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Robust execution of service workflows using redundancy and advance reservations

Robust execution of service workflows using redundancy and advance reservations
Robust execution of service workflows using redundancy and advance reservations
In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm that allows service consumers to execute business processes (or workflows) of interdependent services in a dependable manner within tight time-constraints. In particular, we consider large inter-organisational service-oriented systems, where services are offered by external organisations that demand financial remuneration and where their use has to be negotiated in advance using explicit service-level agreements (as is common in Grids and cloud computing). Here, different providers often offer the same type of service at varying levels of quality and price. Furthermore, some providers may be less trustworthy than others, possibly failing to meet their agreements. To control this unreliability and ensure end-to-end dependability while maximising the profit obtained from completing a business process, our algorithm automatically selects the most suitable providers. Moreover, unlike existing work, it reasons about the dependability properties of a workflow, and it controls these by using service redundancy for critical tasks and by planning for contingencies. Finally, our algorithm reserves services for only parts of its workflow at any time, in order to retain flexibility when failures occur. We show empirically that our algorithm consistently outperforms existing approaches, achieving up to a 35-fold increase in profit and successfully completing most workflows, even when the majority of providers fail.
1939-1374
125-139
Stein, Sebastian
cb2325e7-5e63-475e-8a69-9db2dfbdb00b
Payne, Terry
0bb13d45-2735-45a3-b72c-472fddbd0bb4
Jennings, Nick
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Stein, Sebastian
cb2325e7-5e63-475e-8a69-9db2dfbdb00b
Payne, Terry
0bb13d45-2735-45a3-b72c-472fddbd0bb4
Jennings, Nick
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30

Stein, Sebastian, Payne, Terry and Jennings, Nick (2011) Robust execution of service workflows using redundancy and advance reservations. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 4 (2), 125-139. (doi:10.1109/TSC.2010.47).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm that allows service consumers to execute business processes (or workflows) of interdependent services in a dependable manner within tight time-constraints. In particular, we consider large inter-organisational service-oriented systems, where services are offered by external organisations that demand financial remuneration and where their use has to be negotiated in advance using explicit service-level agreements (as is common in Grids and cloud computing). Here, different providers often offer the same type of service at varying levels of quality and price. Furthermore, some providers may be less trustworthy than others, possibly failing to meet their agreements. To control this unreliability and ensure end-to-end dependability while maximising the profit obtained from completing a business process, our algorithm automatically selects the most suitable providers. Moreover, unlike existing work, it reasons about the dependability properties of a workflow, and it controls these by using service redundancy for critical tasks and by planning for contingencies. Finally, our algorithm reserves services for only parts of its workflow at any time, in order to retain flexibility when failures occur. We show empirically that our algorithm consistently outperforms existing approaches, achieving up to a 35-fold increase in profit and successfully completing most workflows, even when the majority of providers fail.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 28 October 2010
Published date: April 2011
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 268519
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/268519
ISSN: 1939-1374
PURE UUID: 83f5a3bc-1eea-4687-ba1d-890b2eb2951c
ORCID for Sebastian Stein: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2858-8857

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 18 Feb 2010 17:36
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:30

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Contributors

Author: Sebastian Stein ORCID iD
Author: Terry Payne
Author: Nick Jennings

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