A QUERY BASED SYSTEM FOR OPTIMIZING WEB SERVICES THROUGH

PROGRAM SLICING
Jitender Tanwar, Ravindra Kumar, Balkaran Singh Sidhu, Amit Kumar, Sudip Akura
CSE & IT Department, Amity School of Engineering & Technology, Bijwasan
New Delhi – India

Abstract
The development of web services and applications based on web services have become
increasingly popular in recent years. However, how to publish, discover and compose them in
open and dynamic network environment has become one of the most important challenges for web-
based technology. This project proposes a method based on program slicing to realize the
optimization of web services. It provide an efficient way to access Web Services using query. This
project abstract away the fundamental complexity of XML based Web services specifications and
toolkits, and provide an elegant, intuitive, simple, and powerful query based invocation system to
end users. Our system uses Program Slicing and Caching technique in the process of automating
Web services invocation and execution. The results of experiments show that our optimization
methods of WS are feasible and flexible.

Keywords: Web Service, Program Slicing, Query Based System, WS Generation, Function
Dependence Graph, C#, ASP.net
1. Introduction can also be divided into forward slicing and
backward slicing. In forward slicing, one is
1.1. Program Slicing
interested in what depends on or is affected
Mark Weiser first defines a program slice S by the entity selected as the slicing criterion.
[7] as a reduced executable program obtained In backward slicing, one is interested in what
from a program P by removing statements, affects the variables in the slicing criterion.
such that S replicates part of the behavior of Figure 1 gives an example of Program
P. In general, a program slice consists of Slicing.
those statements of a program that may
Void Calculate(int void Calculate(int
directly or indirectly affect the variables N) N)
computed at a given program point. The { {
program point p and the variable set V, int I; int i;
denoted by <p, V>, is called a slicing int sum=0; int sum=0;
criterion. Program slicing algorithms can be int product=1;
roughly classified as static slicing and For(i=0;i<N;++i) For(i=0;i<N;++i)
dynamic slicing methods, according to { {
whether they only use statically available sum=sum+i; sum=sum+i;
information or compute those statements that product=product*I;
influence the value of a variable occurrence } }
for a specific program input. Program slicing Write(sum); Write(sum);
 Write(product);
} }
Source Code Slicing for
<10,sum>
Figure 1. Source Code and Slicing Results
1.2. Web Service
According to the W3C group, a WS (also web
service) is traditionally defined as a software
system designed to support interoperable
machine-to-machine interaction over a
network. It has an interface described in a
machine-process able format such as WSDL
(web services Description Language). Other
systems interact with the WS in a manner
prescribed by its description using SOAP
(Simple Object Access Protocol) messages,
typically conveyed through HTTP with an
XML serialization in conjunction with other
web-related standards. Web services today
are frequently just application programming
interfaces (API) or web APIs that can be
accessed over a network such as the Internet,
and be executed on a remote system hosting
the requested services. In general, a service
depends on other services. Such dependences
can be described as dependence graphs on
which program slicing algorithms can be
applied for WS generation and composition.
All of the algorithms appeared in this paper
are implemented in language C# which will
be introduced in next subsection.
1.3. C#
C# syntax is highly expressive, yet it is also
simple and easy to learn. The curly-brace
syntax of C# will be instantly recognizable to
anyone familiar with C, C++ or Java.
Developers who know any of these languages
are typically able to begin to work
productively in C# within a very short time.
C# syntax simplifies many of the
complexities of C++ and provides powerful
features such as null able value types,
enumerations, delegates, lambda expressions
and direct memory access, which are not
found in Java. C# supports generic methods
and types, which provide increased type
safety and performance, and iterators, which
enable implementers of collection classes to
define custom iteration behaviors that are
simple to use by client code. Language-
Integrated Query (LINQ) expressions make
the strongly-typed query a first-class
language construct. As an object-oriented
language, C# supports the concepts of
encapsulation, inheritance, and
polymorphism. All variables and methods,
including the Main method, the application's
entry point, are encapsulated within class
definitions. A class may inherit directly from
one parent class, but it may implement any
