Introduction
When deployed as infrastructure components of real-time business processes, service computing applications upon which we rely for our daily activities elicit the proper addressing of performance and dependability issues. While recent developments in service-oriented architectures have come a long way in many aspects raging from semantics and ontologies to frameworks and design processes, performance and dependability remain a research demanding field. Nondeterministic dynamics of the network environment and the diversity of resources and requirements pose challenges to state-of-art techniques aimed at meeting both functional and non-functional requirements of real-world service computing applications. This book is conceived under this perspective and aims at presenting the last achievements and future directions for research on performance and dependability in service computing.

Objective of the Book
The book is a research-oriented introduction to the main challenges related to performance and dependability in service computing and to directions for future investigation. It is intended for specialists from both academy and industry interested in performance and dependability issues in the context of service computing. These editors' vision and mission for the book are addressed by the proposed scope, focus, orientation and structure as follows:
• Scope centered in service computing concept. This book is about service computing as a general concept, independently of standards or implementation platform. Naturally, current technological trends and related research issues shall be highlighted in dedicated chapters, but without restricting the scope. Indeed, editors are willing to receive papers present criticism on state-of-art technologies (e.g., Web Services) and exploratory essays on alternative approaches.
• Focus on performance and dependability issues. There are several books about service computing and related topics that explore the field on varying aspects, but there is not yet a book specifically devoted to performance and dependability issues associated to service computing. This book shall focus on these two complementary aspects, which include concerns of quality of service (QoS), real-time constraints, security, reliability and other important requirements when it comes to integrate services into real-world business processes and critical applications.
• Orientation towards research perspective. The book is oriented towards state-of-art advancements and research challenges. The book is meant to serve as a guide leading the reader through the main concepts and technologies in service computing area as far as the next steps in research front and future directions.
• Structure offering a consistent meaningful ensemble. The editors’ perspective for the book is to work together with authors to make the volume a consistent sequence of chapters which guide the reader through meaningfully connected topics, drawing a roadmap for researchers.

Target Audience
The book is intended for an audience of researchers and engineers who are interested in distributed computing, databases, and e-Business (primary application areas of service-oriented computing) and graduate students who wish to learn and spot the opportunities for their studies in this emerging research and development area. The book will also be of general interest to anyone using the service paradigms for software development, particularly in developing high performance and dependable applications.

Recommended Topics
The book content will be organized in three main parts: foundations, engineering and deployment. The first part will address research issues concerning conceptual and methodological aspects of service computing. The second part will focus on advances in service computing technology and implementation including monitoring and testing aspects. The third part will be devoted to the deployment of service computing as a platform. Recommended topics for chapters include, but are not limited to, the list below.
• Models, methodologies, and tools for performance evaluation of service-oriented architectures
• System and service dependability
• Security and privacy issues and concerns
• Integration of dependability and security concepts
• QoS and SLA in service-oriented computing
• Real-time issues in service-oriented computing
• System engineering issues (including energy aspects) in service-oriented computing
• Self-adaptive service-oriented architectures
• Performance and dependability issues for pervasive service-oriented computing
• Implementation and deployment technologies
• Real-world experiences
• Criticism on current models and technologies

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 1, 2010, a 2-3 page chapter proposal in printable PDF format clearly explaining the mission and concerns of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by March 15, 2010 about the status of their proposal and sent chapter organizational guidelines. Full chapters (8000-10000 words) are expected to be submitted by June 15, 2010. All submissions must describe original work, not published or currently under review. All submissions must be in printable PDF format and written in English. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind peer review basis. Please note that the final chapters are to be provided in MS Word format, according to the IGI Global standards. Directions for preparing the manuscript and for submitting it are available on the book Web site http://www.icmc.usp.br/~pdsc/ Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded by e-mail to any of the book editors at pdsc@icmc.usp.br

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is scheduled to be released in 2011.

Important Dates
Chapter proposal submission: March 1, 2010
Notification of acceptance: March 15, 2010
Full chapter submission: June 15, 2010
Review results to authors: August 30, 2010
Revised chapter submission: September 30, 2010
Final acceptance notification: October 15, 2010
Submission of final chapter: October 30, 2010

Editorial Advisory Board Members
Salima Benbernou, Université Paris Descartes, France
Gerson G.H. Cavalheiro, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil
Chi-Hung Chi, Tsinghua University, China
Bruno Ciciani, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy
Michele Colajanni, Università di Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Erol Gelenbe, Imperial College London, UK
Ricardo Jiménez-Peris, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Antonio A.F. Loureiro, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Junichi Suzuki, University of Massachusetts, USA
Ramin Yahyapour, Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany

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