A Matching Algorithm for Selecting Web Services Based on Non-Functional Features

Searching for a Web service that meets the user requirements can be a complex task especially when the system starts to scale up by increasing the number of Web services, w, in the UDDI registry and by enlarging the number of QoS features (f) by which each Web service is described. This can be perceived as the commonly known nearest neighbor search problem, which typically imposes a time or storage complexity that is exponential in f. In this work, we present a new algorithm (wsSVD) that is founded on the algebraic matrix operation called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The basic idea is to encode the features of each Web service by a single value using the SVD. When a user seeks a Web service based on some specific requirements, these requirements get encoded by a single value using the same algorithm, and the matching process takes place in order to find the closest Web service that fulfills the user requirements. Our experiments show that the wsSVD algorithm performs and scales up well in comparison with other matching algorithms

A Formal Method for Selecting a Project Manager Based on Leadership Characteristics

Selecting the most suitable manager to lead a project is a non-trivial task especially if the need arises urgently. Our research presents a new method by which a new manager can be selected objectively by formally modeling the leadership characteristics, which are the core criteria of selection. The ideal characteristics sought by the company are modeled using a Configuration Profile, while the characteristics of each candidate manager are modeled using Candidate Profile. The value of each profile is computed and stored in a list. This list gets sorted and eventually the top candidate profile is selected. We show how to apply our methodology using the characteristics of leadership but any other arbitrary attributes, such as cultural or technical characteristics, can be used too

Composite Web Services Formation Using a Social Network of Web Services: A Preliminary Investigation

A composite Web service, such as arranging a travel to a conference, can be viewed as a project team that is comprised of several members who want to collaborate in order to accomplish a specific goal. In this work, we propose an algorithm for searching a social network of Web services in order to select an effective set of Web services that can collaborate in order to attain the main goal of the composite Web service at hand. Ultimately, the selection algorithm takes into consideration the set of functions that each Web services member possesses, e.g., hotel booking, car rental, etc., and the communication cost among these members. Our goal is to secure all the functions required by the composite Web service yet minimizing the communication overhead. The preliminary design of the experiments and the future work are described. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd

A Data-based Guiding Framework for Digital Transformation

This paper presents a framework for guiding organizations initiate and sustain digital transformation initiatives. Digital transformation is a long-term journey that an organization embarks on when it decides to question its practices in light of management, operation, and technology challenges. The guiding framework stresses out the importance of data in any digital transformation initiative by suggesting 4 stages referred to as collection, processing, storage, and dissemination. Because digital transformation could impact different areas of an organization for instance, business processes and business models, each stage suggests techniques to expose data. 2 case studies are adopted in the paper to illustrate how the guiding framework is put into action

Reputation of communities of Web services - Preliminary investigation

Web services communities can be seen as virtual clusters that agglomerate Web services with the same functionality (e.g., FlightBooking). However, selecting a community to deal with is a challenging task to users and providers. Reputation, besides other selection criteria, has been widely used for evaluating and ranking candidates. Interestingly, the definition of community reputation from the perspective of users differs from the perspective of Web service providers. In this paper, we introduce a reputation-based Web services community architecture and define some of the petformance metrics that are needed to assess the reputation of a Web service community as perceived by users and providers. © 2008 IEEE

An Effective PSO-inspired Algorithm for Workflow Scheduling

The Cloud is a computing platform that provides on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable resources such as networks, servers and storage that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort from clients. At its core, Cloud computing focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of the shared resources. Therefore, workflow scheduling is one of the challenges that the Cloud must tackle especially if a large number of tasks are executed on geographically distributed servers. This entails the need to adopt an effective scheduling algorithm in order to minimize task completion time (makespan). Although workflow scheduling has been the focus of many researchers, a handful efficient solutions have been proposed for Cloud computing. In this paper, we propose the LPSO, a novel algorithm for workflow scheduling problem that is based on the Particle Swarm Optimization method. Our proposed algorithm not only ensures a fast convergence but also prevents getting trapped in local extrema. We ran realistic scenarios using CloudSim and found that LPSO is superior to previously proposed algorithms and noticed that the deviation between the solution found by LPSO and the optimal solution is negligible

Enhancing Data Security for Cloud Computing Applications through Distributed Blockchain-based SDN Architecture in IoT Networks

Blockchain (BC) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are some of the most prominent emerging technologies in recent research. These technologies provide security, integrity, as well as confidentiality in their respective applications. Cloud computing has also been a popular comprehensive technology for several years. Confidential information is often shared with the cloud infrastructure to give customers access to remote resources, such as computation and storage operations. However, cloud computing also presents substantial security threats, issues, and challenges. Therefore, to overcome these difficulties, we propose integrating Blockchain and SDN in the cloud computing platform. In this research, we introduce the architecture to better secure clouds. Moreover, we leverage a distributed Blockchain approach to convey security, confidentiality, privacy, integrity, adaptability, and scalability in the proposed architecture. BC provides a distributed or decentralized and efficient environment for users. Also, we present an SDN approach to improving the reliability, stability, and load balancing capabilities of the cloud infrastructure. Finally, we provide an experimental evaluation of the performance of our SDN and BC-based implementation using different parameters, also monitoring some attacks in the system and proving its efficacy.Comment: 12 Pages 16 Figures 3 Table

Towards an approach for weaving preferences into web services operation

Existing approaches on Web services privacy dominate solutions from a users’ perspective, giving little consideration to the preferences of Web service providers. The integration of service providers’ preferences into Web services’ operations is discussed in this paper. A Web service provider indicates peer Web services that it could interact with as well as the data that they could exchange with. We focus on Privacy and (trust) Partnership preferences based on which, we develop a Specification for Privacy and Partnership Preferences (S3P). This specification suggests a list of exceptional actions to deploy at run-time when these preferences are not met. An integration model of these preferences into Web services design is illustrated throughout a running scenario, and an implementation framework proves the S3P concept.Zakaria Maamar, Quan Z. Sheng, Yacine Atif, Sujith Samuel Mathew, Khouloud Boukad