Requirements for QoS-Based Web Service Description and Discovery

The goal of service oriented architectures (SOAs) is to enable the creation of business applications through the automatic discovery and composition of independently developed and deployed (Web) services. Automatic discovery of Web services (WSs) can be achieved by incorporating semantics into a richer WS description model (WSDM) and by the use of semantic Web (SW) technologies in the WS matchmaking and selection (i.e., discovery) process. A sufficiently rich WSDM should encompass not only functional but also nonfunctional aspects like quality of service (QoS). QoS is a set of performance and domain-dependent attributes that has a substantial impact on WS requesters' expectations. Thus, it can be used for distinguishing between many functionally equivalent WSs that are available nowadays. This paper starts by defining QoS in the context of WSs. Its main contribution is the analysis of the requirements for a semantically rich QoS-based WSDM and an accurate, effective QoS-based WS Discovery (WSDi) process. In addition, a road map of extending current WS standard technologies for realizing semantic, functional, and QoS-based WSDi, respecting the above requirements, is presented.