2nd Middleware for Service Oriented Computing

MW4SOC Workshop of the
8th International Middleware Conference 2007

Previous year:
1st MW4SOC 2006
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http://middleware2007.ics.uci.edu/
November 26 - 30, 2007
Newport Beach, California, USA

 

Program and slides - Workshop Committee - Proceedings

Workshop Overview

Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is a computing paradigm broadly pushed by vendors, utilizing services to support the rapid development of distributed applications in heterogeneous environments. The visionary promise of SOC is a world of cooperating services being loosely coupled to flexibly create dynamic business processes and agile applications that may span organisations and computing platforms and can nevertheless adapt quickly and autonomously to changes of requirements or context. Consequently, the subject of Service Oriented Computing is vast and enormously complex, spanning many concepts and technologies that find their origins in diverse disciplines like Workflow Management Systems, Component Based Computing, "classical" Web applications, and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) including Message Oriented Middleware. In addition, there is a strong need to merge technology with an understanding of business processes and organizational structures, a combination of recognizing an enterprise's pain points and the potential solutions that can be applied to correct them.

Middleware, on the other hand, is defined as the software layer in a distributed computing system that lies between the operating system and the applications on each site of the system (ObjectWeb consortium). Middleware is the enabling technology of system and enterprise application integration (EAI) and therefore it clearly and evidently plays a key role for SOC.

While the immediate need of middleware support for Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) is evident, current approaches and solutions mostly fall short by primarily providing support for the EAI aspect of SOC only and do not sufficiently address composition support, service management and monitoring. Moreover, quality properties (in particular dependability and security) need to be addressed not only by interfacing and communication standards, but also in terms of integrated middleware support. But what makes these issues so different in a SOA setting? Why - for instance - is traditional middleware support for transaction processing different to transaction processing in SOA, reflecting different types of atomicity needs? One answer lies in the administrative heterogeneity, the loose coupling between coarse-grained operations and long-running interactions, high dynamicity, and the required flexibility during run-time. Recently, massive-scale and mobility were added to the challenges for Middleware for SOC.

However, loose coupling is not always the best approach to solve a particular problem. In order to temporarily allow for a stronger (traditional) form of coupling (like group membership agreement or atomic transaction), the middleware also has to provide explicit and configurable means to change between different strengths of coupling and various communication paradigms. This will enable service-based applications to take the best from both worlds by dynamically adjusting the interactions between the composed services.

The highly dynamic modularity and need for flexible integration of services (e.g. Web service implementations) may require new middleware architectures, protocols, and services. These considerations also lead to the question to what extent service-orientation at the middleware layer itself is beneficial (or not). Recently emerging "Middleware as service" offerings, from providers like Amazon or from the open source community, support this trend towards "infrastructure services" that can be purchased and consumed over the Internet. However, this model may not be suitable for all kinds of middleware functions, including those addressing dependability (availability, reliability, integrity, safety, maintainability). Providing end-to-end properties and addressing cross-cutting concerns in a cross-organizational SOA is a particular challenge and the limits and benefits thereof have still to be investigated.

Program and presented slides

9h00-10h45: Session 1:

10h45-11h00: Coffee break

11h00-12h30: Session 2:

12h30-13h30: Lunch break

13h30-15h00: Session 3

15h00-15h30: Coffee break

15h30-16h30: Session 4


Workshop co-chairs

Karl M. Göschka (chair)
Vienna University of Technology
Institute of Information Systems
Distributed Systems Group
Argentinierstrasse 8/184-1
A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Phone: +43 664 180 6946
Fax: +43 664 188 6275
Karl dot Goeschka (at) tuwien dot ac dot at

Schahram Dustdar
Vienna University of Technology
Institute of Information Systems
Distributed Systems Group
Argentinierstrasse 8/184-1
A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Phone: +43 58801 18414
Fax: +43 58801 18491
Dustdar (at) infosys dot tuwien dot ac dot at

Frank Leymann
University of Stuttgart
Institute of Architecture of Application Systems
Universitätsstraße 38
D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Phone: +43 58801 18414
Fax: +43 58801 18491
Frank dot Leymann (at) informatik dot uni-stuttgart dot de

Vladimir Tosic
National ICT Australia (NICTA)
Empirical Software Engineering
Eveleigh, NSW 1430, Australia
vladat (at) computer dot org

Organisational Chair

Johannes Osrael
Vienna University of Technology
Institute of Information Systems
Distributed Systems Group
Argentinierstrasse 8/184-1
A-1040 Vienna, Austria
phone: +43 1 58801 58409
fax: +43 1 58801 18491
mw4soc@dedisys.org


Program Committee