8. A method for selecting a requested Web service from one of a plurality of providers, comprising: defining a set of metarules, wherein each of said metarules comprises at least one condition and at least one action to be used in response to an instance of said at least one condition, said at least one condition comprising at least one parameter representing a context of a user and said at least one action comprising at least one directive for selecting services; storing a set of alternative workflows for requested services, wherein each of said alternative workflows comprises multiple web services executed to accomplish a task and wherein each of said alternative workflows is associated with a different provider; retaining performance information from previous web service invocations; for each of said metarules, ranking said alternative workflows in said set of alternative workflows, based on said performance information, in order to output a set of context-dependent alternative workflows, including summaries of conditions under which each of said alternative workflows in said set of context-dependent alternative workflows should be executed; receiving a customer service request from a customer; collecting run-time context data from said providers and said customer; matching said run-time context data with a summary of conditions for a first ranked one of said context-dependent alternative workflows; and automatically selecting said first ranked one of said context-dependent for execution in response to said customer service request.
8. A method for selecting a requested Web service from one of a plurality of providers, comprising: defining a set of metarules, wherein each of said metarules comprises at least one condition and at least one action to be used in response to an instance of said at least one condition, said at least one condition comprising at least one parameter representing a context of a user and said at least one action comprising at least one directive for selecting services; storing a set of alternative workflows for requested services, wherein each of said alternative workflows comprises multiple web services executed to accomplish a task and wherein each of said alternative workflows is associated with a different provider; retaining performance information from previous web service invocations; for each of said metarules, ranking said alternative workflows in said set of alternative workflows, based on said performance information, in order to output a set of context-dependent alternative workflows, including summaries of conditions under which each of said alternative workflows in said set of context-dependent alternative workflows should be executed; receiving a customer service request from a customer; collecting run-time context data from said providers and said customer; matching said run-time context data with a summary of conditions for a first ranked one of said context-dependent alternative workflows; and automatically selecting said first ranked one of said context-dependent for execution in response to said customer service request. 9. The method according to claim 8 , wherein said performance information comprises a component based on technical service properties, and a component based on derived business properties.