2015 IEEE 8th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing and Applications

SkyAP-S3: A Hybrid Approach for Efficient Skyline Services Selection

Abdelaziz Ouadah1, Karim Benouaret2, Allel Hadjali3 and Fahima Nader1

l
Ecole nationale Supérieure d’Informatique (E.S.I), Oued-Smar, Algiers, Algeria
{a_ouadah, f_nader}@esi.dz
2
LIRIS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
karim.benouaret@liris.cnrs.fr
3
LIAS/ENSMA, Poitier, France
allel.hadjali@ensma.fr

Abstract enhancing Web services selection. Unfortunately, the QoS got

This paper handles the problem of Skyline services
selection; it proposes a hybrid approach which mixes three
Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods: Skyline, AHP and
Promethee, for ranking Web services. The Skyline is used to
reduce the decision space and focusing only on interesting
web services that are not dominated by any other service.
AHP is used to weight QoS criteria of interest in a simple and
intuitive manner; it allows for checking whether the weights
assigned are consistent as well. Promethee method is
leveraged to rank skyline services, by taking advantage of the
outranking relationships between skyline candidate services
and generating positive, negative and Net flows. An efficient
algorithm to rank-order skyline services on the basis of Net
flow is developed. A case study is presented to illustrate the
different steps of our approach. The experimental evaluation
conducted on real-world datasets demonstrates that our
approach can better capture the user preferences and retrieve
the best ranked Skyline services.
Keywords— Skyline Services; Multi-Criteria Decision
Making; AHP; Promethee; User preferences.
1. Introduction
With the proliferation of Service Oriented Computing
(SOC), more and more Web Services are designed with the
intention to accomplish a precise function. A Web Service is a
software component which can be described, published and
invoked on the web using a set of standards such as SOAP,
WSDL and UDDI [1], it can be located by its identifier on the
Web and its input and output parameters, which represent its
functional information; however, there are other non-
functional pieces of information which can characterize the
service as response time, availability, cost, reliability, etc.
This latter kind of information is called quality of service
(QoS).
The problem of identifying the best candidate web services
from a set of functionally-equivalent services is a Multi-
Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem [2]. Non-
functional quality of service aspects are crucial criteria for
from service descriptors (WSDL) or services providers
(UDDI) do not reflect the real quality of these services, they
differ from a user to another, from a context to another and
change dynamically in time according to several parameters.
For example, the response time can vary according to the
traffic of the network [3] and according to the capacity of each
service to preserve the same performances.
To select a service among several candidate services, with
similar functionality but with different qualities of services,
the user cannot try all candidate services by himself, but, he
can leverage historical invocation experiences performed by
other users in similar contexts [4]. Exploiting the experiences
of other users allows to predict the QoS before using them,
then, to help the user to choose the relevant services to his
needs.
In the last years, the notion of Skyline is appeared as a new
and popular method to find the most relevant Web services [5]
[6]. It is considered as a promising direction which allows to
reduce the space of decisions of the user by offering him only
the most interesting services, and as a result, to simplify
selection process. However, Skyline allows generally
returning incomparable and conflicting results, or the user
often encounters some difficulties to select a good service with
a better compromise between criteria of interest.
Existing approaches based on MCDM methods as AHP [7],
PROMETHEE [8] and other methods [9], carry generally on
some Datasets where the number of Web services is limited
and the number of QoS criteria is restricted too. However, the
number of services which gives similar functionality with
different qualities increases every day. So, theses approaches
take a lot of time and ask much effort to the user to find the
most relevant services.
In this work, to overcome the own drawbacks of each
above cited method, we propose a hybrid SkyAP-S3 (Skyline-
Ahp-Promethee methods for Skyline Service Selection)
approach where the Skyline method is combined with two
other MCDM methods AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and
PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organisation METHods
for Enrichment Evaluation). This approach allows exploiting
the advantages of every method and having better
performances than using each method separately. The Skyline
operator allows reducing the number of candidate services to

