An Ontological Framework for Dynamic Coordination

Coordination is the process of managing the possible interactions between activities and processes; a mechanism to handle such interactions is known as a coordination regime. A successful coordination regime will prevent negative interactions occurring (e.g., by preventing two processes from simultaneously accessing a non-shareable resource), and wherever possible will facilitate positive interactions (e.g., by ensuring that activities are not needlessly duplicated). We start from the premise that effective coordination mechanisms require the sharing of knowledge about activities, resources and their properties, and hence, that in a heterogeneous environment, an ontological approach to coordination is appropriate. After surveying recent work on dynamic coordination, we describe an ontology for coordination that we have developed with the goal of coordinating semantic web processes. We then present a implementation of our ideas, which serves as a proof of concept for how this ontology can be used for dynamic coordination. We conclude with a summary of the presented work, illustrate its relation to the Semantic Web, and provide insights into future extensions.