Disputation i data- och informationsvetenskap: Jens Kirchner

Titel: Context-Aware Optimized Service Selection with Focus on Consumer Preferences
Ämne: Data- och informationsvetenskap
Fakultet: Fakulteten för teknik
Datum: Fredagen den 17 juni 2016 kl 13.00
Plats: Sal Weber, hus K, Växjö
Opponent: Dr Mats Neovius, Åbo Akademi, Finland
Betygsnämnd: Professor Wolf Zimmermann, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Tyskland
Professor Ulf Johansson, Tekniska Högskolan i Jönköping
Professor Jan-Torsten Milde, Hochschule Fulda, Tyskland
Ordförande: Dr Jonas Lundberg, Institutionen för datavetenskap, Linnéuniversitetet
Handledare: Professor Welf Löwe, Institutionen för datavetenskap, Linnéuniversitetet
Examinator: Professor Welf Löwe, Institutionen för datavetenskap, Linnéuniversitetet
Spikning: Fredagen den 27 maj 2016 kl 9.30 på Universitetsbiblioteket i Växjö

Abstract

Cloud computing, mobile computing, Service-Oriented Computing (SOC), and Software as a Service (SaaS) indicate that the Internet emerges to an anonymous service market where service functionality can be dynamically and ubiquitously consumed. Among functionally similar services, service consumers are interested in the consumption of the services which perform best towards their optimization preferences. The experienced performance of a service at consumer side is expressed in its non-functional properties (NFPs). Selecting the best-fit service is an individual challenge as the preferences of consumers vary. Furthermore, service markets such as the Internet are characterized by perpetual change and complexity. The complex collaboration of system environments and networks as well as expected and unexpected incidents may result in various performance experiences of a specific service at consumer side. The consideration of certain call side aspects that may distinguish such differences in the experience of NFPs is reflected in various call contexts.

Service optimization based on a collaborative knowledge base of previous experiences of other, similar consumers with similar preferences is a desirable foundation. The research work described in this dissertation aims at an individually optimized selection of services considering the individual call contexts that have an impact on the performance, or NFPs in general, of a service as well as the various consumer preferences. The presented approach exploits shared measurement information about the NFP behavior of a service gained from former service calls of previous consumptions. Gaining selection/recommendation knowledge from shared experience benefits existing as well as new consumers of a service before its (initial) consumption. Our approach solely focuses on the optimization and collaborative information exchange among service consumers. It does not require the contribution of service providers or other non-consuming entities. As a result, the contribution among the participating entities also contributes to their own overall optimization benefit. With the initial focus on a single-tier optimization, we additionally provide a conceptual solution to a multi-tier optimization approach for which our recommendation framework is prepared in general.

For a consumer-sided optimization, we conducted a literature study of conference papers of the last decade in order to find out what NFPs are relevant for the selection and consumption of services. The ranked results of this study represent what a broad scientific community determined to be relevant NFPs for service selection.

We analyzed two general approaches for the employment of machine learning methods within our recommendation framework as part of the preparation of the actual recommendation knowledge. Addressing a future service market that has not fully developed yet and due to the fact that it seems to be impossible to be aware of the actual NFP data of different Web services at identical call contexts, a real-world validation is a challenge. In order to conduct an evaluation and also validation that can be considered to be close approximations to reality with the flexibility to challenge the machine learning approaches and methods as well as the overall recommendation approach, we used generated NFP data whose characteristics are influenced by measurement data gained from real-world Web services.

For the general approach with the better evaluation results and benefits ratio, we furthermore analyzed, implemented, and validated machine learning methods that can be employed for service recommendation. Within the validation, we could achieve up to 95% of the overall achievable performance (utility) gain with a machine learning method that is focused on drift detection, which in turn, tackles the change characteristic of the Internet being an anonymous service market.