Policy-Based Service Selection

Conventional means of selecting a service are predominantly based on the results returned from service discovery. Typically most approaches employ a matchmaker which works in tandem with a service registry and user preferences based on the functionality of services. Nonfunctional attributes of services, such as reliability, timeliness and other quality of service criteria are typically not addressed or only in the static form of a contract that is made between the provider and the consumer of a service. In this paper we propose an extended architecture that allows consumers to specify additional policies for service selection based on their preferences for the non-functional service requirements. Policies are enforced by a policy-engine and are based on past requests made by the consumer.