Context Coupling Techniques for Context-aware Web Service Systems: An Overview
Quan Z. Sheng, Jian Yu, Schahram Dustdar · 2010
Abstract Distributed servi es in a ontext-aware Web servi e system or in a servi e omposition need to ouple ontext information from dierent sour es in order to be able to interpret ontext information. Su h interpreta- tion is a prerequisite before servi es an adapt themselves to be ontext-aware. However, ontext oupling in ontext-aware Web servi e systems is a omplex issue. It is related not only to how we represent and transfer ontext infor- mation among Web servi es, but also to how we support the ontext storage, and how we ensure se urity and priva y issues of ontext information. Con- text oupling te hniques for Web servi e systems will be dierent from that of tightly oupled systems be ause, with Web servi e systems, ontext in- formation is typi ally shared a ross the boundaries of organizations that host Web servi es. This hapter aims at presenting an overview of ontext oupling te hniques, their related issues, and their impli ation for a ontext-aware Web servi e system. Our approa h is to study existing te hniques implemented in urrent systems, to present open ontext oupling issues in urrent and future ontext-aware Web servi e systems, and to suggest further resear h dire - tions.