CFP: AAMAS Workshop on Web Services and Agent-Based Eng. (WSABE'04)

From: Lawrence Cavedon (lcavedon@csli.Stanford.EDU)
Date: 01/08/04

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                    C A L L   F O R   P A P E R S
    
    
                         Second Workshop on
    
            WEB SERVICES AND AGENT-BASED ENGINEERING (WSABE)
    
                    http://agentus.com/WSABE2004/
    
    
                          to be held at the
    
             The Third International Joint Conference on
               Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems
                              AAMAS-2004
    
                http://satchmo.cs.columbia.edu/aamas04/
    
                             New York City
                  19 or 20 July 2004 (to be decided)
                   -------------------------------
    
    
    DESCRIPTION
    
    Web services are a rapidly expanding approach to building distributed
    software systems across networks such as the Internet. A Web service
    is an operation typically addressed via a URI, declaratively described
    using widely accepted standards, and accessed via platform-independent
    XML-based messages. The development of industry standards, products,
    and tools for supporting Web service system development is proceeding
    at a very rapid rate. Standards exist for service discovery (UDDI),
    description (WSDL), coordination (BPML, BPEL4WS, WSCI), and
    communication (SOAP).
    
    While a Web service need not fulfill all characteristics of a strong
    definition of agency, the Web services approach to building complex
    software systems bears many similarities to the engineering process of
    a collection of software agents. In particular, large systems are
    assembled from distributed heterogeneous software components providing
    specialized services and communicating using agreed-upon protocols.
    Similarly to certain multi-agent engineering paradigms, the design
    process of such systems focuses on the declarative characterization of
    the agents' capabilities and on a message-based paradigm of
    interoperation.
    
    The area of Web Services offers much of real interest to the Multi
    Agent community, including similarities in system architectures,
    powerful tools, and the focus on issues such as security and
    reliability. Similarly, techniques developed in the Multi Agent
    research community promise to have a strong impact on this fast
    growing technology.
    
    This is the second AAMAS workshop, the first having been held at
    AAMAS'03 in Melbourne, Australia: see http://agentus.com/WSABE2003.
    
    
    TOPICS
    
    The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the recent and significant
    developments in the general area of Web Services and Software Agents
    and to promote cross-fertilization of techniques. We seek original and
    high quality submissions that apply Multi Agent research to Web
    Service frameworks and vice versa in innovative and interesting ways.
    
    Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
    * Architectures and infrastructure for distributed agent- or service-
      based frameworks;
    * Agent-based modelling and design techniques to address problems in
      web service system development;
    * Process modeling (e.g. workflow-, planning-, logic-based approaches)
      for service/agent composition, orchestration and coordination;
    * Multi-agent techniques to describing, organizing, and discovering
      web services;
    * Use of context and conversations for Web services composition;
    * Ontology or semantic-based approaches to describing and classifying
      services and capabilities;
    * Using speech acts, performatives, and conversational models for web
      service specification and coordination;
    * Use of agent-based approaches for web service personalization;
    * Security support for agents and services, and agent-based approaches
      to service security;
    * Transactional integrity for long-running transactions in service-
      or agent-systems;
    * Intelligent matchmaking and service brokering;
    * Pricing and payment models for Web services;
    * Web service agreements, legal contracts, and social commitments
      between trading partners;
    * Interoperability of web services;
    * In-depth critiques of web service standards, comparison to agent
      community standards, and their adequacy for agent based solutions;
    * Services and the semantic web, including initiatives such as OWL-S
      (formerly DAML-S);
    * Infrastructure and architectures for M-services;
    * Use of web service infrastructure and tools for building multi-agent
      systems.
    
    
    SUBMISSION and PUBLICATION
    
    Submission is to be done electronically: instructions will be posted
    to the WSABE'04 wepage closer to the submission deadline. Contact
    Zakaria Maamar (zakaria.maamar@zu.ac.ae) for help if required.
    
