HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF SCIENCE

Department of Computer Science Colloquium
2012 Series

Service-oriented Computing and (Multi-)agent Systems: Can the Latter Serve the First?

Prof. Rainer Unland
Professor, Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB)
University of Duisburg-Essen

Date: December 10, 2012 (Monday)
Time: 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Venue: AAB610, Academic and Administration Building, Baptist University Road Campus

Abstract
Today’s world not only has become more complex but also much more dynamic. From the business point of view this requires an IT that is not only affordable but also highly flexible and adaptable. In order to achieve this, the idea of software services composition (also called choreography and orchestration) came up. Here, enterprise applications are assembled from comparatively simple pre-existing building blocks that are loosely integrated in an efficient and meaningful way - especially tailored to the specific needs of the underlying business process. This leads to highly distributed and fluid software systems that may even cut across the boundaries of enterprises.

Software services are typically designed, built and deployed independently from each other, however, are meant to follow common standards to enable dynamic interoperability and loose coupling. If we take a look at what SOA is expecting to deliver we find, among others, features like flexibility, adaptability, autonomy, cooperation, or interoperability. However, if we take a look at current implementations of SOA it becomes clear that especially the mentioned features are far away from being realized in a satisfactory way yet.

Implementations are usually static, provide comparatively little fault-tolerance and lack dynamism, versatility, and adaptivity. Moreover, it takes substantial human efforts to build such systems. This is where agent technology can come into the picture.

This talk will present some preliminary results which were, among others, achieved during a recent so-called Dagstuhl seminar where researchers from all over the world met for one week to discuss about the topic of this talk.

Biography
Rainer Unland is a full professor in computer science at the Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB) at University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) where he heads the chair Data Management Systems and Knowledge Representation. He has authored, co-authored and edited numerous publications, journal editions and (text)books in the areas of non-standard/object-oriented database management systems, XML and database systems, object-oriented software development, component-based and aspect-oriented software engineering, advanced transaction management, computer supported cooperative work, (distributed) artificial intelligence, especially Multi-Agent Systems, and industrials informatics. Moreover, he has served as Chair and/or PC member for more than 150 national and international conferences, workshops, and symposia. He is co-founder of the annual International German Conference on Multi-Agent Systems Technology (MATES) and the annual International conference SABRE that serves as an umbrella conference for topics related to software engineering, multi-agent system, Grid computing, and Web-Services and the Internet. Moreover, he serves on several editorial boards of computer science related journals, most noticeably as editor-in-chief of the IOS “Multiagent and Grid Systems” (MAGS) journal (together with Hua Tianfield) and as deputy editor of the El sevier “Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence” (EAAI) journal. His current areas of interest are Non-Standard Database Management Systems, Multi-agent Systems, and Service-oriented Computing.

********* ALL INTERESTED ARE WELCOME ***********
(For enquiry, please contact Computer Science Department at 3411 2385)

http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/v1/?page=seminars&id=220
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