Web services engineering

Over the last years most business processes changed on various dimensions (e.g. flexibility, interconnectivity, coordination style, autonomy) due to market conditions, organizational models, and usage scenarios of information systems. This trends lead to connected and integrated information systems increasingly based on Web services. Web services promise the realization of a "service-oriented architecture" for distributed and integrated information systems. Some people claim that after object-orientation and component-based software engineering, Web services require new development paradigms having considerable implications on software processes and products. Currently most organizations spend substantial amount of their resources to interconnect and glue information systems and to a far lesser degree on the underlying engineering principles and methodologies for Web services. This session is interested in issues that need to be addressed before Web services become a paradigm for distributed information systems and invites contributions on software processes, methodologies, and engineering principles for developing Web service based information systems.