A layered architecture for flexible Web service invocation

Web service composition is emerging as an interesting approach to integrate business applications and create intra‐organizational business processes. Single Web services are combined to create a complex Web service that will realize the process business logic. Once the process is created, it is executed by an orchestration engine that invokes individual Web services in the correct order. However, Web services composing the workflow sometimes become unavailable during the run‐time phase, blocking process execution. This paper describes an architecture that allows the flexible orchestration of business processes. With this approach, Web services composing the process can be automatically substituted with other compatible Web services during process execution. A methodology is defined to evaluate Web service compatibility based on interface matching, in order to select substitutable Web services. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The design with object (DwO) approach to Web services composition

Web services are being adopted, more and more, as a viable means of accessing Web-based applications. With a Web-native XML based solution, Web services can, thus, tackle the problem of heterogeneous sources and make them inter-operable. At present, there is a trend towards deploying business processes as composite Web services, known as Web services compositions. Web services compositions are synthesized by researchers from elementary web services, offering the opportunity for service providers and application developers to create value-added services, through Web services composition. However, a problem exists in the current distribution process of Web services compositions: the general analysis and selection of services can be overly complex and un-systemic. There is a need to manage composite Web services, based on these emerging technologies, but the research related to ranking candidate services and selection of optimization strategies is sparse. Nothing has yet been published that considers the constraints of non-functional service properties. In this paper, a design with object (DwO) approach is proposed. This has the advantage of being an object-orientated concept, which characterizes (i) changing the design object without directly changing the Web services themselves, and (ii) information hiding. A systemic but complete composition process is also proposed for Web services composition, which shows great promise in the emerging demand for composite Web services.     

Mashing Up Search Services

Mashup languages offer new graphic interfaces for service composition. Normally, composition is limited to simple services, such as RSS or Atom feeds, but users can potentially use visual mashup languages for complex service compositions, with typed parameters and well-defined I/O interfaces. Composing search services introduces new issues, however, such as determining the optimal sequence of search invocations and separately composing ranked entries into a globally ranked result. Enabling end users to mash up services through suitable abstractions and tools is a viable option for improving service-based computations.     

一种基于CPN的运行时监控服务交互行为的方法

BPEL对Web服务组合的描述特性使得它很难表达和分析服务组合中的交互行为属性.这些行为属性需要遵循一定的交互协议.然而良定义的交互协议还是容易受到侵犯,这将导致服务组合进程产生状态不一致的问题.为了解决这类实际交互行为与其服务组合描述之间的不一致性问题,提出了一种由BPEL描述自动构造运行时监控器的方法.首先提出了一种基于有色Petri网(CPN)的形式化表示模型以及服务组合规约到模型的映射方法,用于精确表达从BPEL流程描述中提取的服务交互行为规约.然后,描述了由CPN形式化表示模型生成运行时监控器的方法.该运行时监控器能够捕获所有进出服务组合进程的交互消息,并且检测是否存在违背交互协议的行为.     

Composing semantic Web services under constraints

Web service composition is an inevitable aspect of Web services technology, which solves complex problems by combining available basic services and ordering them to best suit the problem requirements. Automatic composition gives us flexibility of selecting best candidate services at composition time satisfying QoS requirements; this would require the user to define constraints for selecting and composing candidate Web services. In this work, a Web service composition approach is presented in which a rich set of constraints can be defined on the composite service. The output of the framework is the schedule of Web service composition in which how and when services are executed is defined. The basic properties of the proposed approach is converting Web service composition problem into a constraint satisfaction problem in order to find the best solution that meets all criteria defined by user and providing semantic compatibility and composability during composition.     

