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Of course, the problem that I see with any system like this is trying to
figure
out all of the metrics that a consumer may want to see. Response time, for
example, may be critical to one company, but of much less importance to a
second.
To use your example, let's say I have two travel agencies and a person who
uses
web services on their own, with no agency involved. Agency #1 deals mainly
with
business travelers, while agency #2 has mostly retired pleasure travelers as
its clientele. The person is one of those programmer-geek types that
sometimes
wants to go to programming conferences, and sometimes has to travel
somewhere to
support a program that they screwed up on (not that this ever happens to
me...).
So, Agency #1 is interested in fast response times, accurate prices, ability
of
the web service to determine distances to where the business traveller needs
to
do business, amenities such as computer-friendly (preferably high-speed)
rooms,
and so on.
Agency #2 is not as interested in the response time, and their set of
"necessary"
values provided by the web services is largely different. Comfort,
availability
of swimming pools, closeness of tourist attractions and availability of
guided
tours and such become "core" to their needs, while those are just fluff for
the
business travelers.
And the person may just want to be able to pull down an accurate description
and
browse for what they want...
I guess the end result would kind of be like the star ratings on hotels
themselves.
I've stayed at 2-star hotels that I've gone back to year after year, because
they
served a particular purpose that I liked, and I've been to 4-star hotels
that I
wouldn't stay at again because I just didn't think the continental breakfast
was
worth the extra price. Does that mean that the ratings are wrong, or that
the
4-star hotel was just "fooling" the auditors? Not necessarily. It just
means
that even within one "industry", there may be a plethora of
metrics/descriptors
that need to be looked at. Perhaps too many for an accurate rating system.
Joe Mayer
Information Systems
Kathrein Inc, Scala Division
Medford, OR, USA
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chiusano Joseph [mailto:chiusano_joseph@bah.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 9:54 AM
> To: Nicolas Toper
> Cc: Simon St.Laurent; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Web Services and Quality
>
>
> Regarding metrics and measurement: I'm going through the W3C Web
> Services Architecture (W3C Working Draft 8 August 2003[1]) which
> presents 5 "architectural models" - one of these models is the
> "Management Model". This model includes the concept of "management
> metrics". It states:
>
> "The value of the metric captures the information at a point in time.
> Generally these values are numeric, but may be strings as
> well. This can
> be contrasted with Measurements that are calculated with a
> formula based
> on metrics, e.g. Average response time during the last hour of
> execution. The metrics requirements do not enforce any implementation
> pattern. A managed element should allow any available metrics and
> measurements to be reported according to configurable time intervals,
> such as cumulative, sliding window, and interval. A managed
> element must
> declare which interval types are supported."
>
> So one potential criteria for rating a Web service could be (as the
> example above suggests) average response time. This could be computed
> dynamically and updated at regular intervals, according to an
> advertised
> method (e.g. cumulative, sliding window, and interval - as in the
> example above).
>
> Kind Regards,
> Joe Chiusano
> Booz | Allen | Hamilton
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/
>
>
> Nicolas Toper wrote:
> >
> > the web have the same problem :=) if you find an answer
> you'll do better
> > than google (which might be a part of the solutions)
> >
> > -----Message d'origine-----
> > De : Chiusano Joseph [mailto:chiusano_joseph@bah.com]
> > Envoye : mercredi 17 septembre 2003 17:51
> > A : Simon St.Laurent
> > Cc : xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> > Objet : Re: [xml-dev] Web Services and Quality
> >
> > <Quote>
> > Determining whose feedback to listen to, while still
> keeping consumers
> > free of legal or other retailiation from vendors seems like a bigger
> > problem than the technical issues.
> > </Quote>
> >
> > Yes - it seems like there would need to be some sort of
> established and
> > respected ratings service (much like Arbitron rates TV
> stations here in
> > the US(?)). Another possibility is for an open standards consortium
> > (such as OASIS) to, through a TC, establish a framework for
> Web Services
> > rating with wide vendor participation. A large vendor
> backing would add
> > further legitimacy to such a framework. Then, the framework could be
> > adopted by a Web service and the various values provided by that Web
> > service.
> >
> > Of course, that leads to the question of how to get Web service
> > providers to honestly provide values for their services...
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> > Joe Chiusano
> > Booz | Allen | Hamilton
> >
> > "Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> > >
> > > chiusano_joseph@bah.com (Chiusano Joseph) writes:
> > > >Lately I've been thinking about what's around the corner for Web
> > > >services (whether we're close to that corner yet or not
> is a separate
> > > >issue). The notion of dynamic discovery and collaboration of Web
> > > >services comes to mind (choreography, business
> processes, etc.) - but
> > > >I'm also thinking in terms of how a Web service can
> judge the "quality"
> > > >of another Web service. My question is: is anyone aware
> of any current
> > > >efforts on rating Web services?
> > >
> > > I don't have a good answer for this, but have heard
> several suggestions
> > > for providing EBay-like feedback on services using
> UDDI-like approaches.
> > >
> > > Determining whose feedback to listen to, while still
> keeping consumers
> > > free of legal or other retailiation from vendors seems
> like a bigger
> > > problem than the technical issues.
> > >
> > > -----------------------------------------------------------------
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> > > initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
> > >
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