ICEBE 2008 Keynote I

Web services are featured with application, platform and provider independence. The Web services technology has had quick evolution and broad acceptance during the past seven years, and has been widely applied in developing industrial applications, particularly Web-based e-business applications. Software agents are characterized with key features including autonomy, cooperation, and proactiveness. They have been extensively studied for almost two decades. They are evolving slowly (compared with Web services), and are adopted progressively by the industry. Since each of these two technologies has its own advantages and disadvantages, integrating them by taking their advantages and avoiding their shortcomings has been an active research topic since the Web services technology emerged. This talk presents our first-hand R&D experience on the integration of service-oriented computing (Web services in particular) and software agent technologies with applications to e-engineering, collaborative design, multidisciplinary design optimization, distributed manufacturing, and enterprise collaboration. We also discuss future trends, R&D opportunities and challenges in this area.