Quality Evaluation of Semantic Web Application as a Service

Abstract

The quality evaluation of Semantic Web applications (SWAs) in isolation is not enough. The future shall see almost all Web applications being deployed on the cloud and available to us as services, facilitating transparency and reusability. The business model of cloud computing provides services on demand, which are paid as per their use. The Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model of cloud computing segregates provider’s ownership from customer’s use. Since the concept of quality is crucial to services, therefore, it is plausible to build models for quality assessment of SWAs, which fit in the cloud’s SaaS paradigm. Such applications are referred to Semantic Web application as a service (SWAaaS), in the following text. In our knowledge, there are no quality factors, measures, or frameworks for tracking the quality of SWAaaS. The Semantic Web application quality framework described in Chap. 3 is not profusely appropriate for evaluation of SWAaaS, owing to the distinctive natures of Web application and service. Previously, some ways of assessing quality of SWA and SaaS have been invented, a few of which build on quality features from existing software and Web application quality models, whereas some formulate SaaS quality metrics. few works merely present quality attributes in the context of Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters. Here, the representative quality factors influencing SWAaaS are recognized after the literature review and a Hierarchical Fuzzy System (HFS) has been developed to assess SWAaaS quality. The quality attributes of HFS have been validated using IEEE 1061 framework. Results of experiments show that our HFS handles multiple quality attributes, and may perform quality-based ranking of SWAs available as services. The hierarchical fuzzy quality model discussed here may serve as a beginning point toward an all-inclusive quality model aimed to facilitate a SWAaaS consumer to choose the best quality service among SWAs available as a service on the cloud. Additionally, HFS may act as a directive to SWAaaS provider for the betterment of quality of SWA that is being provided as a service.