Service-Oriented Computing: Agents, Semantics, and Engineering

Electronic contracting, based on explicit representation of different parties’ commitments, is a promising way to specifying and regulating behaviour in distributed business applications. A key part of contract-based system is a process through which the actual behaviour of individual parties is checked for conformance with contracts set to govern such behaviour. Such checking requires that relevant information on the behaviour of the parties, both with respect to the application processes they execute and to managing their contractual relationships, is captured. The process of collecting all such information, termed contract observation, is the subject of this paper. First, we describe general properties and requirements of such an observation process; afterwards, we discuss specifics of realising contract observation in web services environments. Finally, we show how contract observation has been implemented as part of the IST-CONTRACT web services framework for contract-based systems.