Semantic and QoS based Web Service Selection using a Multi Agent System

Currently all web services are published and found by making use of the WSDL and UDDI techniques. This forces the consumers to find and bind services at design time since WSDL relies on static descriptions. Also the current techniques don’t address runtime service selection based on a dynamic assessment of QoS attributes. Hence in this paper, a Semantic QoS Web Services Agent Framework (SQoSWSAF) architecture has been proposed and implemented that can dynamically select a web service based on user’s requirements, QoS constraints and preferences. This requires developing service and QoS ontologies and adding semantic descriptions to web services using these ontologies, which enables the automation of web service discovery, selection and composition. Dynamic service selection based on user constraints requires an agent-based system. Thus a multi-agent framework, which involves an agent querying the web service registry for the set of advertised services and selecting the best service, is implemented in the SQoSWSAF system.