Dynamic web services composition: current issues

Abstract

A great deal of recent web-related research has concentrated on automated web service composition. The main advantage of web services technology is the possibility of creating value-added services by combining existing ones to achieve customized tasks. How to combine these services efficiently into an arrangement that is both functionally sound and architecturally realizable is a very challenging topic that has founded a significant research area within computer science. Our research contribution lies in the area of dynamic composition service selection. We have started by collating and analyzing current outstanding problems within the dynamic composition area. To help explain the background to these challenges we compare, firstly, the key components of distributed computing technologies with web service composition. Then we define the ‘execute ability’ problem - the key idea that preconditions of web services must be satisfied before or during composition. We discuss data distribution strategies among services, how they can be used to overcome problems in dynamic composition problems and how they relate to the quality of service. Finally, we present our proposed framework model to handle the process of web service composition and execution. We propose that this framework eliminates the main problems as discussed in the paper