Zhibin Cao

Verification of Web services using an enhanced UDDI server

The UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) provides classification to find the distributed Web services (WS) by keyword matching. The UDDI version 3 allows searching WS using digital signatures. However, it still needs systematic verification to ensure WS quality in a timely fashion. This paper proposes adding verification mechanism to the UDDI servers including check-in and checkout of WS. The key idea is that test scripts should be attached to WS, and both WS providers and clients use these test scripts. Before accepting a new WS into the service directory. The associated test scripts must test the new WS, and they will be accepted only if the test was successful. Before using a specific WS, a client can use the appropriate test scripts to test the WS and it will be used only if the test was successful. While the code for WS may not be available, but the associated test scripts test script specification techniques and distributed test execution techniques to perform testing with a UDDI server.

Coyote: an XML-based framework for Web services testing

Web services received significant attention recently and several important Web service platforms such as .NET are now available. The testing and evaluation of Web services are important for both service providers and subscribers. This paper proposes an XML-based object-oriented testing framework Coyote to test Web services rapidly. Coyote consists of two parts: test master and test engine. The test master allows testers to specify test scenarios and cases as well as performing various analyses such as dependency analysis, completeness and consistency, and converts WSDL specifications into test scenarios. The test engine interacts with the Web services under test, and provides tracing information. The test framework incorporates concepts from object-oriented application frameworks so that it is relatively easy to change test scenarios/cases. Due to the distributed nature of Web services, Coyote focuses on integration testing instead of module testing.

Services-oriented dynamic reconfiguration framework for dependable distributed computing

Recently service-oriented architecture (SOA) has received significant attention and one reason is that it is potentially survivable as services are located, bound, and executed at runtime over the Internet. However, this is not enough for dependable computing because the system must also be able to reconfigure once a system failure or overload is detected, and this reconfiguration must be done in real-time at runtime with minimum disruption to the current operation. This work presents reconfiguration requirements for building dependable SOA, and proposes a dynamic reconfiguration framework based on distributed monitoring, synchronization, and runtime verification with distributed agents.

RTSOA: Real-Time Service-Oriented Architecture

This paper extends the traditional service-oriented architecture (SOA) to a new real-time SOA (RTSOA) and proposes a framework for the new architecture, by providing real-time service modeling, design, code generation, simulation, deployment, execution, orchestration, and management. The concepts, architecture, and enabling technique are studied for real-time SOA. In addition, an efficient algorithm is derived in the paper to find the optimal composition of real-time services subject to the real-time constraint

Testing Web Services Using Progressive Group Testing

This paper proposes progressive group testing techniques to test large number of Web services (WS) available on Internet. At the unit testing level, the WS with the same functionality are tested in group using progressively increasing number of test cases. A small number of WS that scored best will be integrated into the real environment for operational testing. At the integration testing level, many composite services will be constructed and tested by group integration testing. The results of group testing at both unit and integration levels are verified by weighted majority voting mechanisms. The weights are based on the reliability history of the WS under test. A case study is designed and implemented, where the dependency among the test cases in WS is analyzed and used to generate progressive layers of test cases.

Modeling and Simulation in Service-Oriented Software Development

Recently, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has received significant attention. SOA simulation can play an important role in SOA software development as it can be used to verify the SOA application models and to demonstrate runtime and collaborative behaviors of the SOA applications. SOA simulation differs from traditional simulation as it emphasizes on reusability, collaborative behaviors, and its unique model-driven development. This paper focuses on these issues and illustrates how these can be achieved.

Design of a trustworthy service broker and dependence-based progressive group testing

To address the challenges of dynamic, distributed and collaborative Web Services (WS) testing, this paper proposes a trustworthy service broker architecture and a dependence-based progressive group testing technique. The new architecture extends the traditional Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) service broker by introducing the check-in and check-out testing interfaces, which are associated with a set of automated tools. The design objectives of the trustworthy service broker are to perform rigorous testing and evaluation effectively and to ensure that only quality WS can be registered and released to the public. A group testing technique is applied to reduce the test cost by using a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated test scripts, which progressively rules out low quality WS. WS are further ranked based on the group testing results using ranking criteria. Experiments show that this approach can effectively test and choose WS in an open environment and in reduced number of tests.

Web services-based collaborative and cooperative computing

This paper presents an integrated development process for Web services. The key differences with the traditional software development are that this new process involves collaboration and cooperation among all parties involved: developers, brokers, and clients. The process defines a new way of developing trustworthy Web services based on the existing Internet infrastructure. The paper serves as a roadmap to research on Web services specification, discovery, ontology, composition, re-composition, testing, reliability assessing, ranking, and collaboration and cooperation among all parities involved in Web services research, development, and application.

Process Specification and Modeling Language for Service-Oriented Software Development

This paper focuses on the service-oriented system engineering issues using PSML (process specification and modeling language) framework. The key innovations of the framework are the PSML-based service-oriented software development and single model with multiple analyses (SMMA) model-driven architecture. SMMA uses one integrated core model, the PSML model, to derive other models for code generation simulation, and various analyses, which leads to the service-oriented system engineering

End-to-End (E2E) Testing and Evaluation of High-Assurance Systems

A crown closure and container comprising a glass container having a crown finish without threads, a closure comprising a rigid plastic outer shell and an inner cup-shaped liner. The outer shell comprises a top panel and a peripheral skirt. The liner is made of soft resilient plastic material and comprises a top wall and a peripheral wall. Interengaging cam surfaces are provided between the inner surface of the skirt of the shell and the outer surface of the peripheral wall of the liner such that when the closure is applied to the crown finish by an axial motion of the closure relative to the container, the liner if forced into the shell and the upper portion of the liner engages the crown finish of the container. The peripheral skirt of the outer shell is formed with threads so that the upper portion of the liner is forced into the threads and will allow for sufficient interference with the liner and finish to permit removal of the closure by rotation of the shell in relation to the liner.