Showing papers on "Differentiated service published in 2012"

Mobile service context

Abstract: According to one general aspect, a method may include requesting, from a database and by a program executing on a mobile computing device, at least a portion of a business service context regarding a business service. The method may also include receiving, from the database, an aggregated database result regarding the business service. The aggregated database result may include the requested business service context and wherein the business service context includes information from a plurality of applications. The method may also include displaying, via the mobile computing device, at least a portion of the information included by the business service context.

Provisioning QoS controlled media access in vehicular to infrastructure communications

Abstract: The emerging IEEE 802.11p standard adopts the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism as its Media Access Control (MAC) scheme to support quality-of-service (QoS) in the rapidly changing vehicular environment. While the IEEE 802.11 protocol family represents the dominant solutions for wireless local area networks, its QoS performance in terms of throughput and delay, in the highly mobile vehicular networks, is still unclear. To explore an in-depth understanding on this issue, in this paper, we develop a comprehensive analytical model that takes into account both the QoS features of EDCA and the vehicle mobility (velocity and moving directions). Based on the model, we analyze the throughput performance and mean transmission delay of differentiated service traffic, and seek solutions to optimally adjust the parameters of EDCA towards the controllable QoS provision to vehicles. Analytical and simulation results are given to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed model for varying EDCA parameters and vehicle velocity and density.

Multi-attribute optimization in service selection

Abstract: As multiple service providers may compete to offer the same functionality with different quality of service (e.g., latency, fee, and reputation), a key issue in service computing is selecting service providers with the best user desired quality. Existing service selection approaches mostly rely on computing a predefined objective function. When multiple quality criteria are considered, users are required to express their preference over different (and sometimes conflicting) quality attributes as numeric weights. This is a rather demanding task and an imprecise specification of the weights could miss user desired services. We propose a multi-attribute optimization approach to tackle this issue. In particular, we develop a novel concept, called service skyline, and a set of service skyline computation techniques that return a set of most interesting service providers. These providers are non-dominant in all user interested quality attributes. Thus, the service skyline ensures that the user desired providers will be included. Analytical and experimental studies justify the performance of the proposed techniques. The relative small sizes of the service skylines also make it practical for service users to make selections from them.

Typology for Modular Service Design: Review of Literature

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present a typology for modular service design. We review engineering, manufacturing, and service research literature and develop three key concepts for service modularization: service module, service architecture, and service experience. Thereafter these key concepts are further decomposed into detailed constructs. Basing on the reviewed literature, we develop a common typology for modular services. We argue that our typology provides a foundation for the development of modular service design methods. We also expect that it is important to recognize how customers perceive the service. We propose that service experiences can be characterized by value creation, role perception, personalization, and task complexity and by how the customers experience the particular services.

Optimized service integration

Abstract: An optimized service mediation framework may use customized tokens for reducing cost and latencies per transaction. In particular, a token service and an integration service may function together to generate customized tokens for use by network components within a transaction pathway. Each network component may access information with the token for a predetermined time period and/or for a predetermined number of service calls for service processing tasks related to mapping, security, governing, bridging, transforming, orchestrating, generating events, managing workloads, routing, validating, managing cache, encrypting, queuing and staging, commodity services, transaction management, and quality of service (QoS)/resiliency, among other things.

BANMAC: An Opportunistic MAC Protocol for Reliable Communications in Body Area Networks

Abstract: We consider reliable communications in Body Area Networks (BAN), where a set of nodes placed on human body are connected using wireless links. In order to keep the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) as low as possible for health safety reasons, these networks operate in low transmit power regime, which however, is known to be error prone. It has been observed that the fluctuations of the Received Signal Strength (RSS) at the nodes of a BAN on a moving person show certain regularities and that the magnitude of these fluctuations are significant (5 -- 20 dB). In this paper, we present BANMAC, a MAC protocol that monitors and predicts the channel fluctuations and schedules transmissions opportunistically when the RSS is likely to be higher. The MAC protocol is capable of providing differentiated service and resolves co-channel interference in the event of multiple co-located BANs in a vicinity. We report the design and implementation details of BANMAC integrated with the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol stack. We present experimental data which show that the packet loss rate (PLR) of BANMAC is significantly lower as compared to that of the IEEE~802.15.4 MAC. For comparable PLR, the power consumption of BANMAC is also significantly lower than that of the IEEE~802.15.4. For co-located networks, the convergence time to find a conflict-free channel allocation was approximately 1 s for the centralized coordination mechanism and was approximately 4 s for the distributed coordination mechanism.

