Toward service selection for workflow reconfiguration:An interface-based computing solution

Abstract

Due to the open and diverse features of the Internet, applications need an effective method of performing a workflow reconfiguration to achieve both the functional behaviors and non-functional requirements of workflow changes when a service failure occurs. This paper proposes a service selection method for workflow reconfiguration based on interface operation matching. First, formal models of service workflow and interface operations of Web services are defined, and functional behavior comparisons of service selections are performed to determine the operation coverage set that will fulfill all activities that predefine the form of an abstract process. Second, reconfiguration patterns are introduced to describe different solution types for service patterns, including one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, and many-to-one modes. Third, to consider the quality of service (QoS), the quality of service workflow (QoW) is proposed according to control structures and service interface computing, and the unified QoW formula is then provided to effectively rank each reconfiguration plan to provide a top-k solution recommendation. Fourth, related algorithms and a case study are discussed to show the service selection process during the workflow reconfiguration. To support the engineering implementation, a novel service workflow reconfiguration architecture is designed to provide guidance, which ranges from monitoring to recommendations for project implementation. Finally, experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.