Conclusion

Abstract

There is increasing consensus that Web services will be the silver bullet of the next generation of the Web, the service Web. In this respect, Service Computing is expected to be at the core of the emerging field of “Services Science.” The focus of this book is on a key enabler of service computing: a trust framework among Web services. The goal of this research is to provide a trust management framework for Web services interactions. The aim is to develop techniques for defining, ascertaining, and managing reputation among Web services as a key mechanism for managing trust. Reputation of Web services (in delivering services) is the key parameter used to establish this trust. A Peer-to-Peer approach is proposed to assess the reputation of a-priori unknownWeb services. Previous solutions for reputation assessment make simplifying assumptions that may not apply on the SemanticWeb (e.g. reliance on pre-existing trusted parties, specific data distribution, a common set or providers for similarity-based trust, requiring human intervention, focusing on efficiency/performance rather than functionality, etc). We develop a simple and holistic solution that overcomes the deficiencies of previous solutions and provides an automated, adaptive and decentralized mechanism, whereby reputations are evaluated through a number of heuristics with different perspectives, providing a fair and accurate assessment.