Metamodel for Service Analysis and Design Based on an Operational View of Service and Service Systems

Abstract: This paper presents a metamodel that addresses service system analysis and design based on an operational view of service that traverses and integrates three essential layers: service activities, service systems, and value constellations. The metamodel's service-in-operation perspective and underlying premises diverge from a view of service systems as systems of economic exchange that has appeared a number of times in the journal Service Science. In addition to the metamodel itself, this paper's contributions include an explanation of eight premises on which it is based plus clarifications concerning concepts such as service, service system, customer, product/service, coproduction and cocreation of value, actor role, resources, symmetrical treatment of automated and nonautomated service systems, and the relationship between service-dominant logic and service systems. Many articles have discussed these topics individually; few, if any, have tied them together using an integrated metamodel.

Secure consumer authorization and automated consumer services using an intermediary service

Abstract: A transaction processing service that operates as an intermediary between aggregators of transaction requests, service providers, consumers, and third-party recipients of data, is disclosed. As used herein, a transaction request is a request for consumer services to be provided to a consumer or third-party, a consumer's authorization of such consumer services, and/or a consumer's authorization of applicable terms, policies, contracts, or agreements. The intermediary service utilizes a consumer's mobile device as an out-of-band communication channel to notify a consumer of a received transaction request and to receive a consumer's authorization of the transaction. Once a transaction is authorized, the intermediary service facilitates the consumer services related to the transaction and provides a service response from one or more service providers to the user's mobile device and/or another service target.

A QoS-Aware Service Selection Method for Cloud Service Composition

Abstract: Many recent studies have been addressing the service selection problem based on non-functional aspects due to the ever-increasing number of web services. However, most existing works about QoS-based service composition treat the services referred in service composition as independent ones from each other, and their correlations are usually ignored. In reality, the services supplied by service providers in cloud environment are not segregate and irrelevant with each other. In view of this challenging problem, we use Finite State Machine (FSM) to prescribe the legal invocation orders of these web services, also an improved Tree-pruning-based algorithm is proposed to create the Web Service Composition Tree (WSCT). After generating all of the feasible execution paths, a Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) technique is used to select an optimal one. At last, an experiment is presented for validating the performance of the method.

Continuous Query for QoS-Aware Automatic Service Composition

Abstract: Current QoS-aware automatic service composition queries over a network of Web services are often one-time innature After a network of Web services is built, such queries are issued once, and answers are found from the scratch The underlying assumption is that the participating Web services are rather static so that their functional and non-functional parameters seldom change However, such an assumption is often baseless New services come and go, service APIs change gradually, and QoS values fluctuate Therefore, a support for efficiently handling "continuous" service composition queries is desired In this paper, we propose an event driven continuous query algorithm for QoS-aware automatic service composition problem to cope with different types of dynamic services Moreover, we integrated this algorithm in our service composition system, QSynth Finally, we evaluate our proposal using both real QoS data and synthetic Web service data and show the superior performance of ours, compared to the state-of-the art solution which won the performance championship of Web Service Challenge in 2009 and 2010

Domain-Specific Service Selection for Composite Services

Abstract: We propose a domain-specific service selection mechanism and system implementation to address the issue of runtime adaptation of composite services that implement mission-critical business processes. To this end, we leverage quality of service (QoS) as a means to specify rigid dependability requirements. QoS does not include only common attributes such as availability or response time but also attributes specific to certain business domains and processes. Therefore, we combine both domain-agnostic and domain-specific QoS attributes in an adaptive QoS model. For specifying the service selection strategy, we propose a domain-specific language called VieDASSL to specify so-called selectors. This language can be used to specify selector implementations based on the available QoS attributes. Both the QoS model implementation and the selectors can be adapted at runtime to deal with changing business and QoS requirements. Our approach is implemented on top of an existing WS-BPEL engine. We demonstrate its feasibility by implementing a case study from the telecommunication domain.

Internet of Things IoT Service Architecture and its Application in E-Commerce

Abstract: Internet of Things IoT is considered as the developing tendency of network technology, generally it refers to the networked interconnection of different kinds of things objects. Compared with the Internet, IoT provides a wider platform to share more information. In this situation, the information service in IoT is necessary to organize the process of getting and sharing information for the IoT user. This paper considers that IoT service should have active, personalized, and intelligent features. The architecture for IoT service is given, which consists of three layers: perception layer, network layer, and service layer. Correspondingly, models ftoor identify users need and service coordination are proposed. E-commerce is one of the most important applications on the Internet and is a typical format of information service. Thus, this paper chooses e-commerce as the application case to research and show how IoT service works in reality.

Systems, computer-implemented methods, and computer-readable media to provide building information to on-site mobile-devices

Abstract: Systems, methods, computer-readable media, and user interfaces are provided. In some aspects, the provided techniques transmit to a mobile device a notification of one or more buildings, service providers; or services relating to a geographic position of, or an environment of, the mobile device. Information relating to services provided in a building may be displayed to a user, and the user's selection may be received by the mobile device. The user may be guided to one or more service providers for the user-selected service. Further Information relating to services, service providers, and buildings may be presented to the user as relates to the user-selected service. Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are further provided that, in some instances, notify a service provider of a user's selection received by the mobile device and in some instances, notify a service provider of a geographic position for the mobile device.

