New Directions in Sofware Engineering; Liber Amicorum Maurice verhelst

The internet is radically changing the ways in wich enterprises interact with each other in value networkts. However, today's existing software technology doesn't adequately address the need to create highly complex interactions among multiple business partners. The arrival of web service promises to bring changes in current internet technology. Web services are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located and invoked across the web. They perform functions that can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes. Using web services, an information system will be able to communicate much more easily with a partner's information system than in the past. Web services provide the techtnical foundation that companies need, to adopt the new operating style required by a dynamic business world: 'plug-and-play e-business'. By 'plugand-play' we mean that companies can integrate themselves seamlessly into each other's businesses with little or no software efforts and without the protracted business cycles of the past in order to meet customers demands.