The Role of Contract and Component Semantics in Dynamic E-Contract Enactment Configuration

Dynamic establishment of electronic service contracts necessitates the dyna-mic configuration of a contract enactment system to either perform or consume the service. The more complex a service is, the more likely it is to be enacted by several components (or subsystems). Flexible configuration of a contract enactment system from components requires a blueprint defining which component type plays which role in the service’s enactment and how compo-nents are parameterised with contract elements. For this specification we need to understand the semantics of the contract and of the available components as well as rules for a correct composition of components. We investigate how components can be configured and dynamically assembled and propose an extensible service enactment model that provides the basis for component assembly. On the basis of this model the Internal Enactment Specification language is introduced for describing component compositions and parameter-isations that can be processed by an automatic configuration mechanism.