Web services are nowadays emerging as a major technology for deploying automated interactions between distributed and heterogeneous applications. Various standards support this deployment including WSDL, UDDI, and SOAP. These standards respectively support the definition of Web services, their advertisement to the community of potential users, and finally their binding for invocation purposes. In general, composing Web services rather than accessing a single service is essential and provides better benefits to users. Composition primarily addresses the situation of a user's request that cannot be satisfied by any available service, whereas a composite service obtained by combining available services might be used.

Several questions raise during Web services composition and execution including which businesses have the capacity to provision Web services, when and where the provisioning of Web services occurs, and how Web services from independent parties coordinate their activities during execution so that conflicts are avoided. To address some of these questions, it is recommended considering the context in which the composition and execution of Web services occur. Context is generally perceived as the information that characterizes the interaction between humans, applications, and the surrounding environment. From a Web services perspective, it is expected that context should define a set of common meta-data about the current status of a Web service and its capability of collaborating with other peers, possibly enacted by distinct providers. For example before a Web service agrees to participate in a composite service its status in terms of current participations is assessed. Moreover, before a back-up strategy is deployed an assessment of the exception that a Web service has raised is needed.