Execution Of Composite Web Services Research Articles

An Adaptive Approach for Dynamic Recovery Decisions in Web Service Composition Using Space Based QOS Factor

Service Oriented Architecture facilitates automatic execution and composition of web services in distributed environment. This service composition in the heterogeneous environment may suffer from various kinds of service failures. These failures interrupt the execution of composite web services and lead towards complete system failure. The dynamic recovery decisions of the failed services are dependent on non-functional attributes of the services. In the recent years, various methodologies have been presented to provide recovery decisions based on time related QoS (Quality of Service) factors. These QoS attributes can be categorized further. Our paper categorized these attributes as space and time. In this paper, we have proposed an affinity model to quantify the location affinity for composition of web services. Furthermore, we have also suggested a replication mechanism and algorithm for taking recovery decisions based on time and space based QoS parameters and usage pattern of the services by the user.

Conformance Checking and QoS Selection Based on CPN for Web Service Composition

The development of new services by composition of existing ones has gained considerable momentum as a means of integrating heterogeneous applications and realizing business collaborations. More and more Web services with similar function attributes but different QoS are available. The performance of the composed service is determined by the involved Web services. Therefore, QoS properties are crucial for selecting the Web services to take part in the composition, which can identify the best candidate Web services from a set of functionally-equivalent services. Web service composition enables seamless and dynamic integration of business applications on the web. Due to the inherent autonomy and heterogeneity of component Web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Conformance checking identifies failure and conflict of execution of composite Web service that ensures reliable execution. In this paper we use skyline computation to select services for composition efficiently, reducing the number of candidate services to be considered. Then a novel color Petri net model of Web service composition is presented that combines QoS-based optimal service selection and consistence verification. In the model we define aggregation functions, and use a Multiple Attribute Decision Making approach for the utility function to achieve optimal services selection of QoS properties. We also propose a consistence verification approach to identify potential logical inconsistence of the semantic Web service process before the deployment. Proofs are also presented. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets.

Modeling dynamic recovery strategy for composite web services execution

During the execution of Composite Web Services (CWS), a component Web Service (WS) can fail and can be repaired with strategies such WS retry, substitution, compensation, roll-back, replication, or checkpointing. Each strategy behaves differently on different scenarios, impacting the CWS QoS. We propose a non intrusive dynamic fault tolerant model that analyses several levels of information: environment state, execution state, and QoS criteria, to dynamically decide the best recovery strategy when a failure occurs. We present an experimental study to evaluate the model and determine the impact on QoS parameters of different recovery strategies; and evaluate the intrusiveness of our strategy during the normal execution of CWSs.

Reliable Composite Web Services Execution: Towards a Dynamic Recovery Decision

During the execution of a Composite Web Service (CWS), different faults may occur that cause WSs failures. There exist strategies that can be applied to repair these failures, such as: WS retry, WS substitution, compensation, roll-back, or replication. Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages on different execution scenarios and can produce different impact on the CWS QoS. Hence, it is important to define a dynamic fault tolerant strategy which takes into account environment and execution information to accordingly decide the appropriate recovery strategy. We present a preliminary study in order to analyze the impact on the CWS total execution time of different recovery strategies on different scenarios. The experimental results show that under different conditions, recovery strategies behave differently. This analysis represents a first step towards the definition of a model to dynamically decide which recovery strategy is the best choice by taking into account the context-information when the failure occurs.

A Chemistry-Inspired Workflow Management System for Decentralizing Workflow Execution

With the recent widespread adoption of service-oriented architecture, the dynamic composition of services is now a crucial issue in the area of distributed computing. The coordination and execution of composite Web services are today typically conducted by heavyweight centralized workflow engines, leading to an increasing probability of processing and communication bottlenecks and failures. In addition, centralization induces higher deployment costs, such as the computing infrastructure to support the workflow engine, which is not affordable for a large number of small businesses and end-users. In a world where platforms are more and more dynamic and elastic as promised by cloud computing, decentralized and dynamic interaction schemes are required. Addressing the characteristics of such platforms, nature-inspired analogies recently regained attention to provide autonomous service coordination on top of dynamic large scale platforms. In this paper, we propose an approach for the decentralized execution of composite Web services based on an unconventional programming paradigm that relies on the chemical metaphor. It provides a high-level execution model that allows executing composite services in a decentralized manner. Composed of services communicating through a persistent shared space containing control and data flows between services, our architecture allows to distribute the composition coordination among nodes. A proof of concept is given, through the deployment of a software prototype implementing these concepts, showing the viability of an autonomic vision of service composition.