978-1-4673-9469-7/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 18

DOI 10.1109/SOCA.2015.22
be considered, focusing only on the most interesting services services which provides hotel search and on-line reservation;
which are not dominated by any other service and then for each Web service, two QoS are taken into consideration:
reducing the ranking computing time. AHP method is used to execution time and price (Table 1). Assume that a user is
minimize the effort of the user in the step of weights looking for the best Web services w.r.t. to execution time and
assignment to different QoS criteria, such weights are needed price. The most interesting services are provided by the
in the step of ranking. The PROMETHEE method is used to Skyline (see Figure 1). The Skyline results are incomparable,
rank Skyline services by exploiting the different outranking so, to make a decision to choice a Web service, the user needs
relationships between candidates and the preferences functions to express his priorities and
Service QoS
on QoS criteria such as the preference threshold, indifference preferences over the QoS criteria in
S1 (0.8, 0,5)
threshold and the preference nature (maximization or S2 (0.1, 0.8) order to rank Skyline services.
minimization). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first S3 (1.0, 0.8) Table 1. QoS values.
work that mixes the Skyline operator with AHP and S4 (0.5, 0.7)
Price
PROMETHEE methods for ranking Skyline services and S5 (0.2, 0.6)
s7
providing user with a short list of relevant services and with a S6 (0.7, 0.9) s6
good compromise between QoS. S7 (0.3, 1.0) s11
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2
S8 (0.5, 0.4) s2 s3
S9 (0.8, 0.1) s4
provides a background on the three MCDM methods used in S10 (0.3, 0.3) s5
our work and the different steps of each method. Section 3 s1
S11 (0.4, 0.8) s8
reviews related work. Section 4 presents the mixed approach s10
proposed. Section 5 describes the algorithm proposed to rank- s9
order Skyline services. Section 6 discusses a case study based
on a real QoS dataset example. Section 7 presents the Execution time
experimental evaluation. Section 8 concludes the paper. Figure 1. Skyline results.

2. Background 2.2. AHP Method

To simplify the presentation of our paper, we describe in
this section the terminology we use in this work:
1. A = (a1, a2, a3, …., an), a set of alternatives, ai
represent the alternative number i. (1  i  n).
2. S = (S1, S2, S3, …., Sn), a service group with similar
functionality, Sj denotes service number j (1  j  n),
n the number of services.
3. Gi = (qi1, qi2, qi3,… ,qij, ….qim), qij represents the value of
the quality qi of the service Sj, 1  i  m, where m
denotes the number of QoS criteria.
2.1. Skyline operator
The Skyline operator is a popular and relevant tool for
modeling and processing preference database queries [5]. Let
p1, p2, …, pN be a group of objects, the Skyline operator
returns all objects pi, such that pi is not dominated by any
other object pj. It relies on Pareto dominance relation which
can be expressed as follows:
Relation of dominance of Skyline :
Given Si and Sj ‫ א‬S, we say that Si dominate Sj, denoted by
Si ‫ ط‬Sj, if Si is better or equal to Sj on all attributes of QoS and
strictly better at least on one attribute of QoS (without loss of
generality, we assume that the smaller value, the better).
‫[א —׊‬1,m], Gu(Si) ≤ Gu(Sj) ‫ ׌ ר‬v ‫[א‬1,m], Gv(Si) ൏ Gv(Sj)
Example: Consider a request which illustrates the
pertinence of the Skyline operator, concerning a set of web
AHP is a MCDM method developed by [10], it is fluently
used by the researchers in comparison between objectives or
alternatives. It allows including the subjectivity of the
decision-maker in a form of weights. AHP Method
decomposes the decision-making problem in a hierarchical
form; this hierarchy reflects natural tendency and the mind of
the human being. AHP starts from binary comparisons
matrices to arrive after all computing operations in a form of
vector of weights.
Table 2. Scale of pairwise comparisons [10].
Intensity of Definition
importance
1 Equal Importance
3 Moderate importance of one over another
5 Essential or strong importance
7 Very strong importance
9 Extreme importance
2, 4, 6, 8 Intermediate values between the two adjacent
judgments
AHP follows the following procedure:
1- Step 1: Decomposes the problem into a hierarchy.
2- Step 2: Compares the elements of each hierarchic
level one by one and constructs the comparison
matrix. The values of this matrix are got by the
transformation of the subjectivity of the decision-

