Service-oriented Resource Management

This paper presents an approach to search, reserve and book resources over the Internet based on Web services. Possible resources are, for example, vehicles, rooms or tools. Groups of resources are managed locally with a database system and some business logic expressed by means of explicit rules. A resource can be queried by simple Web forms as well as with Web services. A distributed resource management system uses the Web services to query for required re¬sources and to build up a complex service for customers asking for different resources. This architecture is applicable in many domains. We demonstrate the system for the case of organizing scientific conferences. Resources to be booked are travel vacancies, hotel rooms as well as meeting rooms.