Web Service Selection for Multiple Agents with Incomplete Preferences

A qualitative way is desirable for web service selection according to agents' preferences on non-functional Quality of Service (QoS) attributes of services. However, it is challenging when the decision has to be made for multiple agents with preferences on attributes that may be incomplete. In this paper, we first use a qualitative graphical representation tool called CP-nets to describe preference relations in a relatively compact, intuitive and structured manner. We then propose algorithms based on this representation to select web services for multiple agents despite the presence of incompleteness in their preference orderings. Our experimental results indicate that this method can always obtain some optimal outcomes which closely satisfy all agents.