Raising resilience of web service dependent repository systems

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to address the issue of long-term stability of services and systems depending on service-oriented architecture that has become a popular architecture in systems development and is often implemented using Web services. However, the dependency, especially on externally provided services, can impact the reliability of a system. This is often caused by the loose coupling also implying a less stringent policy for change management and notifications. Therefore, the authors characterise the types of changes that can happen in remote services and propose the concept of resilient web services (RWSs) as an example on how to upgrade existing services to better support the long-term stability of services and systems. Design/methodology/approach – Having analysed several use cases where systems broke because of external dependencies not correctly maintained, the authors derived requirements for RWSs. Findings – By means of a prototype implementation and evaluation of this solution in a case study, the feasibility of the approach was verified. Several scenarios of changes in WSs were simulated, correctly identified and responded to. Originality/value – The authors propose a set of extensions to existing standards such as Web Services Description Language to improve the long-term availability of services in SOAs. A prototype implementation was developed for service monitoring and RWSs.