Recent Advances in Web Services

A special issue of Future Internet (ISSN 1999-5903).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (7 October 2011) | Viewed by 65002

Special Issue Editor

Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA
Interests: software architecture; systems security; web services; cloud computing
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The application of web services has arrived to a crossroad. Although SOAP/XML-based web services proved their value in enterprise applications, the arrival of cloud computing and a larger variety of applications, e.g. social networks, require also more agile services. REST/JSON-based web services are faster and simpler to use; however, they lack standards and their security appears weak. Reliability is another of their unclear aspects. We are looking for work that contributes to clarify the realms of application of both types of services and to define their strong and weak points with respect to different applications. Projections of their future use are of high interest. Discussions of other current issues of web services are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Eduardo B. Fernandez
Guest Editor

Keywords

  • cloud architectures
  • reliability
  • REST
  • security
  • SOAP
  • web services

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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126 KiB  
Editorial
Introduction to the Special Issue on Recent Advances in Web Services
by Eduardo B. Fernandez
Future Internet 2012, 4(3), 618-620; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4030618 - 27 Jun 2012
Cited by 57 | Viewed by 6074
Abstract
We have collected five papers describing different aspects of web services and cloud computing. Cloud computing is the next stage of application interoperability and it is a logical extension of web services, both approaches being a variety of Service-Oriented Architecture. The papers cover [...] Read more.
We have collected five papers describing different aspects of web services and cloud computing. Cloud computing is the next stage of application interoperability and it is a logical extension of web services, both approaches being a variety of Service-Oriented Architecture. The papers cover security, migration, certification, and application development. Together, these papers provide a useful panorama of some of the issues of these two technologies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Web Services)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

