Reliability-aware automatic composition approach for web services

In this paper,we study the reliability-aware synthesis problem for composing available services automatically and guaranteeing that the composed result satisfies the specification,such as temporal constraints of functionality and reliability,centered on a synthesis model for mediator of web services composition (CSM).This approach focuses on handling attributes and state relations,and permitting users and services to operate over them,i.e.,read /write their data values and compare them according to a dense state order.We show that the reliability-aware synthesis problem for the specification is EXPTIME-complete and we give an exponential-time algorithm (CSM-NSA) which for a given formula ψ and a synthesis model,synthesizes available services in the library satisfying ψ over the synthesis model (if they exist) or responds with "not satisfiable" (otherwise).The specification ψ is a fragment of PCTL (probabilistic computation tree logic),obtained from "ordinary" CTL (computation tree logic) by replacing the EX,AX,EU and AU operation with their quantitative counterparts X >p,X =1,U >p,and U =1,respectively.As opposed to NSA,we provide a more effective algorithm to replace the NSA algorithm called CSM-HSA (heuristic synthesis algorithm).Though HSA is an incomplete algorithm,the answer is correct.The experiments show that the HSA algorithm solves the problem of reliability-aware service synthesis effectively and efficiently.     

QoS-Aware Composite Services Retrieval

For current service-oriented applications, individual web service usually cannot meet the requirements arising from real world applications, so it is necessary to combine the functionalities of different web services to obtain a composite service in response to users＇ service requests. In order to address the problem of web service composition, this paper proposes an efficient approach to composing basic services in case no any individual service can fully satisfy users＇ requests. Compared with the general strategies adopted in most previously proposed approaches where only the best composition solution is produced, the QoS-aware service composition approach is given and top k solutions in the framework are provided, rather than focusing on obtaining the best composition solution, since the presented approach allows more candidates that are likely to meet the requirements of the users. The approach is based on a succinct binary tree data structure, and a system,named ATC （Approach to Top-k Composite services retrieval） system is implemented. In ATC, Qos is taken into account for composite service, and a heuristic-based search method is proposed to retrieve top k composite service. Some extensive experiments are designed and two web service benchmarks are used for performance study. The experimental results snow that the proposed approach can assure high precision and efficiency for composite service search.     

Dynamic web service composition based on OWL-S

Composing existing web services for enterprise applications may enable higher level of reuse. However the composition processes are mostly static and lack of support for runtime redesign. In this paper, we describe our approach to the extension of the OWL-S ontology framework for dynamic web service composition. We raise the level of abstraction and propose an abstract service layer so that web services can be com- posed at the abstract service level instead of the concrete level. Each abstract service is attached with an instance pool including all instances of the abstract service to facilitate fail-over and dynamic compositions.     

Web Service Choreography: Unanimous Handling of Control and Data

To provide an effective service-oriented solution for a given business problem, it is necessary to explore all available options for providing the required functionality while ensuring a flawless data transfer within the composed services. Existing service composition approaches fall short of this ideal, as functional requirements and data mediation are not considered in a unified framework. We propose a service composition framework that addresses both of these aspects by integrating existing techniques in formal methods, service oriented computing and data mediation. Our framework guarantees the correct interaction of services in a composition by verifying certain behavioral constraints, and resolving data mismatches at semantic, syntactic and structural levels, in a unified manner. A tableau based algorithm is used to generate and explore compositions in a goal-directed fashion that proves or disproves the existence of a service choreographer. Data models, to detect and resolve data mismatches, are generated using WSDL documents and regular expressions. We also apply our framework to examples adapted from the existing service composition literature that provide strong testimony that the approach can be effectively applied in practical settings.     

