A QoS-aware decision model for web service development: server-site data services or client-site task services

An enterprise system needs to provide different types of web services to model actual services in the corresponding business domain. We have proposed to categorize web services into data and task services. While a data service processes client data at the server-side, a task service employs a service representative, as a generic client-side software agent, to process the client data locally at the client-side. Task services maintain client privacy by locally processing client sensitive data and reducing the required network bandwidth. However, they limit the computational power of web services to the client platform. This paper proposes a decision model, which uses the analytic hierarchy process method to help service developers decide on the best type of business service for a specific functionality. The decision model includes evaluation functions for relevant quality of service (QoS) parameters. Finally, we use a case study to discuss alternative services and the decision making process.