NOW: Orchestrating Services in a Nomadic Network using a dedicated Workflow Language

Orchestrating services in nomadic or mobile ad hoc networks is not without a challenge,
since these environments are built upon volatile connections. Services residing on mobile devices are
exposed to (temporary) network failures, which must be considered the rule rather than the exception.
This paper proposes a dedicated workflow language built on top of an ambient-oriented programming
language that supports dynamic service discovery and communication primitives resilient to network
failures. The proposed workflow language, NOW, has support for high level workflow abstractions for
control flow, rich network and service failure detection, and failure handling through compensating
actions, and dynamic data flow between the services in the environment. By adding this extra layer of
abstraction, the application programmer is offered a flexible way to develop applications for nomadic
networks.