Auction-Based Models for Composite Service Selection: A Design Framework

Abstract

Composite service selection refers to the process of selecting an optimal set of web services out of a pool of available candidates based on their quality of service and price. The goal is to logically compose these atomic web services and create value-added composite services which in turn can be used to develop service-based systems. Existing approaches to composite service selection are mostly based on optimization and negotiation techniques. In this paper, we study an emerging trend of composite service selection approaches based on auction models. These techniques benefit from the dynamic pricing of auction models compared to a fixed pricing approach and have the potential to incorporate the dependencies that exist between services constituting a composition. We propose a design framework that introduces two components which need to be addressed when developing an auction-based model for composite service selection: the elements in an auction-based model and a set of design decisions associated with those elements.