A general architecture for service delivery and coordination in intelligent agent-based peer-to-peer (IP2P) environments, that has been developed within the CASCOM research project, is presented in this book. The CASCOM architecture provides support for business services for mobile workers and users across mobile and fixed networks. To its users, the CASCOM architecture makes easy and seamless access available to Semantic Web Services anytime, anywhere, and using any device. The system has successfully been validated in trials in healthcare applications, in particular in emergency medical assistance.

The CASCOM architecture addresses the problem of seamlessly combining various novel technologies that establish the basis for self-adaptable and self-healing systems including semantic service discovery, matchmaking, composition planning and semantic service composition, reliable execution of composite services, and semantic failure handling. The book provides an in-depth introduction into these areas, presents how they have been extended in order to best support the needs for agent-based service coordination in IP2P environment, and finally shows how the different agents can be seamlessly combined.

This book presents the design, implementation and validation of a value-added supportive infrastructure for Semantic Web based business application services across mobile and fixed networks, applied to an emergency healthcare application. This infrastructure has been realized by the CASCOM European research project. For end users, the CASCOM framework provides seamless access to semantic Web services anytime, anywhere, by using any mobile computing device. For service providers, CASCOM offers an innovative development platform for intelligent and mobile business application services in the Semantic Web.

The essential approach of CASCOM is the innovative inter-disciplinary combination of intelligent agent, Semantic Web, peer-to-peer, and mobile computing technology. Conventional peer-to-peer computing environments are extended with components for mobile and wireless communication. Semantic Web services are provided by peer software agents, which exploit the coordination infrastructure to efficiently operate in highly dynamic environments. The generic coordination support infrastructure includes efficient communication means, support for context-aware adaptation techniques, as well as flexible, resource-efficient service discovery, execution, and composition planning.

The book has three main parts. First, the state-or-the-art is reviewed in related research fields. Then, a full proof-of-concept design and implementation of the generic infrastructure is presented. Finally, quantitative and qualitative analysis is presented on the basis of the field trials of the emergency application.