Ad-Hoc Collaboration Between Messengers: Operations and Incentives

This paper discusses how ad-hoc collaboration boosts the operation of a set of messengers. This discussion continues the research we earlier initiated in theMESSENGER project, which develops data management mechanisms for UDDI registries of Web services using mobile users and software agents. In the current operation mode of messengers, descriptions of Web services are first, collected from UDDI registries and later on, distributed to other UDDI registries. This distribution mode of Web services descriptions does not foster the tremendous opportunities that both wireless technologies and mobile devices offer. When mobile devices are in the vicinity of each other, they can form a mobile ad-hoc network, which enables the exchange of data between these devices without any preexisting communication infrastructure. By authorizing messengers to engage in collaboration, collecting additional descriptions of Web services from other messengers can happen, too.