Executable behavior delegation in web services and ontology exchange systems

Web services and semantic web systems suffer from a number of practical problems, notably the difficulty of maintaining inter-operability. We propose a new principle for the design of such systems: the delegation of executable behavior. This principle leads to an alternative framework in which the operation environment, rather than XML messaging, is standardized. The operation environment can then execute remotely delegated behavior. Such delegation is achieved in three classes of web systems: dynamic script delegation systems, plug-in delegation systems, and ontology exchange systems. Examples of each class are presented here. An application of the proposed principle to use cases of web crawlers and software agents is discussed and an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages for the different types of system architectures is included. While the class of traditional web services is populated very well with existing systems, the three classes of executable behavior delegation systems are under-populated. However all the presented examples of executable behavior delegation systems have significant advantages over traditional web services. Thus it is expected that future trends in web system architectures will be seen as a migration from the class of traditional web services to the three classes of systems with executable behavior delegation.