Efficient web service selection with uncertain QoS

Abstract

The QoS-based service selection in a highly dynamical environment is becoming a challenging issue. In practice, the QoS fluctuations of a service composition entail major difficulties in measuring the degree to which the user requirements are satisfied. In addition, the search space of feasible compositions (i.e., the solutions that preserve the requirements) is generally large and cannot be explored in a limited time; therefore, we need an approach that not only copes with the presence of uncertainty but also ensures a pertinent search with a reduced computational cost. To tackle this problem, we propose a constraint programming framework and a set of ranking heuristics that both reduce the search space and ensure a set of reliable compositions. The conducted experiments show that the ranking heuristics, termed 'fuzzy dominance' and 'probabilistic skyline', outperform almost all existing state-of-the-art methods.