Introductory Essay of MALLOW-AWESOME'009

Following the success of the previous edition held in Durham in 2007, MALLOW-AWESOME’009 wants to stimulate discussion among researchers working on Agents, Web Services, and Ontologies, in order to help the identification and the definition of Methodologies for integrating them. The realisation of distributed, open, dynamic, and heterogeneous software systems is, in fact, a challenge that involves many facets, from formal theories to software engineering and practical applications. Scientists in various research areas, such as Semantic Web, Web Services, Agents, Ontologies, are attacking this problem from different perspectives. MALLOW-AWESOME’009 attempts to provide a discussion forum for collecting and comparing such diverse experiences with the aim of fostering cross fertilization.