Flow Oriented Approaches to QoS Assurance

Abstract: The following flow-oriented architectures for quality of service assurance in IP networks are surveyed: Integrated Services, Connectionless Approach to QoS guarantees, Dynamic Packet State, Caspian Networks and Anagran, the Feedback and Distribution method, Flow-Based Differentiated Services, Flow-Aware Networking, the Flow-State-Aware transport, and Flow-Aggregate-Based services. The reasons why flow-awareness attracted so much attention are explained, and the current studies as well as the development history of the solutions are presented. The following features of the discussed architectures are compared: flow definition, classes of service, architecture, and signaling. Also, their pros and cons, complexity, and scalability, as well as perspectives are assessed.

Towards robust service compositions in the context of functionally diverse services

Abstract: Web service composition provides a means of customized and flexible integration of service functionalities. Quality-of-Service (QoS) optimization algorithms select services in order to adapt workflows to the non-functional requirements of the user. With increasing number of services in a workflow, previous approaches fail to achieve a sufficient reliability. Moreover, expensive ad-hoc replanning is required to deal with service failures. The major problem with such sequential application of planning and replanning is that it ignores the potential costs during the initial planning and they consequently are hidden from the decision maker. Our basic idea to overcome this substantial problem is to compute a QoS optimized selection of service clusters that includes a sufficient number of backup services for each service employed. To support the human decision maker in the service selection task, our approach considers the possible repair costs directly in the initial composition. On the basis of a multi-objective approach and using a suitable service selection interface, the decision maker can select compositions in line with his/her personal risk preferences.

Differentiated service-based graceful degradation layer

Abstract: The differentiated service-based graceful degradation layer (DSGDL) allows cloud-based architectures to operate through and recover from periods of limited capability. The DSGDL protects and continues serving higher priority requests with the best possible response even as the underlying cloud-based services deteriorate. The DSGDL offloads lower priority requests to lower-grade secondary capability that can be dynamically provisioned in order to reserve the best capability for maintaining high priority service (e.g., by re-directing lower priority requests to a slightly out-of-date cached dataset, and reserve the primary consistent database for higher priority requests). The DSGDL 1) implements an overlay network over existing cloud services to route and enforce priority requests, and 2) provisions on-demand computing nodes and sites to provide secondary capability for service requests as needed.

Integrated Customer Profiling, Service Provider Matching and Smart Order, Creation System and Method

Abstract: A computer-implemented home maintenance and service system and method provide automated, integrated user profiling, service provider matching, and work order creation. The system and method facilitate the computer-implemented, automatic creation of service transactions, in the form of actionable work orders that can be utilized by service providers. These service transactions are established in a vendor-provided transaction brokering system that includes a home profile database, a service request match processor, and a service order processor. The system also houses and uses a comprehensive database repository for all home related information.

A semantically enhanced service repository for user-centric service discovery and management

Abstract: User centricity represents a new trend in the currently flourishing service oriented computing era. By upgrading end-users to prosumers (producer+consumer) and involving them in the process of service creation, both service consumers and service providers can benefit from a cheaper, faster, and better service provisioning. The EU-IST research project OPUCE (Open Platform for User-Centric Service Creation and Execution) aims at building a unique service environment by integrating recent advances in networking, communication and information technology where personalized services can be dynamically created and managed by prosumers. This paper particularly discusses the design and development of a service repository, which is at the very core of the OPUCE platform. The repository consists of two main components: a fully functioned XML registry supporting facet-based access to service descriptions, and a novel semantic service browser that supports prosumers who are not technically experienced to explore and discover services in an intuitive and visualized manner. We demonstrate the benefits of our design by conducting usability and performance studies.

Non-Functional Properties in Service Oriented Architecture – A Consumer’s Perspective

Abstract: Information about non-functional properties (NFPs) is rarely explicitly described in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) services. In particular, there is still no standardized solution addressing what service providers should expose or advertise as NFPs in service descriptions to empower service consumers to decide whether a given ser- vice suits best their needs or not. Our goal is to define a catalogue of generic (i.e., domain independent) non- functional properties to be considered when service descrip- tions are developed. This catalogue should be used to better characterize services and enable consumers to perform advanced applications such as NFP-aware service selection. We have identified an initial catalogue of SOA-related NFPs that are relevant from the perspective of consumers (as opposed to providers). Then, we have designed an online survey and invited international SOA experts in many ap- plication areas to criticize the relevance and definitions of the proposed NFPs and to enhance this catalogue. After analyzing the survey results to synthesize an improved cata- logue, we have validated the new definitions a second time with a subset of the initial participants. We obtained a vali- dated list of 17 NFP definitions for atomic SOA service descriptions relevant from a service consumer's perspective. Index Terms—Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Service Description, Non-Functional Properties (NFPs), Consumer's Perspective.

