This paper proposes and researches mechanisms which
on the one hand support and stimulate the large scale adoption
of web services as a means for publishing software
components, and on the other hand enable the dynamic creation
and execution of internet-scale distributed software
systems built on top of this web services environment.
The proposed solution is to extend the Service-Oriented Architecture
(SoA) design pattern by adding a transparent
middleware layer that restricts and controls the access
of the applications to the needed web services by
means of requiring successful participation in auctions associated
with those web services.
This proposal has several benefits: an efficient pricing
mechanism for digital services, the introduction of
incentives that would drive the development and offering
of web services,and a healthy, supply-demand based
mechanism that enables the evolution both of the published
web services and of the systems built on these
services. Finally, systems built on our extended architecture
will be capable of autonomously evolving in terms
of choice of the needed services and will function efficiently
in terms of costs associated with their execution.
The current paper uncovers this new research field and focuses
on the rationale for our extension, the research problems
generated by it; it also describes the middleware
supporting the auction mechanisms, and looks into initial
practical considerations of auctions mechanisms for
web services and strategies for building auction-enhanced
SoA systems.
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