An Exception Handling Approach for Service-Based Business Processes

This paper proposes an exception handling mechanism for running reliable service-based business processes. With Smart Process-based Application Model that we have proposed, a smart process is generated automatically according to the execution of composite web services to better meet user’s individual requirements. However, the loosely-coupled nature of the smart process introduces more exceptions during its running. This paper will mainly focus on the failures of a smart process, and give an approach to handle exceptions. Based on Execution Transition Diagram(ETD) and several execution states we define in this paper, exceptions can be handled automatically by selecting rational transitions in the ETD during the execution of a smart process.

Retracted] Service Selection of Ensuring Transactional Reliability and QoS for Web Service Composition

Service‐Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a flexible framework of service composition. Using standard‐based protocols, composite service can be constructed by integrating component services independently. As component services are developed by different organization and offer diverse transactional properties and QoS characteristics, it is a challenging problem how to select suitable component services which ensure reliable execution of composite Web service and construct the optimal composite Web service. In this paper, we propose a selection approach that combines transactional properties of ensuring reliability and QoS characteristics. In the selection approach, we build automaton model to implement transactional‐aware service selection and use the model to guarantee reliable execution of composite Web service. We also define aggregation functions, and use a Multiple‐Attribute Decision‐Making approach for the utility function to achieve Qos‐based optimal service selection. Finally, two scenarios of experiments are presented to demonstrate the validity of the selection approach.

FACETA*: Checkpointing for Transactional Composite Web Service Execution based on Petri-Nets

Failures during the execution of Transactional Composite Web Services (TCWSs) can be repaired by forward or back–ward recovery processes, according to the component WSs transactional properties. In previous works, we presented TCWS fault tolerant execution approaches relying on WSs replacement, on a compensation protocol, and on unrolling processes of Colored Petri-Nets (CPNs) to support forward and backward recovery. We represent a TCWS and its corresponding backward recovery process by CPNs. Even though these recovery processes ensure system consistency, backward recovery means that users do not get the desired answer to their queries and forward recovery could imply long waiting time for users to finally get the desired response. In this paper, we present an alternative fault tolerant approach in which, in case of failures, the unrolling process of the CPN controlling the execution of a TCWS is check–pointed and the execution flow goes on as much as it is possible. In this way, users can have partial responses as soon as they are received and can re-submit the checkpointed CPN to re-start its execution from an advanced point of execution (checkpoint). We present the checkpointing algorithm integrated to our previous work.

Stochastic bounds for composite Web services response times

In this paper, we propose bounding models, which provide upper and lower bounds on response time in composite Web service model, for alleviating the state explosion problem. The considered models have heterogeneous servers and the number of elementary Web services can be very large. More precisely, we study two types of composite Web services. First, we investigate the performance of a single composite Web service execution instance. Second, this assumption is relaxed (i.e. multiple composite Web services execution instances are considered). These models allows to find trade-off between the accuracy of the bounds and the computation complexity.

A Global Graph-based Approach for Transaction and QoS-aware Service Composition

In Web Service Composition (WSC) area, services selection aims at selecting an appropriate candidate from a set of functionally-equivalent services to execute the function of each task in an abstract WSC according to their different QoS values. In despite of many related works, few of previous studies consider transactional constraints in QoS-aware WSC, which guarantee reliable execution of Composite Web Service (CWS) that is composed by a number of unpredictable web services. In this paper, we propose a novel global selection-optimal approach in WSC by considering both transactional constraints and end-to-end QoS constraints. With this approach, we firstly identify building rules and the reduction method to build layer-based Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) model which can model transactional relationships among candidate services. As such, the problem of solving global optimal QoS utility with transactional constraints in WSC can be regarded as a problem of solving single-source shortest path in DAG. After that, we present Graph-building algorithms and an optimal selection algorithm to explain the specific execution procedures. Finally, comprehensive experiments are conducted based on a real-world web service QoS dataset. The experimental results show that our approach has better performance over other competing selection approaches on success ratio and efficiency.

