Service selection using fuzzy multi-criteria decision making: a comprehensive review

Abstract

The growing number of web services (WSs) and cloud services, which can meet the users’ functional and non-functional requirements, have inspired researchers to provide more effective approaches for ranking the available services, regarding different QoS factors and selecting the best of them. In this context, several service selection frameworks using the fuzzy multicriteria decision making (MCDM) techniques are introduced in the literature. This paper focuses on such schemes, and firstly provides the required background knowledge about service selection and MCDM methods. Then, it puts forward a taxonomy of the service selection schemes, regarding their utilized fuzzy MCDM methods, and describes how the fuzzy MCDM methods are adapted to handle the fuzziness of the users’ preferences and QoS properties. Furthermore, the main features of these schemes are compared, and their contributions and possible shortcomings are discussed. Finally, the concluding remarks are provided, and directions for future studies are illuminated.