QoS-Aware Automatic Service Composition: A Graph View

In the research of service composition,it demands efficient algorithms that not only retrieve correct service compositions automatically from thousands of services but also satisfy the quality requirements of different service users.However,most approaches treat these two aspects as two separate problems,automatic service composition and service selection.Although the latest researches realize the restriction of this separate view and some specific methods are proposed,they still suffer from serious limitations in scalability and accuracy when addressing both requirements simultaneously.In order to cope with these limitations and efficiently solve the combined problem which is known as QoS-aware or QoS-driven automatic service composition problem,we propose a new graph search problem,single-source optimal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs),for the first time.This novel single-source optimal DAGs (SSOD) problem is similar to,but more general than the classical single-source shortest paths (SSSP) problem.In this paper,a new graph model of SSOD problem is proposed and a Sim-Dijkstra algorithm is presented to address the SSOD problem with the time complexity of O(n log n + m) (n and m are the number of nodes and edges in the graph respectively),and the proofs of its soundness.It is also directly applied to solve the QoS-aware automatic service composition problem,and a service composition tool named QSynth is implemented.Evaluations show that Sim-Dijkstra algorithm achieves superior scalability and efficiency with respect to a large variety of composition scenarios,even more efficient than our worklist algorithm that won the performance championship of Web Services Challenge 2009.     

Mapping Business Workflows onto Network Services Environment

In order to implement the common adaptability in accessing distributed resources, it is fatal for web applications to deploy business workflows onto network service environment, which is composed of Web Services and Grid Services. This paper introduces abstract resources and abstract services to express abstract workflows, and expresses executable workflows that can run in service environments by resources and service instances. Thus the deployment and execution of business workflows are transformed into two mappings： the mapping of business workflow onto abstract workflows and the mapping of abstract workflows onto executable workflows. The definition of relevant parameters used to implement automatically mapping is formulized as Application Template （AT）. The most important component of AT is the corresponding relationship between business functions and abstract workflow fragments. AT also defines the restrictions while each abstract services are utilized in certain application tasks, as well as the associated service metadata. The latter avoids superfluous metadata by service providers, and simplifies unnecessary details in matching service instances.     

Performance Aware Service Pool in Dependable Service Oriented Architecture

As a popular approach to dependable service oriented architecture （SOA）, a service pool collects a set of services that provide the same functionality by different service providers for achieving desired reliability. However, if the tradeoff between reliability and other important qualities, e.g., performance, has to be considered, the construction and management of a service pool become much more complex. In this paper, an automated approach to this problem is presented. Based on the investigation of service pools in the typical triangle SOA model, two challenges critical to the effectiveness and efficiency of service pools are identified, including which services should be held by a pool and what order these services are invoked in. A set of algorithms are designed to address the two challenges and then a service pool can be automatically constructed and managed for given reliability and performance requirements in polynomial time. The approach is demonstrated on a J2EE based service platform and the comparison results between different pooling algorithms are evaluated.     

An automatic subdigraph renovation plan for failure recovery of composite semantic Web services

A Web service-based system never fulfills a user＇s goal unless a failure recovery approach exists. It is inevitable that several Web services may either perish or fail before or during transactions. The completion of a composite process relies on the smooth execution of all constituent Web services. A mediator acts as an intermediary between providers and consumers to monitor the execution of these services. If a service fails, the mediator has to recover the whole composite process or else jeopardize achieving the intended goals. The atomic replacement of a perished Web service usually does not apply because the process of locating a matched Web service is unreliable. Even the system cannot depend on the replacement of the dead service with a com- posite service. In this paper, we propose an automatic renova- tion plan for failure recovery of composite semantic services based on an approach of subdigraph replacement. A replacement subdigraph is posed in lieu of an original subdigraph, which includes the failed service. The replacement is done in two separate phases, ofltine and online, to make the recovery faster. The ofitine phase foresees all possible subdigraphs, pre-calculates them, and ranks several possible replacements. The online phase compensates the unwanted effects and executes the replacement subdigraph in lieu of the original subdigraph. We have evaluated our approach during an experiment and have found that we could recover more than half of the simulated failures. These achievements show a significant improvement compared to current approaches     

AutoSyn: A new approach to automated synthesis of composite web services with correctness guarantee

How to compose existing web services automatically and to guarantee the correctness of the design(e.g. freeness of deadlock and unspecified reception,and temporal constraints) is an important and challenging problem in web services. Most existing approaches require a detailed specification of the desired behaviors of a composite service beforehand and then perform certain formal verification to guarantee the correctness of the design,which makes the composition process both complex and time-consuming. In th...     

