A Cost-Effective Planning Graph Approach for Large-Scale Web Service Composition

Web Service Composition (WSC) problems can be considered as a service matching problem, which means that the output parameters of a Web service can be used as inputs of another one. However, when a very large number of Web services are deployed in the environment, the service composition has become sophisticated and complicated process. In this study, we proposed a novel cost-effective Web service composition mechanism. It utilizes planning graph based on backward search algorithm to find multiple feasible solutions and recommends a best composition solution according to the lowest service cost. In other words, the proposed approach is a goal-driven mechanism, which can recommend the approximate solutions, but it consumes fewer amounts of Web services and less nested levels of composite service. Finally, we implement a simulation platform to validate the proposed cost-effective planning graph mechanism in large-scale Web services environment. The simulation results show that our proposed algorithm based on the backward planning graph has reduced by 94% service cost in three different environments of service composition that is compared with other existing service composition approaches which are based on a forward planning graph.