Patent ID: 7467206
Filing Date: 2008-12-16
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. In a computing environment in which web services are used to provide computing services to clients via protocols and cross-platform standards, a system for finding and ranking web services in a manner that matches web services with a consumer's computing service needs, and which is not significantly influenced by popularity data or other manipulable data of a web service, the system comprising: a listing mechanism that identifies a plurality of web services, each of the web services operable to provide interoperative functionality to the system; an auditor that collects reputation data that corresponds to schematized behavioral attributes for the plurality of web services, the behavioral attributes including technical attributes of the web service unrelated to web service popularity, including at least web service responsiveness, wherein web service responsiveness is a measure of how often a web service reads from a specific port; and a selection mechanism for matching one or more web services to a consumer's needs, the selection mechanism being adapted to narrow the plurality of web services identified by the listing mechanism, based on the reputation data, including at least the technical attributes, provided by the auditor, into a subset that identifies at least one web service, wherein the technical attributes used to narrow that plurality of web services include empirical data on at least web service responsiveness, and excludes attributes, including popularity data, that are susceptible to manipulation by provides of the plurality of web services, and instead includes technical attributes that are resistant to manipulation; wherein the selection mechanism includes a server component that returns a list of at least two web services as the subset to a requesting client; wherein the selection mechanism includes a client component that further narrows the list into a single selected web service.