Efficiency of dynamic content adaptation based on semantic description of web service call context

This article tackles the problem of supplying the low level commanders with information from information sources located on higher command levels, distributed using Web services, the most commonly used technology in modern command and control systems. There has been proposed the Adaptation Framework For Web Services Provision (AFRO) that defines a mechanism for effective Web services invocation in tactical networks, which are considered disadvantaged in terms of available throughput, delay and error rate. Its implementation, in the form of AFRO Proxy performs so called adaptation actions, which are modifications of the SOAP XML messages by changing their encoding to more efficient or dropping information that are accepted to be removed by the service requester. The proposed adaptation mechanism gives promising effects for low level commanders located at the battlefield. They can be supplied with information generally available on high command levels, which, up to now, were very rarely distributed to tactical networks.