Using real-time dependability in adaptive service selection

In service-oriented architectures (SOA), services advertise a description of the type of service they can provide. Sometimes, services also advertise quality of information (QoI) attributes describing the quality of their provided service. When there are multiple alternative service providers for the same type of service, a client can use the advertised QoI to select the best alternative. However, these QoI attributes may not be reliable, leading the client to select a sub-optimal alternative. We suggest a mechanism in SOAs for rating the current dependability of the advertised QoI of each alternative, and using this dependability to automatically select the best alternative service provider. We present results of a case study that considers weather forecast services