Runtime Monitoring CompositeWeb Services Through Stateful Aspect Extension

The execution of composite Web services with WS-BPEL relies on externally autonomous Web services. This implies the need to constantly monitor the running behavior of the involved parties. Moreover, monitoring the execution of composite Web services for particular patterns is critical to enhance the reliability of the processes. In this paper, we propose an aspect-oriented framework as a solution to provide monitoring and recovery support for composite Web services. In particular, this framework includes 1) a stateful aspect based template, where history-based pointcut specifies patterns of interest cannot be violated within a range, while advice specifies the associated recovery action; 2) a tool support for runtime monitoring and recovery based on aspect-oriented execution environment. Our experiments indicate that the proposed monitoring approach incurs minimal overhead and is efficient.

FENECIA: failure endurable nested-transaction based execution of composite Web services with incorporated state analysis

Interest in the Web services (WS) composition (WSC) paradigm is increasing tremendously. A real shift in distributed computing history is expected to occur when the dream of implementing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is realized. However, there is a long way to go to achieve such an ambitious goal. In this paper, we support the idea that, when challenging the WSC issue, the earlier that the inevitability of failures is recognized and proper failure-handling mechanisms are defined, from the very early stage of the composite WS (CWS) specification, the greater are the chances of achieving a significant gain in dependability. To formalize this vision, we present the FENECIA (Failure Endurable Nested-transaction based Execution of Composite Web services with Incorporated state Analysis) framework. Our framework approaches the WSC issue from different points of view to guarantee a high level of dependability. In particular, it aims at being simultaneously a failure-handling-devoted CWS specification, execution, and quality of service (QoS) assessment approach. In the first section of our framework, we focus on answering the need for a specification model tailored for the WS architecture. To this end, we introduce WS-SAGAS, a new transaction model. WS-SAGAS introduces key concepts that are not part of the WS architecture pillars, namely, arbitrary nesting, state, vitality degree, and compensation, to specify failure-endurable CWS as a hierarchy of recursively nested transactions. In addition, to define the CWS execution semantics, without suffering from the hindrance of an XML-based notation, we describe a textual notation that describes a WSC in terms of definition rules, composability rules, and ordering rules, and we introduce graphical and formal notations. These rules provide the solid foundation needed to formulate the execution semantics of a CWS in terms of execution correctness verification dependencies. To ensure dependable execution of the CWS, we present in the second section of FENECIA our architecture THROWS, in which the execution control of the resulting CWS is distributed among engines, discovered dynamically, that communicate in a peer-to-peer fashion. A dependable execution is guaranteed in THROWS by keeping track of the execution progress of a CWS and by enforcing forward and backward recovery. We concentrate in the third section of our approach on showing how the failure consideration is trivial in acquiring more accurate CWS QoS estimations. We propose a model that assesses several QoS properties of CWS, which are specified as WS-SAGAS transactions and executed in THROWS. We validate our proposal and show its feasibility and broad applicability by describing an implemented prototype and a case study.

Efficient execution of composite Web services exchanging intensional data

Web service technologies provide a standard means of integrating heterogeneous applications distributed over the Internet. Successive compositions of new Web services using pre-existing ones usually create a hierarchical structure of invocations among a large number of Web services. For the efficient execution of these composite Web services, we propose an approach which exploits intensional XML data, i.e. an XML document that contains special elements representing the calls to Web services, in order to delegate the invocations of the external Web services to some relevant nodes. We formalize an invocation plan for composite Web services in which intensional data is used as their parameters and results, and define a cost-based optimization problem to obtain an efficient invocation plan for them. We provide an A∗ heuristic search algorithm to find an optimal invocation plan for a given set of Web services and also present a greedy method of generating an efficient solution in a short time. The experimental results show that the proposed greedy method can find a close-to-optimal solution efficiently and has good scalability for a complex call hierarchy of Web services.

