. et al. (2011). Industry Case Studies Program and Industrial and Business Applications of Semantic Web Technologies, Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences, On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2011 Workshops, Confederated International Workshops and Posters,, Hersonissou, Crete, Greece. HAL. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Petersen, S. et al. (2008). Virtual Enterprise Formation supported by Agents and Web Services. Agents and Web Service Technologies in Virtual Enterprises [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Sujatha, S. (2010). Paradigm for Integrating Web Services and agent technology with RSA and Digigeo. IEEE Explore Digital Library. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Vadivelou, G. (2008). Multi-Agent Systems Integration in Enterprise Environments Using Web Services. Moble and Pervasive Computing. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Yassine, A. (2011). Future communication services: Application enablement and the role of software agent architectures. Bell Labs Technical Journal. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 September 2012] Read More