Composing adaptive Web services on COTS middleware

Abstract

Composing adaptive and self-managing Web services needs plug-and-play architecture so that the deployment of control components does not require changes made to the Web services and the host middleware platforms. This is especially challenging for Web services running on COTS middleware platforms, such as Microsoft .Net. In this paper, we propose an architectural solution that introduces a management proxy between adaptive control components and Web services. The management proxy can be customized and seamlessly integrated with a COTS middleware platform by leveraging the existing middleware mechanisms. This solution enables dynamically composing adaptive Web services on COTS middleware without stopping its services. We demonstrate this architecture by a realistic Web service application built on .Net Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The performance overhead incurred by this architecture is measured, and the results validate that our solution is efficient in terms of performance and flexibility. ©2008 IEEE.