Efficient integration of web services with distributed data flow and active mediation

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a loosely coupled service-composition paradigm. This paradigm employs a distributed data flow that differs markedly from centralized information flow adopted by current service integration frameworks, such as CORBA, J2EE and SOAP. Distributed data flows support direct data transmission to avoid many performance bottlenecks of centralized processing. In addition, active mediation is used in applications employing multiple web services that are not fully compatible in terms of data formats and contents. Active mediation increases the applicability of the services, reduces data communication among the services, and enables the application to control complex computations. The benefits of distributed data flow and active mediation are illustrated with various applications, such as dynamic type conversion, result extraction, and engineering application. It is shown that active mediation, combining with distributed data flows, can greatly improve the performance of an application utilizing multiple web services.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software
          Subjects: Information networks; Performance evaluation (efficiency and effectiveness); Distributed systems

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation, Languages, Performance, Standardization, Theory

Keywords:
active mediation, direct data transmission, handheld services, mobile class, service integration, web services