19
 maker into numerical values according to Saaty’s 1-9
scale of pairwise comparisons shown in Table 2.
3- Step 3: Determines the relative importance of
elements by calculating the corresponding maximum
vectors values of the comparisons matrix.
4- Step 4: Checks the coherence of the subjectivity
values.
AHP method makes use of two measures: the Consistency
Index and the Coherence Ratio which are presented below.
Consistency Index (CI): it is obtained as follows:
λmax − n
CI = (1)
n −1
Where max represents the maximum value corresponding
to the comparison matrix by pairs, n represents the number of
elements compared.
Coherence Ratio (CR): it is computed as follows:
CI
CR = 100* (2)
ACI
Where ACI represents the average coherence indication, see
[10] for more details.
A value of CR less than 10% is generally acceptable;
otherwise, judgments must be reviewed and improved.
2.3. PROMETHEE Method
PROMETHEE is a MCDM method which allows making a
partial or complete ranking of alternatives according to their
pertinence, including the preferences of the user (weights,
preference and indifference thresholds).
PROMETHEE Method was proposed by [11], it is a part of
outranking methods where alternatives are pair-wise
compared. With PROMETHEE the notion of criterion is
extended including a function which expresses the preferences
of the user for one alternative in opposition to another.
The steps of PROMETHEE method are:
• Step 1: fixes for every criterion, one of six basic
types offered in PROMETHEE [11] (usual criterion,
U-shape criterion, V-shape criterion, level criterion,
V-shape with indifference criterion and Gaussian
criterion).
• Step 2: For each couple of alternatives (ai, ak); the
preference degree (Outranking degree) is calculated
in the following way:
¦
n then be simplified.
P(ai ,ak ) = π j .Fj (ai ,ak ) (3)
j=1
Where j represents the weight of the jth criterion.
• Step 3: Calculates the negative and positive flows for
each alternative ai:
Positive flows: expresses the force of alternative ai
¦
+
Φ (ai ) = P(ai ,ak ) (4)
a k ≠ai
20
Negative flows: expresses the weakness of ai
Φ − (ai ) = ¦ P(ak ,ai )
a k ≠ ai
(5)
• Step 4: PROMETHEE II is used to rank alternatives
according to the score order of the net flows (ai)
defined as follows:
Φ (ai ) = Φ + (ai ) − Φ − (ai ) (6)
3. Related work
It is well-known that the Skyline operator is very useful for
several applications that require a multi-criteria decision
making. It was introduced at the early 2000's in the field of
databases by [12]. Many algorithms for computing the skyline
have been proposed in the literature. BNL (Block Nested
Loops) algorithm makes a full scan of the dataset in several
iterations for computing the Skyline; for each iteration, it
keeps in memory the list of skyline candidates. D&C (Devide
and Conquer) [12] method converses the set of points in a
group of partitions and calculates a result Skyline for every
partition, by using any Skyline algorithm; finally, it merges
the results of partitions to find the final result [12]. [13]
proposed both Index and Bitmap-based algorithms which
allow returning Skyline result progressively. [14] introduced
algorithms NN (Nearest Neighbor) and BBS (Branch and
Bound Skyline) based on R-trees indexing structure.
Recently, the problem of web services selection has
received a considerable intention, several works were
proposed, adapting a variety of Skyline algorithms for service
selection. [15] addresses several problems, notably, (i) taking
into consideration users preferences in web services selection
and composition, optimization of service selection for several
users with conflicting preferences, (ii) service selection with a
good compromise between attributes of QoS and (iii) dealing
with the uncertainty aspect of QoS data during the process of
Skyline services selection. [6] adapts existing Skyline
algorithms to calculate the best SEP (Service Execution Plan).
The result Skyline SEP, represents the set of SEPs that are not
dominated by any other SEPs. [16] introduces a new concept
called degree of dominance, which can capture the scale of
dominance of Skyline services and order Skyline results, the
authors explain how the Skyline can help to determine the
optimum allocation of weights to the different metrics of QoS,
relying on the dominance Skyline relation, the number of
candidate services can be reduced and selection process can
The approach to use MCDM methods to resolve some
problems is not new. In the context of web service selection
many methods are used such as AHP [7], PROMETHEE [17],
ELECTRE TRI [18] and MAUT [19]. However, we did not
find a lot of research works which combine two or several
MCDM methods to rank web services. In the work proposed
by [8], the authors combine both methods ANP (Analytical
Network Process) and PROMETHEE for ranking services,
while [20] and [21] combines AHP and PROMETHEE.
 QoS Data history invocations
Decomposes the problem into a hierarchy

