Consensus as a Tool for RESTful Web Service Identification

Abstract

Our recent studies show that the market of RESTful Web services is rapidly growing. However, still there is lack of identification methods of this class of services so they remain invisible for their potential users. In this work we propose a tool for solving above problem using the consensus methods. The identification process is based on recognising URI structural patterns subjected to opinions of different agents with different knowledge. The task of consensus method is to determine version of knowledge which best reflects given versions reflected in agent’s opinions on individual components. The research includes defining the structure of knowledge, determining conflict situations, conflict profiles, defining consensus function and assigning distance functions which allow to resolve conflicting views. Moreover, our research is supported with implementations of proposed approach by which we conducted preliminary experiments. Experimental results show high effectiveness and performance of proposed approach in contrast to the other chosen methods.