A peer-to-peer framework for Web service discovery with ranking

Abstract

Current Web service discovery methods are based on centralized approaches where Web services are identified based on service functionality. Examples of service functionality include car rental, hotel booking and book selling. Since higher level Web services are increasingly composed in terms of lower level Web services, it is important that service discovery not only be based on service functionality but also be based on process behavior, i.e., how a service functionality is served. Furthermore, centralized approaches to service discovery suffer from problems such as high operational and maintenance cost, single point of failure, and scalability. Another issue that has not been considered in current Web service discovery paradigms is the issue of trust and quality of service of the service provider. We, therefore, propose a structured peer-to-peer framework for Web service discovery in which Web services are located based on both service functionality and process behavior. In addition, we integrate a scalable reputation model in this distributed peer-to-peer framework to rank Web services based on both trust and service quality.