Service Selection Algorithms for Composing Complex Services with Multiple QoS Constraints
One of the promises of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) is that complex services can be composed using individual services. Individual services can be selected and integrated either statically or dynamically based on the service functionalities and performance constraints. For many distributed applications, the runtime performance (e.g. end-to-end delay, cost, reliability and availability) of complex services are very important. In our earlier work, we have studied the service selection problem for complex services with only one QoS constraint. This paper extends the service selection problem to multiple QoS constraints. The problem can be modelled in two ways: the combinatorial model and the graph model. The combinatorial model defines the problem as the multi-dimension multi-choice 0-1 knapsack problem (MMKP). The graph model defines the problem as the multi-constraint optimal path (MCOP) problem. We propose algorithms for both models and study their performances by test cases. We also compare the pros & cons between the two models.

title: Modeling and Measuring Privacy Risks in QoS Web Services
abstract: The privacy issue for QoS Web services is considered. As more Web services are constructed and deployed, many of our personal needs may be served by more than one service providers regardless of their platforms and implementation technologies. Service selection is performed by comparing the QoS attributes of all candidate services. Releasing private data without due control may raise the risk of allowing potential adversaries to collect, reveal or utilize one's data in undesirable ways. We propose a QoS model that quantifies a user's privacy risk in order to make the service selection process manageable. The privacy risk is derived using the percentage of the private data set to be released, and user-defined context-oriented weights that quantify the potential damage of privacy leaking in a specific context. We have included privacy risk cost as one of the QoS parameters by extending the end-to-end QoS composition algorithms developed previously

title: QCWS: an implementation of QoS-capable multimedia web services
abstract: QoS (Quality of Service), which defines service quality such as latency, availability, timeliness and reliability, is important for web applications that provide real-time information, multimedia content, or time-critical services. Many web applications are best implemented by servers with a guaranteed server processing capacity. In this research, we study the QoS control issues using the current Web services standards. We propose a QoS-capable Web service architecture, QCWS, by deploying a QoS broker between Web service clients and providers. The functions of the QoS broker module include tracking QoS information about servers, making selection decisions for clients, and negotiating with servers to get QoS agreements. We have implemented a QCWS prototype using IBM WSDK, enhanced with simple QoS capabilities. We have measured the performance running under different service priorities.

title: On the modeling and analysis of obligations
abstract: Traditional security policies largely focus on access control requirements, which specify who can access what under what circumstances. Besides access control requirements, the availability of services in many applications often further imposes obligation requirements, which specify what actions have to be taken by a subject in the future as a condition of getting certain privileges at present. However, it is not clear yet what the implications of obligation policies are concerning the security goals of a system.In this paper, we propose a formal metamodel that captures the key aspects of a system that are relevant to obligation management. We formally investigate the interpretation of security policies from the perspective of obligations, and define secure system states based on the concept of accountability. We also study the complexity of checking a state's accountability under different assumptions about a system.

title: Jet subdivision schemes on the k-regular complex
abstract: We introduce a new family of subdivision schemes called jet subdivision schemes. Jet subdivision schemes are a natural generalization of the commonly used subdivision schemes for free-form surface modeling. In an order r jet subdivision scheme, rth order Taylor expansions, or r-jets, of functions are the essential objects being generated in a coarse-to-fine fashion. Standard subdivision surface methods correspond to the case r=0. Just as the standard free-form subdivision surface schemes, jet subdivision schemes are based on combining (i) a symmetric subdivision scheme in the shift-invariant setting with (ii) an extraordinary vertex rule. We formulate the notions of stationarity, symmetry, and smoothness for jet subdivision schemes. We then extend some well-known results in the theory of subdivision surfaces to the setting of jet subdivision schemes.By incorporating high order data into the subdivision rules, jet subdivision schemes offer more degrees of freedom for the design of extraordinary vertex rules than do standard subdivision schemes. Using a simple 2-point stencil, we construct an order 1 jet subdivision scheme, which is interpolatory, C1 everywhere, and free from polar artifacts at extraordinary vertices of any valence. It is similar to the popular butterfly scheme, but unlike the butterfly scheme, it produces surfaces that can be explicitly parameterized by spline functions. In addition, our jet subdivision scheme allows for explicit control of gradient information on the resulting surface.We address the problem of constructing curvature continuous subdivision schemes at extraordinary vertices by giving an example of a 'flexible C2 scheme' for extraordinary vertex of valence k = 3. The stencils for this subdivision scheme coincide with those of the popular Loop scheme. We discuss the mathematical structure of this example of a C2 scheme.

title: An identifiability-based access control model for privacy protection in open systems
abstract: We argue that in open systems one's private information disclosure needs to be dynamically controlled based on both its sensitivity and the possibility that a user's identity is revealed. Then we propose an identifiability-based access control scheme, which not only properly control usrers' private information, but also increase users' access to web services.

title: Defining and Measuring Policy Coverage in Testing Access Control Policies
abstract: To facilitate managing access control in a system, security officers increasingly write access control policies in specification languages such as XACML, and use a dedicated software component called a Policy Decision Point (PDP). To increase confidence on written policies, certain types of policy testing (often in an ad hoc way) are usually conducted, which probe the PDP with some typical requests and check PDP's responses against expected ones. This paper develops a first step toward systematic policy testing by defining and measuring policy coverage when testing policies. We have developed a coverage-measurement tool to measure policy coverage given a set of XACML policies and a set of requests. We have developed a tool for request generation, which randomly generates requests for a given set of policies, and a tool for request reduction, which greedily selects a nearly minimal set of requests for achieving the same coverage as the originally generated requests. To evaluate coverage-based request reduction and its effect on fault detection, we have conducted an experiment with mutation testing on a set of real policies. Our experimental results show that the coveragebased test reduction can substantially reduce the size of generated requests and incur only relatively low loss on fault detection. We also conduct a study on the policy coverage achieved by manually generated requests.

title: Integrating XML data sources using approximate joins
abstract: XML is widely recognized as the data interchange standard of tomorrow because of its ability to represent data from a variety of sources. Hence, XML is likely to be the format through which data from multiple sources is integrated. In this article, we study the problem of integrating XML data sources through correlations realized as join operations. A challenging aspect of this operation is the XML document structure. Two documents might convey approximately or exactly the same information but may be quite different in structure. Consequently, an approximate match in structure, in addition to content, has to be folded into the join operation. We quantify an approximate match in structure and content for pairs of XML documents using well defined notions of distance. We show how notions of distance that have metric properties can be incorporated in a framework for joins between XML data sources and introduce the idea of reference sets to facilitate this operation. Intuitively, a reference set consists of data elements used to project the data space. We characterize what constitutes a good choice of a reference set, and we propose sampling-based algorithms to identify them. We then instantiate our join framework using the tree edit distance between a pair of trees. We next turn our attention to utilizing well known index structures to improve the performance of approximate XML join operations. We present a methodology enabling adaptation of index structures for this problem, and we instantiate it in terms of the R-tree. We demonstrate the practical utility of our solutions using large collections of real and synthetic XML data sets, varying parameters of interest, and highlighting the performance benefits of our approach.