number of interfaces. Methods that override
virtual methods in a parent class require the
override keyword as a way to avoid
accidental redefinition. In C#, a structure is
like a lightweight class; it is a stack-allocated
type that can implement interfaces but does
not support inheritance.
1.4. Web Service Invocation using QBS
Web services are widely expected to simplify
the design of distributed applications that are
amenable to automated discovery,
composition, and invocation. The use of
XML facilitates in moving towards loosely
coupled applications that provide greater
interoperability in distributed heterogeneous
environments. However, the current XML
based specifications provide only syntactical
descriptions of the functionality provided by
Web services. Even though a wide variety of
tools are available to invoke Web services,
the lack of semantics associated with Web
service descriptions requires user
intervention in the decision making process
and understanding of the complex interfaces,
contexts, composition, and invocation. It is
currently required for application developers
to have some knowledge of the intricacies of
Web services: know-how about the list of
available operations, the input and output
parameter types, the set of ports and service
endpoints, apart from usage details of their
particular Web services toolkit. Though an
important motivation of Web services is to
promote ease-of-use for application
developers, the requirement that end users
also be familiar with the design and some
implementation details makes its usage
difficult for end users. Our work addresses
this problem by simplifying the user
interaction with Web services. We have
developed several algorithms and
optimization techniques that map user
queries to relevant operations in domain
specific Web services. Our system presents a
simple interface, similar to HTML based
search engines, which accepts user queries
and presents the end user with results after
invoking and executing relevant Web
services. We employ several query matching
techniques including Semantic Web and
ontology technologies such as OWL, as well
as tools such as WordNet, to retrieve
contextual information from queries and
determine the set of Web services that need
to be invoked for any user query. The details
of Web services specification and
implementations are hidden from the user.
For example, suppose a user wants to check
the weather for a trip from Boston to
Chicago. In our system, the user needs to
enter a query "weather for travel from Boston
to Chicago". Our system will employ various
algorithms to understand the query and
obtain the required information by invoking
the appropriate Web services. Unlike other
Web service implementations, the user does
not have to fill detailed forms for each
service. Our system takes into consideration
results of past Web service invocations and
utilizes it to improve performance for
subsequent user queries in the same domain.
1.5. Background and Related Work
Many researchers are doing some related
work about WS generation and composition.
They give some methods and models to solve
the problem how to discover and generate a
WS. The most two common methods used
recently are based on syntax and semantics.
The method based on syntax is a traditional
one. Although this method has been
improved by a large number of researchers, it
has a known shortcoming when it uses the
technology of keyword matching, which
often returns some inaccurate results. Many
services discovered by this method are not
wanted for users. The method based on
semantics does a better job than one which is
based on syntax. Its results of discovering
services are more accurate. Some researchers
have studied on generating and composing
web services by using program slicing
technology, but most of them focus on web
services only, and haven’t proposed a
feasible method with the whole process of
WS generation and composition. Microsoft
Roslyn CTP helps analyzing the relationship
between all components in C# types/codes. In
this paper, we will make a detailed method
about how to generate web services from
source codes. The technology of program
slicing is used to help us abstract function
dependence graph (FDG) and generate
corresponding services. Our current
prototype of WS tool can cope with the
imperative language C#. The biggest
difference between our work and others’ is
that the slicing is accomplished on the basis
of methods and not on variables. So there is
no need to describe the function point ‘p’.
And another difference is that we use
program slicing and graph theory to process
services’ dependences. The theory of
function dependence graph is to be discussed
in Section 2, and services identification with
program slicing is to be introduced in Section
3. In Section 4, conclusions are drawn and
future work is listed.
2. Design and Implementation 2.1 Query Based System

