AN APPROACH WEB SERVICE SELECTION BY QUALITY CRITERIA BASED ON SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF MCDM METHODS

Abstract

Context. The problem of QoS based Web service from the list of Web services with equal or similar functionality was considered. This task is an essential part of the processes of finding, discover, matching and using Web services on the Internet due to the numerous offerings of Web services with equal or similar functionality. The reasonable selection of a suitable Web service takes into account a lot of user’s quality requirements, such as response time, throughput, reliability, cost, etc. Such a task is usually formulated as an MCDM problem, in which the parameters are the Web service quality factors and the importance degree of these factors. The object of this research is a process of selection Web services using MCDM methods, taking into accounts the user’s preferences and requirements to the Web service quality characteristics. The subject of the research is the LSP method, which, in addition to the degree of importance of the criteria used in all MCDM methods, simulates the user’s reasoning about quality, taking into account, in particular, such characteristics of the criteria as mandatory, sufficiency, desirability, simultaneity and substitutability. Objective. The objective of the work is to develop an approach for comparing the result of using the LSP method with the results of using other MCDM methods. Method. A method for calculating the weights of input criteria that are not always explicitly specified in the LSP method was proposed. For this, the conjunctive coefficients of impact are used, which are calculated as a result of the sensitivity analysis of the Web service generalized quality criterion to changes the partial quality criteria. This method underlies the proposed approach to comparing the efficiency of the LSP method with other MCDM methods, which consists of using the obtained weights as the weights of the input criteria for the MCDM methods. Results. The developed method and approach was verified experimentally. The Web service ranking produced by the LSP method was compared with the ones produced by SAW, AHP, TOPSIS and VIKOR methods. This comparison confirmed the efficiency of the proposed method and approach. Conclusions. From the obtained results of comparing the LSP method and the MCDM methods considered in this study, it follows that the proposed method and approach provide the equivalent input conditions for these methods as for the LSP method, which is a necessary condition for the correct comparison of MCDM methods. The use of the proposed approach made it possible to study the sensitivities of the considered MCDM methods. In practical applications, this approach can be used to select a suitable MCDM method. The proposed method can be useful for creating professional evaluation systems in which it is necessary to assess the importance (weights) of tens and hundreds of quality criteria.