Robert Steele

Using Mobile Agent Technology to Implement Web Service Migration

Robert Steele, Jean-Luc Jox, Tharam Dillon
University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract

Currently, a given Web Service implementation would typically be deployed in one fixed location. Redeploying a Web Service in another location would typically involve uninstalling it from its original location, deploying it at its destination location and then optionally updating the well known directory service that lets clients know the current location of the Web Service. However being able to migrate a Web Service without human intervention would provide some advantages. One application for this is adaptive systems that need to react to network and load conditions and migrate Web Services to provide optimum performance and load balancing. In addition, with the growing use of mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) coupled with advances in WiFi Internet connectivity we expect to see an increasing demand for software agents (with Web Service interfaces) that can migrate to a number of locations before returning to their base device to satisfy a client request. To achieve this capability of Web Services that can migrate without operator intervention, in this paper we propose the use of Web Services in conjunction with mobile agent technologies. The proposed migratable Web Services framework makes use of mobile agent technologies. An important motivation for this proposed framework is that by using mobile agent technology we in effect provide a middleware. This middleware shields the Web Services developer from complexities of implementing migration and load-balancing code.