Efficient Integration of Web Services with Distributed.doc

Efficient Integration of Web Services with DistributedData Flow and Active Mediation, draft 26 August 2004 David Liu Electrical EngineeringStanford University davidliu@ Jun Peng Civil Env. EngineeringStanford University junpeng@ Kincho H. Law Civil Env. EngineeringStanford University law@ Gio Wiederhold Computer ScienceStanford University gio@  ABSTRACT This paper presents a loosely coupled service-composition paradigm. This paradigm employs a distributed data flow that differs markedly from centralized information flow adopted by current service integration frameworks, such as CORBA, J2EE and SOAP. Distributed data flows support direct data transmission to avoid many performance bottlenecks of centralized processing. In addition, active mediation is used in applications employing multiple web services that are not fully compatible in terms of data formats and contents. Active mediation increases the applicability of the services, reduces data communication among the services, and enables the application to control complex computations. The benefits of distributed data flow and active mediation are illustrated with various applications, such as dynamic type conversion, result extraction, and engineering application. It is shown that active mediation, combining with distributed data flows, can greatly improve the performance of an application utilizing multiple web services. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.11 [Software Engineering]: Software Architectures – information hiding, patterns; H.3.4 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Systems and Software – distributed systems, information networks, performance evaluation; H.2.5 [Database Management]: Heterogeneous Databases – Data translation, program translation. General Terms Algorithms, Performance, Design, Languages, Experimentation, Standardization, Theory. Keywords Web services; service integration; direct data transmission; active mediation; mobile class; handheld services INTRODUCTION We exper