Web services make information and software available programmatically via the Internet and may be used as building blocks for applications. A composite web service is one that is built using multiple component web services and is typically specified using a language such as BPEL4WS or WSIPL. Once its specification has been developed, the composite service may be orchestrated either in a centralized or in a decentralized fashion. Decentralized orchestration offers performance improvements in

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... s of increased throughput and scalability and lower response time. However, decentralized orchestration also brings additional complexity to the system in terms of error recovery and fault handling. Further, incorrect design of a decentralized system can lead to potential deadlock or non-optimal usage of system resources. This paper investigates build time and runtime issues related to decentralized orchestration of composite web services. We support our design decisions with performance results obtained on a decentralized setup using BPEL4WS to describe the composite web services and BPWS4J as the underlying runtime environment to orchestrate them.