一种支持条件分支的语义Web服务组装方式及执行

Web服务组装的目的是使多个Web服务协同工作以完成任务。由于简单的顺序控制结构的组装不能满足较为复杂的协同工作需求,介绍了一种支持条件分支控制结构的语义Web服务组装方式。用户利用该组装器,可在领域知识层进行可视化组装。该基于知识库的执行引擎支持带有条件分支控制结构的组装结果的执行。     

一种基于接口匹配的组合Web服务描述语言

从基于WSDL的服务接口描述语言入手,分析了Web服务组合的类型和消息依赖关系.将服务组合分为顺序组合、替换组合、混合式组合三种类型;结合这些类型,将组合服务中的消息依赖定义为消息映射依赖、消息合成依赖和消息分解依赖三种关系.在此基础上,提出了一种轻量级的组合服务描述语言(CWSDL).     

一种基于广义随机Petri网的Web服务组合性能预测模型

Web服务交互消息受到不可预知的网络环境的影响,因特网环境中的个体Web服务的性能表现与访问者的地域位置有关。于是,服务组合的性能则更加容易受到网络环境因素的影响。同时,服务组合的性能还会受到服务组合流程中不同的分支执行概率的影响。在这种情况下,服务组合建模只考虑组合本身,而不考虑网络环境因素和分支执行概率,这将会对模型的预测结果造成较大的偏差。为了能够真实地评估服务交互行为、网络环境与分支执行概率之间的关系,提出了一种基于广义随机Petri网的Web服务组合性能预测模型,该模型不仅引入了伙伴服务性能方面的因素,而且充分考虑了网络环境因素和分支执行概率,从而能够对被建模系统进行定性和定量分析,进而指导服务组合性能优化。     

一种基于定理证明的Web服务合成方法研究

随着Internet中Web服务的不断增长,如何通过对现存的服务进行合成,以满足用户的个性化需求,成为目前的研究热点。通过引入线性逻辑工具,提出了一种新的Web服务合成解决方案,通过定理证明形成对应的自动服务合成流程。示例证明了该方法的有效性。     

基于完备回溯树的语义Web服务自动组合

基于语义的Web服务自动组合方法具有较高的效率及自动化程度,能更好地解决复杂的服务组合问题。提出一种基于完备回溯树的语义Web服务自动组合方法（CBT_ASWSC）,该方法为Web服务引入语义以实现对象间的语义转化并将搜索空间受限于完备回溯树中,在加快Web服务组合效率的同时提高了Web服务组合的成功率。     

基于BPEL4WS的网格服务组合体系结构及其分析

开放网格服务基础结构OGSI（Open Grid ServicesInfrastrstructure）把Web服务工作流引入到网格任务描述中,给出了几种Web服务与网格技术相融合机制,但并没有界定如何进行网格服务组合.而BPEL4WS（Business Process Execution Language for Web Services）是描述Web服务业务工作流的工业标准.通过对BPEL4WS和OGSI在生命周期管理、Web服务实例化和状态交互管理等方面异同的深度分析,提出了一种兼容OGIS并使用BPEL4WS来合成网格服务的高层体系结构.介绍了一个电力网电能损耗理论计算的实际应用原型系统,表明该文提出的体系结构可应用于网格服务的建模和构造.     

Semantic E-Workflow Composition

Systems and infrastructures are currently being developed to support Web services. The main idea is to encapsulate an organization's functionality within an appropriate interface and advertise it as Web services. While in some cases Web services may be utilized in an isolated form, it is normal to expect Web services to be integrated as part of workflow processes. The composition of workflow processes that model e-service applications differs from the design of traditional workflows, in terms of the number of tasks (Web services) available to the composition process, in their heterogeneity, and in their autonomy. Therefore, two problems need to be solved: how to efficiently discover Web services—based on functional and operational requirements—and how to facilitate the interoperability of heterogeneous Web services. In this paper, we present a solution within the context of the emerging Semantic Web that includes use of ontologies to overcome some of the problem. We describe a prototype that has been implemented to illustrate how discovery and interoperability functions are achieved more efficiently.     

