Evaluating the Effectiveness of Multi-Web Services in Load Balancing Cluster-Based Web Server

Introduction

Web Service (WS) provides a flexibility platform for delivering computational task as service. Its architecture supports deployment of grid computing, Internet of Things (IoT) based applications and distributed computing in a flexible manner. The interoperable features of WS deployment support the homogeneous and heterogeneous communications among software modules.

It follows the principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The principles of SOA focus the methodology of service publishing, consuming and discovering over public registries. It supports service reuse and integration of additional service. The SOA is not limited to a technology. It can be implemented through the variety of programming languages, technologies and communication protocol. The power of Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides a framework in SOA for establishing communication among different business nodes. Recently, WS has become attractive paradigm for building the Software as a Service (SaaS). It is defined as SaaS for machine to machine interaction over different network topologies. The SOA offers the features of adaptability over different network connection and capabilities of terminals.

The principles of interoperability, reusability and modularity can be deployed through the methodology of WS. However, number of concerns and challenges are observed for the quality of the service (QoS). The QoS aspects can be observed from the perspective of service providers and consumers stakeholders. The service providers primarily concern about proper execution and implementation aspects of the service. Conversely, the service consumer primarily concerns about the quality assurance of the service. The service consumers also identifies whether the service is the right service for their business process or not. The service consumers usually identify the service over public service registries. The service can be executed and discovered at run time. Based on the functional parameter and business decision model, the consumer accesses the functionalities of the service. The service consumer is termed as WS client that can communicate the service provider and provide the additional service along with the existing service.

Many practitioners have been trying to deploy WS to deal with distributed business processes. Many prominent software industries are deploying their business services through the paradigm of WS architecture. Their primary goal is to deliver better and enhanced service to end users. With rapid growth of internet users, the consumer of WS is also increasing exponentially. As a service owner of WS, the primary concern is to deliver the service to massive users even in high stress of usage. However, the load balancing cluster based web server can play a vital role for handling massive users of WS. The clustering methodology of web server using single or multiple machines can deliver reliable and efficient service to end users. With rapid growth of organizational infrastructure and independent service delivery modules, the deployment of multiple WS and assessing their effectiveness is becoming crucial among software practitioners and researchers. As such, the QoS against high load of users is becoming an important concern among research community. This work will introduce a novel QoS assessment framework for evaluating the effectiveness of multi WS deployment using load balancing cluster based web server.