This volume contains the proceedings of the 4th International Conference
on Service- Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2006), which took place in
Chicago, USA, December 4-7, 2006. ICSOC 2006 followed on the success of
three previous editions of the International Conference on
Service-Oriented Computing in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2005), New York
City, USA (2004) and Trento, Italy (2003). ICSOC is recognized as the
main conference for service-oriented computing research that covers the
entire spectrum from theoretical and foundational results to empirical
evaluations as well as practical and industrial experiences. ICSOC 2006
built on that foundation while - troducing several innovations in
furthering this goal. Service-oriented computing brings together ideas
and technologies from many d- ferent fields in an evolutionary manner to
address research challenges such as service composition, discovery,
integration, monitoring and management of services, service quality and
security, methodologies for supporting service development, governances
in their evolution, as well as their overall life-cycle management.
ICSOC 2006 strengthened the link to two important communities, Software
Engineering and Grid Computing, with well-known leaders from these
communities serving in important organizing roles such as general chairs
in shaping the conference.