Flexible Web services integration: a novel personalised social approach

Abstract

Dynamic composition or integration remains one of the key objectives of Web services technology. This paper aims to propose an innovative approach of dynamic Web services composition based on functional and non-functional attributes and individual preferences. In this approach, social networks of Web services are used to maintain interactions between Web services in order to select and compose Web services that are more tightly related to user’s preferences. We use the concept of Web services community in a social network of Web services to reduce considerably their search space. These communities are created by the direct involvement of Web services providers.     

Log-based mining techniques applied to Web service composition reengineering

Web service compositions are becoming more and more complex, involving numerous interacting ad-hoc services. These services are often implemented as business processes themselves. By analysing such complex web service compositions one is able to better understand, control and eventually re-design them. Our contribution to this problem is a mining algorithm, based on a statistical technique to discover composite web service patterns from execution logs. Our approach is characterised by a “local” pattern’s discovery that covers partial results through a dynamic programming algorithm. Those locally discovered patterns are then composed iteratively until the composite Web service is discovered. The analysis of the disparities between the discovered model and the initial ad-hoc composite model (delta-analysis) enables initial design gaps to be detected and thus to re-engineer the initial Web service composition.     

一种基于体系结构的Web服务组合描述方法

Web服务组合能够快速开发复杂的Web服务,以促进Web服务的增值。在分析并比较现有的Web服务组合方法的基础上,提出了一种形式化和工业化方法相结合的Web服务组合描述方法。针对Web服务及其组合的特点,研究了基于体系结构的Web服务组合描述方法,采用扩展的XYZ／ADL定义Web服务及描述其交互的连接件,最后结合一个实例描述Web服务组合的工作方式。     

Using Policies to Manage Composite Web Services

When no single Web service can fulfil a user's request, providers often turn to composite Web services. However, developing a composite Web service is not simple and deploying the composition specification at runtime consists of several processes. Developers and deployers of composite Web services can use policies in various scenarios, from the announcement of Web services to the compatibility between Web services and composite Web services. Mapping guidelines for a Web service's behavior to policies can ensure an individual Web service's smooth engagement into a composite Web service     

一个基于有色Petri网的自动Web服务合成模型

提出了一个基于有色Petri网的自动Web服务合成模型,为Web服务的合成提供语义支持,提高合成服务的可靠性和可维护性.该模型将服务的合成结构分成顺序、并发、选择、循环、置换5种合成结构.给出了Web服务基于有色Petri网的形式化定义.定义了一个封闭的Web服务合成算法,通过算法获得的框架能够对Web服务进行说明性的合成.定义了一个自动Web服务合成算法,通过该算法,可以对Web服务进行有人工指导的半自动合成和无人工指导的自动合成.     

A negotiation‐based service selection approach using swarm intelligence and kernel density estimation

Nowadays, the cloud computing environment is becoming a natural choice to deploy and provide Web services that meet user needs. However, many services provide the same functionality and high quality of service (QoS) but different self‐adaptive behaviors. In this case, providers' adaptation policies are useful to select services with high QoS and high quality of adaptation (QoA). Existing approaches do not take into account providers' adaptation policies in order to select services with high reputation and high reaction to changes, which is important for the composition of self‐adaptive Web services. In order to actively participate to compositions, candidate services must negotiate their self‐* capabilities. Moreover, they must evaluate the participation constraints against their capabilities specified in terms of QoS and adaptation policies. This paper exploits a variant of particle swarm optimization and kernel density estimation in the selection of service compositions and the concurrent negotiations of their QoS and QoA capabilities. Selection and negotiation processes are held between intelligent agents, which adopt swarm intelligence techniques for achieving optimal selection and optimal agreement on providers' offers. To resolve unknown autonomic behavior of candidate services, we deal with the lack of such information by predicting the real QoA capabilities of a service through the kernel density estimation technique. Experiments show that our solution is efficient in comparison with several state‐of‐the‐art selection approaches.