A situation calculus based approach to dynamic management of e-business services

In the era of e-businesses, the traditional business services are greatly challenged by the ever-increasing demands from customers with various backgrounds and personalities. Large numbers of new e-businesses are driven by the needs of customers. The existing dynamics inherent in the customer needs require the corresponding dynamic management of services. Attempting to respond to customers in a rapid and intelligent way, this paper proposes a situation calculus based approach for dynamically managing e-Business services in the ubiquitous environment. By employing the formalism of the situation calculus to enable intelligence and automation, the approach can implement the functions of service automatic composition and model verification. These functions will improve the degree of customer-orientation and enable fast responsiveness in the emerging e-service systems. This paper is extended from the version presented at 2007 International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management (IC-SSSM’07). Bing Li is a PhD candidate in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management in Tokyo Institute of Technology. He got his master degree in Electrical Engineering (2003) and double bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering (2000) and Business Administration (2000) in Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. He worked as a research student in Fuji Xerox Visiting Fellowship Program (2001-2002). His research interests include information systems and development, business process modeling and verification, e-Business service systems and management, application of the situation calculus in business systems. Junichi Iijima is a professor of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management in Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is the former chair of this department and the current president of the Japan Society for Management Information (JASMIN). His major research interests are Information Systems Integration, e-Business and Systems Theory. He is also a member of editorial boards of some international journals and program committees of many international conferences. He received his Doctorate in Engineering from Department of Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1983.