Resolving heterogeneity of Web-service composition in network manufacturing based on ontology

Web-service composition provides more powerful service functions through integrating existing Web services on the Internet, and collaborative working and resource-sharing among enterprises on the Internet have become a popular trend by means of Web-service composition technologies. Network manufacturing plays an important role in the manufacturing domain and can be realized based on Web-service composition. However, heterogeneity exists widely in complicated Web-service composition, except for manufacturing resources, and this must be resolved. In this paper, we focus on the heterogeneity existing in the execution of composite Web services in network manufacturing, in which the heterogeneity is classified into the heterogeneity between semantic equivalent Web services and the heterogeneity between subsequent Web services in a composite service. We summarize five types of conflicts, namely Semantic Conflict, Parameter Data Type Conflict, Parameter Structure Conflict, Parameter Number Conflict, and Parameter Data Unit Conflict. According to these five types of conflicts, an ontology-based approach for resolving them is proposed, including the definition of domain business process ontology knowledge, domain and industry ontology knowledge, and meta-ontology knowledge about transformation rules. Finally, a case is given, and the implementation technologies are introduced. The ontology based on heterogeneity resolution policy should be established as middleware and applied to any domain to make Web-service composition more available.

A high performance backoff protocol for fast execution of composite web services

Using web services to expose applications over the Internet is now a widely accepted practice. Currently, there are several ongoing efforts that provide ways to effectively compose web services distributed across different organizations. One of the problems underlying the deployment of such composite services on the web, however, is service co-allocation that arises when a composite service needs to ensure all the required component services to be available for execution at the same time. Motivated by this, this paper presents a new decentralized protocol, named web service co-allocation protocol (WSCP), which can facilitate fast execution of composite web services. The proposed framework is an enhancement of the famous two phase commit protocol through the incorporation of tentative hold phase as well as the employment of a new high performance backoff protocol developed to better address the dynamics of the service co-allocation problem. The simulation results show that the proposed approach yields significant improvements over existing protocols.

Decentralizing execution of composite web services

Distributed enterprise applications today are increasingly being built from services available over the web. A unit of functionality in this framework is a web service, a software application that exposes a set of "typed'' connections that can be accessed over the web using standard protocols. These units can then be composed into a <i>composite</i> web service. BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) is a high-level distributed programming language for creating composite web services. Although a BPEL program invokes services distributed over several servers, the <i>orchestration</i> of these services is typically under centralized control. Because performance and throughput are major concerns in enterprise applications, it is important to remove the inefficiencies introduced by the centralized control. In a distributed, or decentralized orchestration, the BPEL program is partitioned into independent sub-programs that interact with each other without any centralized control. Decentralization can increase parallelism and reduce the amount of network traffic required for an application. This paper presents a technique to partition a composite web service written as a single BPEL program into an equivalent set of decentralized processes. It gives a new code partitioning algorithm to partition a BPEL program represented as a program dependence graph, with the goal of minimizing communication costs and maximizing the <i>throughput</i> of multiple concurrent instances of the input program. In contrast, much of the past work on dependence-based partitioning and scheduling seeks to minimize the <i>completion time</i> of a single instance of a program running in isolation. The paper also gives a cost model to estimate the throughput of a given code partition.

Meta web service: building web-based open decision support system based on web services

Abstract Web services are currently one of the trends in network-based business services, which intuitively will be applied to build a semantic web-based decision support system (DSS). Since web services are self-contained, modular business process applications, based on open standards, enable integration models for facilitating program-to-program interactions. Decision modules in a semantic web-based DSS can be viewed as a web service. However, according to the current features, web services know only about themselves, they are neither autonomous, nor are they designed to use ontologies; they are passive until invoked, and they do not provide for composing functionalities. These lead to the motivation on building a sophisticated web service to contain these features and to utilize web services on behalf of the user. This paper aims to propose a new concept of Meta Web Service, a web service-based DSS. The meta web service understands the user's problem statement with ontology, performs web service discovery, web service composition, and automatically generates codes for composite web service execution. Case-based reasoning is applied to quickly find past histories of successful service compositions. A prototype of research web service has been developed to show the feasibility of the proposed idea.