253 KiB  
Article
Security Analysis in the Migration to Cloud Environments
by David G. Rosado, Rafael Gómez, Daniel Mellado and Eduardo Fernández-Medina
Future Internet 2012, 4(2), 469-487; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4020469 - 08 May 2012
Cited by 32 | Viewed by 17054
Abstract
Cloud computing is a new paradigm that combines several computing concepts and technologies of the Internet creating a platform for more agile and cost-effective business applications and IT infrastructure. The adoption of Cloud computing has been increasing for some time and the maturity [...] Read more.
Cloud computing is a new paradigm that combines several computing concepts and technologies of the Internet creating a platform for more agile and cost-effective business applications and IT infrastructure. The adoption of Cloud computing has been increasing for some time and the maturity of the market is steadily growing. Security is the question most consistently raised as consumers look to move their data and applications to the cloud. We justify the importance and motivation of security in the migration of legacy systems and we carry out an analysis of different approaches related to security in migration processes to cloud with the aim of finding the needs, concerns, requirements, aspects, opportunities and benefits of security in the migration process of legacy systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Web Services)
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557 KiB  
Article
A Survey of Patterns for Web Services Security and Reliability Standards
by Eduardo B. Fernandez, Ola Ajaj, Ingrid Buckley, Nelly Delessy-Gassant, Keiko Hashizume and Maria M. Larrondo-Petrie
Future Internet 2012, 4(2), 430-450; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4020430 - 20 Apr 2012
Cited by 64 | Viewed by 12735
Abstract
An important aspect for the acceptance of Service-Oriented Architectures is having convenient ways to help designers build secure applications. Numerous standards define ways to apply security in web services. However, these standards are rather complex and sometimes overlap, which makes them hard to [...] Read more.
An important aspect for the acceptance of Service-Oriented Architectures is having convenient ways to help designers build secure applications. Numerous standards define ways to apply security in web services. However, these standards are rather complex and sometimes overlap, which makes them hard to use and may produce inconsistencies. Representing them as patterns makes them easier to understand, to compare to other patterns, to discover inconsistencies, and to use them to build secure web services applications. Security patterns abstract the key aspects of a security mechanism and can thus be applied by non-experts. We survey here our work on security patterns for web services and their standards and we put them in perspective with respect to each other and to more fundamental patterns. We also consider other patterns for web services security. All the patterns described here have been previously published, we only show here one of them in detail as an illustration of our style for writing patterns. Our main purpose here is to enumerate them, show their use, and show how they relate to each other. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Web Services)
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1793 KiB  
Article
Blueprinting Approach in Support of Cloud Computing
by Dinh Khoa Nguyen, Francesco Lelli, Mike P. Papazoglou and Willem-Jan Van den Heuvel
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 322-346; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4010322 - 21 Mar 2012
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 11768
Abstract
Current cloud service offerings, i.e., Software-as-a-service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are often provided as monolithic, one-size-fits-all solutions and give little or no room for customization. This limits the ability of Service-based Application (SBA) developers to configure and syndicate offerings [...] Read more.
Current cloud service offerings, i.e., Software-as-a-service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are often provided as monolithic, one-size-fits-all solutions and give little or no room for customization. This limits the ability of Service-based Application (SBA) developers to configure and syndicate offerings from multiple SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS providers to address their application requirements. Furthermore, combining different independent cloud services necessitates a uniform description format that facilitates the design, customization, and composition. Cloud Blueprinting is a novel approach that allows SBA developers to easily design, configure and deploy virtual SBA payloads on virtual machines and resource pools on the cloud. We propose the Blueprint concept as a uniform abstract description for cloud service offerings that may cross different cloud computing layers, i.e., SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. To support developers with the SBA design and development in the cloud, this paper introduces a formal Blueprint Template for unambiguously describing a blueprint, as well as a Blueprint Lifecycle that guides developers through the manipulation, composition and deployment of different blueprints for an SBA. Finally, the empirical evaluation of the blueprinting approach within an EC’s FP7 project is reported and an associated blueprint prototype implementation is presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Web Services)
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509 KiB  
Article
Pattern-Based Development and Management of Cloud Applications
by Christoph Fehling, Frank Leymann, Jochen Rütschlin and David Schumm
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 110-141; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4010110 - 15 Feb 2012
Cited by 52 | Viewed by 10910
Abstract
Cloud-based applications require a high degree of automation regarding their IT resource management, for example, to handle scalability or resource failures. This automation is enabled by cloud providers offering management interfaces accessed by applications without human interaction. The properties of clouds, especially pay-per-use [...] Read more.
Cloud-based applications require a high degree of automation regarding their IT resource management, for example, to handle scalability or resource failures. This automation is enabled by cloud providers offering management interfaces accessed by applications without human interaction. The properties of clouds, especially pay-per-use billing and low availability of individual resources, demand such a timely system management. We call the automated steps to perform one of these management tasks a “management flow”. Because the emerging behavior of the overall system is comprised of many such management flows and is often hard to predict, we propose defining abstract management flows, describing common steps handling the management tasks. These abstract management flows may then be refined for each individual use case. We cover abstract management flows describing how to make an application elastic, resilient regarding IT resource failure, and how to move application components between different runtime environments. The requirements of these management flows for handled applications are expressed using architectural patterns that have to be implemented by the applications. These dependencies result in abstract management flows being interrelated with architectural patterns in a uniform pattern catalog. We propose a method by use of a catalog to guide application managers during the refinement of abstract management flows at the design stage of an application. Following this method, runtime-specific management functionality and management interfaces are used to obtain automated management flows for a developed application. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Web Services)
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509 KiB  
Article
Web Service Assurance: The Notion and the Issues
by Marco Anisetti, Claudio A. Ardagna, Ernesto Damiani, Fulvio Frati, Hausi A. Müller and Atousa Pahlevan
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 92-109; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4010092 - 14 Feb 2012
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5796
Abstract
Web service technology provides basic infrastructure for deploying collaborative business processes. Web Service security standards and protocols aim to provide secure communication and conversation between service providers and consumers. Still, for a client calling a Web service it is difficult to ascertain that [...] Read more.
Web service technology provides basic infrastructure for deploying collaborative business processes. Web Service security standards and protocols aim to provide secure communication and conversation between service providers and consumers. Still, for a client calling a Web service it is difficult to ascertain that a particular service instance satisfies—at execution time—specific non-functional properties. In this paper we introduce the notion of certified Web service assurance, characterizing how service consumers can specify the set of security properties that a service should satisfy. Also, we illustrate a mechanism to re-check non-functional properties when the execution context changes. To this end, we introduce the concept of context-aware certificate, and describe a dynamic, context-aware service discovery environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Web Services)
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