State of the Art -- Intelligent Agent-based Peer-to-Peer Systems (IP2P) -- Semantic Web Service Description -- Semantic Web Service Coordination -- Context-Awareness -- Technology in Healthcare -- The CASCOM Solution -- General Architecture -- Agent Platform and Communication Architecture -- Distributed Directories of Web Services -- Service Discovery -- Service Composition -- Semantic Web Service Execution -- Context-Awareness System -- Security, Privacy and Trust -- Trials and Results -- Qualitative Analysis -- Quantitative Analysis.

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.