基于有限状态自动机的Web服务组合

Web服务是Web上的特殊软件资源,可以被应用系统发现和调用.如何根据用户的需求(目标服务)来组合Web服务是研究中需要解决的重要问题.通过使用有限状态自动机,服务组成的社区中的状态和操作可以使用有限状态自动机来模拟,这样可以表示服务操作的内部和外部概要.结合确定性动态命题逻辑,可以根据已有的Web服务,解决目标服务的可组合问题,产生组合计划.同时讨论了算法的复杂性.     

Rigorous development of composite grid services

Cress (Communication Representation Employing Systematic Specification) is introduced as notation, a methodology and a toolset for service development. The article focuses on rigorous development of composite grid services, with particular emphasis on the principles behind the methodology. A straightforward graphical notation is used to describe grid services. These are then automatically specified, analysed and implemented. Analysis includes formal verification of desirable service properties, formal validation of test scenarios, testing of implementation functionality, and evaluation of implementation performance. The case study that illustrates the approach is document content analysis to compare two pieces of text. This involves two composite services supported by two partner services. The usability of the service design notation is assessed, and a comparison is made of the approach with similar ones. These show that the Cress approach to developing services is usable and more complete than other comparable approaches.     

Minimal privacy authorization in web services collaboration

With the popularity of Internet technology, web services are becoming the most promising paradigm for distributed computing. This increased use of web services has meant that more and more personal information of consumers is being shared with web service providers, leading to the need to guarantee that the private data of consumers are not illegitimate collected, used and disclosed in services collaboration. This paper studies how to realize the minimal privacy authorization while achieving the functional goals. Initially, this paper uses authorization policies to specify the privacy privileges of the services collaboration, and utilizes the trust relationships among services to make authorization decision. Next, it models the interface behaviors of services by extending the interface automata to support privacy semantics. Furthermore, it quantitatively analyzes the minimum set of privacy privileges which are required by the services to achieve the functional goals, and presents the minimal authorization algorithm, which helps us to automatically derive optimal authorization policies for a services collaboration. Finally, it verifies the correctness and efficiency of the approach proposed by this paper through a case study.     

A high performance backoff protocol for fast execution of composite web services

Using web services to expose applications over the Internet is now a widely accepted practice. Currently, there are several ongoing efforts that provide ways to effectively compose web services distributed across different organizations. One of the problems underlying the deployment of such composite services on the web, however, is service co-allocation that arises when a composite service needs to ensure all the required component services to be available for execution at the same time. Motivated by this, this paper presents a new decentralized protocol, named web service co-allocation protocol (WSCP), which can facilitate fast execution of composite web services. The proposed framework is an enhancement of the famous two phase commit protocol through the incorporation of tentative hold phase as well as the employment of a new high performance backoff protocol developed to better address the dynamics of the service co-allocation problem. The simulation results show that the proposed approach yields significant improvements over existing protocols.     

Meta web service: building web-based open decision support system based on web services

Web services are currently one of the trends in network-based business services, which intuitively will be applied to build a semantic web-based decision support system (DSS). Since web services are self-contained, modular business process applications, based on open standards, enable integration models for facilitating program-to-program interactions. Decision modules in a semantic web-based DSS can be viewed as a web service. However, according to the current features, web services know only about themselves, they are neither autonomous, nor are they designed to use ontologies; they are passive until invoked, and they do not provide for composing functionalities. These lead to the motivation on building a sophisticated web service to contain these features and to utilize web services on behalf of the user. This paper aims to propose a new concept of Meta Web Service, a web service-based DSS. The meta web service understands the user's problem statement with ontology, performs web service discovery, web service composition, and automatically generates codes for composite web service execution. Case-based reasoning is applied to quickly find past histories of successful service compositions. A prototype of research web service has been developed to show the feasibility of the proposed idea.