Current visions about the Internet of the future require an evolution in the way distributed applications are designed, implemented, and deployed, moving from top-down approaches that generate partial, static (business) process descriptions to holistic approaches where both the participants and their surrounding environment are modeled. Such approaches will empower distributed applications with the ability to flexibly adapt their behavior to environmental changes, being able to identify opportunities and recover from unexpected failures or market switches. In this chapter we have presented a holistic approach based on organizational theory. The ALIVE framework aims to support the design and development of distributed systems suitable for such highly dynamic environments, is based on model-driven engineering, and consists of three interconnected levels: service, oordination, and organization.

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