International Journal of Web and Grid Services 

About: International Journal of Web and Grid Services is an academic journal published by Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Web service & Cloud computing. It has an ISSN identifier of 1741-1106. Over the lifetime, 326 publications have been published receiving 6467 citations.

Blockchain challenges and opportunities: a survey

Abstract: Blockchain has numerous benefits such as decentralisation, persistency, anonymity and auditability. There is a wide spectrum of blockchain applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services, risk management, internet of things (IoT) to public and social services. Although a number of studies focus on using the blockchain technology in various application aspects, there is no comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology in both technological and application perspectives. To fill this gap, we conduct a comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology. In particular, this paper gives the blockchain taxonomy, introduces typical blockchain consensus algorithms, reviews blockchain applications and discusses technical challenges as well as recent advances in tackling the challenges. Moreover, this paper also points out the future directions in the blockchain technology.

A survey on web services composition

Abstract: Due to the web services' heterogeneous nature, which stems from the definition of several XML-based standards to overcome platform and language dependence, web services have become an emerging and promising technology to design and build complex inter-enterprise business applications out of single web-based software components. To establish the existence of a global component market, in order to enforce extensive software reuse, service composition experienced increasing interest in doing a lot of research effort. This paper discusses the urgent need for service composition, the required technologies to perform service composition. It also presents several different composition strategies, based on some currently existing composition platforms and frameworks, re-presenting first implementations of state-of the-art technologies, and gives an outlook to essential future research work.

Semantic Web of Things: an analysis of the application semantics for the IoT moving towards the IoT convergence

Abstract: The Internet of Things IoT is being applied for stovepipe solutions, since it presents a semantic description limited to a specific domain. IoT needs to be pushed towards a more open, interoperable and collaborative IoT. The first step has been the Web of Things WoT. WoT evolves the IoT with a common stack based on web services. But, even when a homogeneous access is reached through web protocols, a common understanding is not yet acquired. For this purpose, the Semantic Web of Things SWoT is proposed for the integration of the semantic web on the WoT. This work analyses the SWoT, presenting its different levels to offer an IoT convergence. Specifically, we analyse the trends for capillary networks and for cellular networks with standards such as IPSO, ZigBee, OMA, and the oneM2M initiative. This work also analyses the impact of the semantic-annotations/metadata in the performance of the resources.

Classification of the state-of-the-art dynamic web services composition techniques

Abstract: Dynamic web service composition can serve applications or users on an on-demand basis. With dynamic composition, the application's capabilities can be extended at runtime so that theoretically an unlimited number of new services can be created from a limited set of service components, thus making applications no longer restricted to the original set of operations specified and envisioned at design and/or compile time. Moreover, dynamic composition is the only means to adapt the behaviour of running components in highly available applications such as, banking and telecommunication systems where services cannot be brought offline to upgrade or remove obsolete services. In this paper, we present a novel classification of the current state-of-the-art dynamic web services composition techniques with attention to the capabilities and limitations of the underlying approaches. The proposed taxonomy of these techniques is derived based on a comprehensive survey of what has been done so far in dynamic web service composition. Finally, we summarise our findings and present a vision for future research work in this area.

Batch mode scheduling in grid systems

Abstract: Despite recent advances, grid and P2P systems remain difficult for many users to bring to real-world applications. One difficulty is the lack of schedulers for such systems. In this work, we consider the allocations of jobs to resources using batch mode methods. These methods are able to provide fast planning by exploring characteristics of distributed and highly heterogeneous systems. In evaluating these methods, four parameters of the system are measured: makespan, flowtime, resource utilisation and matching proximity. These methods were tested using the benchmark model of Braun et al. (2001) for distributed heterogeneous systems. Based on the computational results, we evaluate the performance of these methods with regard to the four considered metrics. Also, we evaluate the usefulness of batch methods when grid characteristics, such as degree of consistency of computing and heterogeneity of jobs and resources, are known in advance. We observe that batch mode methods are beneficial to grid scheduling services, for adaptively providing these services according to the grid infrastructure characteristics.