Probabilistic QoS aggregations for service composition

In this article, we propose a comprehensive approach for Quality of Service (QoS) calculation in service composition. Differing from the existing work on QoS aggregations that represent QoS as single values, discrete values with frequencies, or standard statistical distributions, the proposed approach has the capability to handle any type of QoS probability distribution. A set of formulae and algorithms are developed to calculate the QoS of a composite service according to four identified basic patterns as sequential, parallel, conditional, and loop. We demonstrate that the proposed QoS calculation method is much more efficient than existing simulation methods. It has a high scalability and builds a solid foundation for real-time QoS analysis and prediction in service composition. Experiment results are provided to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.