Int. J. Computer Applications in Technology, Vol. 47, No. 4, 2013 379

Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

QoS-based approach for context-aware service selection with fuzzy preferences handling

Mohcine Madkour*, Driss ElGhanami and Abdelilah Maach Department of Computer Science, Mohamadia School of Engineers, Mohamed 5 Agdal University, BP: 765 Avenue Ibn Sina, Rabat, Morocco E-mail: mouhcine.madkour@gmail.com *Corresponding author

Abstract: The expected expansion of the number of context-aware services makes service selection engines, which are able to automatically recommend the most relevant service to users, in high demand. Yet, current approach and practice on service selection remain inadequate to meet the requirement posed by the user-centric computing paradigm. In our approach we consider that functional aspects of a service are already met and we focus on non-functional and QoS-related aspects in service description, indeed, QoS-aware computing is expected to be a key enabler for customising the selection of fast-growing context-aware services. We propose in this paper a workflow-based algorithm allowing the inexact matching between context and services descriptions, the service description and request are compared using four similarities measures: syntactic, linguistic, structural and QoS semantic. In the last a discussion is opened about possible methods for service ranking, and a case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Keywords: context-awareness; ontologies matching; service selection; service discovery; workflow graphs; similarity measures; linguistic quantifiers; QoS specification.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Madkour, M., ElGhanami, D. and Maach, A. (2013) ‘QoS-based approach for context-aware service selection with fuzzy preferences handling’, Int. J. Computer Applications in Technology, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp.379–391.

Biographical notes: Mohcine Madkour is a Doctorate Candidate at the Mohammadia School of Engineers at the University Mohameed 5 Agdal of Rabat. He obtained ‘Diplôme des Etudes Superieurs Approfondies’ in Mathematics and Computer Sciences from the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Agadir Morocco. His research interests include the ubiquitous computing and cyber physical systems including smart spaces, ontology matching, context awareness, service adaptation and retrieval. He has published many papers and has a lot of participations in international conferences.

Driss ElGhanami is a Senior Researcher and Member in the Network and Information Systems Group. He earned his PhD in Robotics Science from the University of Versailles-France. He is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the Mohammadia School of Engineering of the University Mohamed 5 Agdal, Rabat, Morocco. His research focuses on wireless network and embedded information systems. He has many research contributions.

Abdelilah Maach earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa. He obtained ‘Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches’ from the University Mohamed 5 of Rabat Morocco. He is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the Mohammadia School of Engineering of the University Mohamed 5 Agdal, Morocco. He was leading the Network and Information Systems Group and he is an active member in international bodies.

1 Introduction

The term Ubiquitous Computing, introduced by Weiser (1991), refers to the seamless integration of devices into users’ everyday life. This term represents an emerging trend towards environments composed of numerous computing devices typically mobile or embedded and connected to a

network infrastructure composed of a wired core and wireless edges (Chen and Liu, 2012). In pervasive scenarios perceived by Ubiquitous Computing, searching for a specific service within service repositories becomes a critical issue for the success of service-oriented and model-driven architectures and for service computing, in general. This issue has recently received considerable