 Step 1: User will provide query in
the User Query Interface.
 Step 2: Query will be processed in the
Query Based System to check
whether the Web Service is present or
not.
 Step 3: If the web service is found
then it first checks the cache memory.
 Step 4: If there is a Cache hit then
output will be directly showed to the
user.
 Step 5: If there is a Cache miss then
the Web Service will be sliced on the
basis of slicing criterion which in this
case are methods.
 Step 6: Then the sliced code is
invoked and the output is stored in a
cache memory.
 Step 7: Output is prepared and shown
to user
 User will provide query in the User
Query Interface.
 Spell checking has been done to
rectify any mistakes in the query.
Lexicon contains the dictionary from
which spell checker will check.
 Query will pass to the query
processor to normalize the query
which includes Stop Word removal,
Non- Alphanumeric replacer and
abbreviation extender.
 After stripping words from the query,
the match processor matches the
stripped words with its repository.
 If match is found then web service is
chosen for further process.
 If match is not found then user
prompted to rectify the provided
query.
2.2 Service Identification with Program
Slicing
When a server receives some source codes
from users, its important work is to identify
components/services from the source codes.
Non-strictly speaking, each top-level
function (or a class in object-oriented
languages such as Java) in source codes can
be abstracted as a component/service. For
simplicity, a global variable or a point
variable in C is treated as the special function
whose parameter and return are both itself.
2.3 Invocation and Caching
For WS identification, source codes will be
parsed to build a FDG on which some slicing Web Service Invocation relates to identifying
operations are applied, and then the sliced the right web service according to the user
codes for each service can be easily query and the executing it after implementing
generated. The main functions of the slicing program slicing on its source code. Our
process will be listed below before describing system also takes into consideration results of
the algorithm of slicing in details. past Web service invocations and utilizes it to
improve performance for subsequent user
code begins:
queries in the same domain.
file→ create web service;
 ASMX Web Service is taken and
codes→ readFile (file); registered in the server (local host or
AST →generateAST (codes); others).
 Create a blank soap envelope.
FDG → generateFDG (AST);  Add soap body which contains the
SN →chooseSlicingNode (methods); web method. After adding the soap
body, the soap envelope is ready to
SN’→ SN+ methods dependent on SN; communicate with the server.
slicedCodes→ delete ~ SN’  Create web request by sending the
soap envelope to the server.
Generate→ Web Service
 Get soap response from server. The
code ends soap response is in XML format.
 Parse the response and get result.
 Prepared output for user.
3 Experimental Results
Output Screens

Home Page:
 User can enter the query in the
textbox.
Output:
 Click ‘Search’ to fetch the result.
 Showing weather report of entered
city.

Example:
 User enter the query to see weather
report in a city
Example:
 User enters another query
Fallback Behavior:
 Query is processed by the system and
found that all the parameters that
needed are not given by the user.
 User will fill this form to get the
result.
Output:
 User fill the form and press ‘Submit’
to get the result.
 The result is shown to the user.
4. Future Scope
 N-gram algorithm can be
implemented to predict next letter in
user query interface.
 Ontology can be incorporated.
 Self-learning mechanism that utilizes
the knowledge of previously made
queries and enhances the efficiency of
the system by a range of 20% - 82%.
 Compression techniques can be
incorporated in SOAP messages.
5. Conclusions
This paper introduces a Query Based System
that matches user queries with corresponding
methods in Web services, invoke the
operations with the correct set of parameters,
and present the results to the end user. It also
incorporates technique of Program slicing
and caching in the process if automating Web
Services invocation and execution
6. References
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Michael R. Head, Madhusudhan Govindaraju
and Weiyi Meng, “A Query-based System for
Automatic Invocation of Web Services”.
[2] Yingzhou Zhang , Wei Fu, Geng Yang,
Lei Chen and Weifeng Zhang, “Web Service
Generation Through Program Slicing” , Int.
J. Communications, Network and System
Sciences,2010, 3, 877-887.

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Vilas and Jose Pazos Arias, “Optimizing Web
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Web Services Practices, 2005

[4] M. F. Porter, “An Algorithm for Suffix

Stripping”, Computer Laboratory, Corn
Exchange Street, Cambridge

[5] Andrea De Lucia, “Program Slicing:

Methods and Applications” Engineering
University of Sanio Palazzo Bosco
Benevento, Italy

[6] Mahmoud Barhamgi, Pierre-Antoine

Champin, and Djamal Benslimane, “A
Framework for Web Services-Based Query
Rewriting and Resolution in Loosely Coupled
Information Systems”, LIRIS Laboratory,
Claude Bernard Lyon1 University 69622
Villeurbanne, France

[7] M. Weiser, “Program Slicing,” IEEE

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[8] F. Tip, “A Survey of Program Slicing

Techniques,” Journal of Programming
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[9] V. Agarwal et al., "Synthy. A System for

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