    Two types of submissions are available: regular submissions of length
    3000-4000 words (approx. 8-12 printed pages) and position papers of
    length 1200-2000 words (approx. 4-6 printed pages). Position papers
    (and some regular papers) may be presented as part of themed dicussion
    panels; preference may be given to position papers that take strong
    or challenging positions on important emergent topics.
    
    Submissions will be peer-reviewed by multiple reviewers. Selection
    criteria will include: relevance, significance, impact, originality,
    technical soundness, quality of presentation. Some preference may also
    be given to papers which address emergent trends or important common
    themes, or which enhance balance of workshop topics.
    
    Since this is associated with the AAMAS conference, accepted papers
    must be of real relevance to the multi-agent research community.
    
    Accepted papers will be made available in electronic form prior to the
    workshop and a printed collection will be available at the workshop.
    The WSABE2003 workshop formed the basis of a volume in Kluwer's MASA
    Series (http://www.wkap.nl/prod/s/MASA); the proceedings of WSABE2004
    may also be used as the basis of a published volume, subject to
    appropriate quality.
    
    
    WORKSHOP FORMAT and ATTENDANCE
    
    The workshop will aim to foster discussion and develop action outcomes
    on key issues relating to designing and building systems using Web
    Services and Software Agents. As well as regular presentations, a
    number of discussion panels on identified important themes are also
    planned.
    
    Attendance may be restricted by the venue. A separate call for
    participation will be distributed at about the time of acceptance
    notification. If attendance needs to be limited then preference will
    be given first to presenters and next to other authors who submitted.
    
    
    IMPORTANT DATES
    
    Submissions due              April 1, 2004
    Notifications sent           May 1, 2004
    Final papers due             May 20, 2004
    Workshop                     July 19 or 20, 2004
    
    
    WORKSHOP COMMITTEES
    
    Organizing committee
    
    Zakaria Maamar       Zayed University, UAE        (point of contact)
    Boualem Benatallah   University of New South Wales, Australia
    Lawrence Cavedon     Stanford University, USA
    Tim Finin            University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
    David Martin         SRI International, USA
    Katia Sycara         Carnegie Mellon University, USA
    
    
    Program committee
    
    M. Brian Blake       Georgetown University, USA
    Fabio Casati         Hewlett Packard, USA
    Adam Cheyer          SRI International, USA
    Jonathan Dale        Fujitsu, USA
    Marlon Dumas         Queensland University of Technology, Australia
    Larbi Esmahi         Athabasca University, Canada
    Steve Goschnick      University of Melbourne, Australia
    Mike Huhns           University of South Carolina, USA
    Jarle Hulaas         Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
    Patrick Hung         Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
    Ahmed Kamel          North Dakota State University, USA
    Manolis Koubarakis   Technical University of Crete, Greece
    Mikko Laukkanen      TeliaSonera, Finland
    Seng Loke            Monash University, Australia
    Margaret Lyell       The MITRE Corporation, USA
    Qusay Mahmoud        University of Guelph, Canada
    Wathiq Mansoor       Zayed University, UAE
    Soraya Kouadri Mostefaoui    University of Fribourg, Switzerland
    Anne Ngu             Southwest Texas State University, USA
    Julian Padget        University of Bath, UK
    Giovanna Petrone     University of Torino, Italy
    Debbie Richards      Macquarie University, Australia
    Elhadi Shakshuki     Acadia University, Canada
    Weiming Shen         NRC-London, Canada
    Quan Z. Sheng        University of New South Wales, Australia
    Munindar Singh       North Carolina State University, USA
    Eleni Stroulia       University of Alberta, Canada
    Jeff Sutherland      PatientKeeper, Inc., USA
    Amund Tveit          Norwegian University of Science and Technology
    Steve Wilmott        Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
    Soe-Tsyr Yuan        National Chengchi University, Taiwan
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