A formal model for the interoperability of service clouds

Abstract: Large-scale service-oriented computing is based on the idea that services from various servers are combined into one distributed application. Referring to a collection of services on one server as a “service cloud”, the problem investigated in this paper is to define formal high-level specifications of such distributed applications and to enable the location of suitable services for them. Based on the language-independent model of Abstract State Services (AS2s), which serves as a universal integrated model for data and software as services, we extend AS2s by high-level action schemes called “plots” as a means to specify permitted sequences of service operations. On these grounds, we develop a model for service mediators, that is, specifications of composed services in which service slots have to be filled by actual services, and investigate matching conditions for slots of mediators and services. For a services to match a slot in a mediator, a (generalised) projection of the mediator must comply with the plot of the service. Furthermore, the service must be semantically adequate, which requires the use of a service ontology.

Quality of service measure approach of web service for service selection

Abstract: Quality of service (QoS) is critical for service customers to select suitable web services for business applications in open web environment. However, since QoS are often influenced by several factors, traditional approaches are not very efficient and effective in measuring QoS of web service. The authors introduce in this study a novel QoS measure approach to efficiently measure QoS of web service for web service selection. The core of this approach is to take the three factors, that is, service providers, the context of customers and historical statistics into QoS measure. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is efficient and effective in measuring QoS of web service.

Open semantic service networks

Abstract: Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control.

Four Ways to Reinvent Service Delivery

Abstract: Innovations that radically redefine how a service is delivered can create tremendous value for customers and for providers. But they require deep insight into clients' needs and the revising of basic assumptions. It's possible, for example, that a doctor can treat more than one patient at a time. Organizations can redefine service delivery along four dimensions. A change in one may unlock -- or block -- possibilities for innovation in the others. 1) The structure of the interaction. Sometimes the service becomes more valuable to clients if they share it with others or if multiple providers coordinate closely to deliver it. 2) The service boundary. If a segment of clients uses the same complementary services and has trouble accessing them, a provider might consider integrating them into its offering. 3) The allocation of tasks. Who actually delivers the service? Employees' expertise might not match their assigned tasks. 4) The delivery location. This should be defined by the client's needs, not the provider's.

Service Grid Federation Architecture for Heterogeneous Domains

Abstract: Service grid is an infrastructure for service-oriented collective intelligence. It provides a set of enabling functionalities to support coordination of services, such as service registries, service composition, access control, and monitoring. To form the service-oriented collective intelligence, various types of services need to be connected on the service grid, and managed by the service grid operator. However, it is difficult for single service grid operator to gather and organize services in various domains. Therefore, building service grids in different domains and connecting these service grids are essential for expanding service-oriented collective intelligence across domains. To this end, we have designed a service domain model to specialize general-purpose service grid to a specific domain and realize interoperability among service grids. Moreover, we have also developed service grid federation architecture to share service registries, compose services across service grids, and control and monitor accesses to the composite services. Finally, we have applied the proposed architecture to the language service domain to construct the Language Grid.

ASTRO-CAptEvo: Dynamic Context-Aware Adaptation for Service-Based Systems

Abstract: Adaptivity is a key feature of service-based systems to fully exploit the advantages offered by the service paradigm. In this paper we present a comprehensive framework that can be used to define and support highly adaptable context-aware service-based business processes. In our approach, all the adaptation-related tasks, from detecting an adaptation problem to finding a solution and applying it to a running process instance, are performed automatically at run time. We also show how the framework has been implemented and applied to a real-world scenario from the logistics domain.

Workflow composition of service level agreements for web services

Abstract: Service-oriented architecture enables an environment where businesses can expose services for use by their collaborators and their peer organizations. In this dynamic environment, organizations require the use of service level agreements (SLAs) to assure the quality of service (QoS) standards of services provided by their collaborators. In an ad-hoc workflow scenario, a business may need to perform real-time composition of existing services in response to consumer requests. In this work, we suggest that, in parallel to traditional web service composition, the business must also compose the existing SLAs in order to ensure the service levels that must be guaranteed to new consumers. Ultimately, this approach to SLA composition must align with the overarching principles of the provider and the priorities of the consumer. In this paper, we introduce a model and representations of service level agreement attributes appropriate for managing a service provider's expectations when adding new partners. Our evaluations suggest that the SLA composition can efficiently run concurrently with traditional service composition. Highlights? We develop a model of service level objectives for web services. ? We develop an approach to compose SLAs based on user priorities. ? The SLA composition performs favorably in parallel with typical service composition. ? SLA composition can prevent entry of new services that invalidate existing SLAs.