Service selection and workflow mapping for grids: An approach exploiting quality-of-service information

Abstract

The advent of heterogeneous and distributed environments, such as Grid environments, made feasible the solution to computational-intensive problems in a reliable and cost-effective manner. In parallel, workflows with increased complexity that require specialized systems to deal with them are emerging, so as to carry out more composite and mission-critical applications. In that rationale, quality-of-service (QoS) issues need to be tackled in order to ensure that each application satisfies the corresponding user requirements. Therefore, considering the quality provision aspect as fundamental for enabling Grid applications to become QoS compliant, we present an approach for service selection using QoS criteria. The latter is achieved with a suite of components that allow the different mappings of application workflow processes to Grid services that not only meet the user goals and requirements but also maximize his/her benefit in terms of the offered QoS level. We also demonstrate the operation of the aforementioned suite of components and evaluate its performance and effectiveness using a Grid scenario, based on a 3D image rendering application. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.