A survey on context‐aware web service systems

Purpose - This survey aims to study and analyze current techniques and methods for context-aware web service systems, to discuss future trends and propose further steps on making web services systems context-aware. Design/methodology/approach - The paper analyzes and compares existing context-aware web service-based systems based on techniques they support, such as context information modeling, context sensing, distribution, security and privacy, and adaptation techniques. Existing systems are also examined in terms of application domains, system type, mobility support, multi-organization support and level of web services implementation. Findings - Supporting context-aware web service-based systems is increasing. It is hard to find a truly context-aware web service-based system that is interoperable and secure, and operates on multi-organizational environments. Various issues, such as distributed context management, context-aware service modeling and engineering, context reasoning and quality of context, security and privacy issues have not been well addressed. Research limitations/implications - The number of systems analyzed is limited. Furthermore, the survey is based on published papers. Therefore, up-to-date information and development might not be taken into account. Originality/value - Existing surveys do not focus on context-awareness techniques for web services. This paper helps to understand the state of the art in context-aware techniques for web services that can be employed in the future of services which is built around, amongst others, mobile devices, web services, and pervasive environments.