Ad-hoc Service Research Articles

Log-based mining techniques applied to Web service composition reengineering

Web service compositions are becoming more and more complex, involving numerous interacting ad-hoc services. These services are often implemented as business processes themselves. By analysing such complex web service compositions one is able to better understand, control and eventually re-design them. Our contribution to this problem is a mining algorithm, based on a statistical technique to discover composite web service patterns from execution logs. Our approach is characterised by a “local” pattern’s discovery that covers partial results through a dynamic programming algorithm. Those locally discovered patterns are then composed iteratively until the composite Web service is discovered. The analysis of the disparities between the discovered model and the initial ad-hoc composite model (delta-analysis) enables initial design gaps to be detected and thus to re-engineer the initial Web service composition.

Proposal of a service delivery integration index of home care for older persons: application in several European cities.

To propose an integration index of home care delivery to older persons, to study its validity and to apply it to home care services of European cities. Home care delivery integration was based on two dimensions referring to process-centred integration and organisational structure approach. Items considered as part of both dimensions according to an expert consensus (face validity) were extracted from a standardised questionnaire used in "Aged in Home care" (AdHoc) study to capture basic characteristics of home care services. Their summation leads to a services' delivery integration index. This index was applied to AdHoc services. A factor analysis was computed in order to empirically test the validity of the theoretical constructs. The plot of the settings was performed. Application of the index ranks home care services in four groups according to their score. Factor analysis identifies a first factor which opposes working arrangement within service to organisational structure bringing together provisions for social care. A second factor corresponds to basic nursing care and therapies. Internal consistency for those three domains ranges from 0.78 to 0.93. When plotting the different settings different models of service delivery appear. The proposed index shows that behind a total score several models of care delivery are hidden. Comparison of service delivery integration should take into account this heterogeneity.

Size and Performance of Local Clusters of Firms

The aim of this paper is to propose an econometric application in order to detect the factors that affect the size and the performance of local clusters of small and medium firms (SMEs) such as industrial districts. Our purpose is to extend some basic issues of models in economic geography in order to account for further micro components that seem fostering the rise and performances of local clusters. We succeed in stating that, in addition to the home market effect and transport costs, firms belonging to industrial districts improve their competitiveness by exploiting some assets, such those involved by ad-hoc services, generated inside the district by the co-operation among firms. Moreover looking for fixed effects in the study of firms' competitiveness allows us to determine that sectorial differences do not affect substantially the behavior and performance of SMEs.

An open information networking architecture for distributed multimedia systems

AbstractThis paper proposes a novel networking architecture on a distributed processing environment (DPE) for various multimedia services suitable to high‐speed networks and for the flexible and rapid introduction services in an open networking environment. Furthermore, the proposed architecture is realized as a testbed. This architecture has the following features: (1) the use of DPE for the rapid introduction of service to users and for the flexible management of multimedia network resources; (2) the definition of the service session and connection management for efficient managing functions of the session and connection; and (3) the introduction of any special service with the use of an Ad Hoc service manager. The interfaces scheme between a service session manager that is implemented on a DPE platform and an Ad Hoc service manager is an important aspect in an open networking environment. A CSCW application is given as an example of an Ad Hoc service manager.