Skyline (Reduce search space)

Compares the elements of each hierarchic level

Difference between each two Skyline services

Determines the relative importance of elements

Indifference threshold Preference intensity

Checking the consistency
Preference threshold
Preference degree AHP (Weighting QoS criteria)
Way of preference

Negative, Positive and Net Flows

PROMETHEE II (Ranking Skyline Services)

Skyline Services ranked

3
Figure 2. SkyAP-S approach.
Where Fj(Si,Sk) represents the intensity preference between
4. SkyAP-S3 approach Si and Sk.

SkyAP-S3 approach which we propose is based on the Fj (S i ,S k )

combination of three MCDM methods: Skyline, AHP and
PROMETHEE (see Figure 2). In the first step of our approach,
we use the Skyline operator to reduce the search space. We
use a BNL (Block Nested Loops) algorithm to compute the
Skyline services, due to its simplicity and large usability [12].
This step can be done on offline as suggested by [2] in order to
enhance the execution time; when a new service is added, the
Skyline result is recomputed implicitly.
In the second step, we calculate the weights of criteria of
QoS based on the AHP method. The choice of this method is
justified by two main reasons:
i- AHP relies on a binary comparison between every two
criteria with the use of a natural language [10] simple to
use by the end user (equal importance, weak importance).
ii- AHP allows checking the coherence of the preferences of
the user based on the both indicators: the coherence
indication CI and the ratio of coherence RC.
In the last step, we propose to use PROMETHEE II method
to make a ranking of Skyline services, offering the user the
top-k Skyline services with a good compromise between QoS
criteria. In our case, we use the basic type N° 5 V-Shape with
indifference criterion (see Figure 3).
­1 if Gj(Si ) − Gj(Sk ) > p j
° preference degrees between each two Skyline
° Gj(Si ) − Gj(Sk ) − qj
Fj(Si ,Sk ) = ® if qj < Gj(Si ) − Gj(Sk ) ≤ p j (7)
° pj − q j
°0 if Gj(Si ) − Gj(Sk ) ≤ q j
¯ for each Skyline service. Finally, Skyline services are
1
0 qj pj G j (Si ) − G j (Sk )
Figure 3. PROMETHEE Basic type N°5 V-Shape.
This function allows the user to specify his preferences for
each QoS criterion. It accepts the following parameters:
preference threshold, indifference threshold and preference
way (criterion to be maximized or minimized); during this
step, candidate services are rank-ordered by the means of the
outranking relationship using different preferences functions
expressed on Qos criteria.
5. Ranking algorithm
Algorithm 1 implements the different steps of the
PROMETHEE method to rank-order the Skylines services:
- The lines of code between 8 and 33 calculate
preference intensity between each two skyline
services.
- The lines of code between 35 and 44 compute the
services.
- The lines of code between 46 and 55 allow calculating
the negative flow, the positive flow and the Net flow
ranked according to the Net flow measure.

21
 Algorithm 1. Ranking Skyline Services. meteorology like temperature, speed of wind, visibility,
meteorological conditions, etc.
The set of QoS metrics are: response time, throughput,
reliability, best practices, material and class.
1: Input: Skyline services (incomparable services) Gj (Si)
2: Input: Preference thresholds Pref [Qosi]
3: Input: Indifference thresholds Indef [Qosi]. Table 3. Examples of data of QoS [22].
4: Input: Preference Way: Sense [Qosi].

(%)
5: Input: Weight of criteria of Qos Weight [Qosi], result of AHP method.

Name

Time (Ms)
Response

(hits / dryness)
Throughput

(%)
Reliability

Material (%)

Class
Is Skyline
Best
6: output Skyline services ranked
7: //Computing the preference intensity

Practices
8: For I = 1 to n do
9 For k = 1 to n do
10 For j = 1 to m do
11 Diffj [Sk, Sj] = Gj (Si) - Gj [Sk];
12 If Diffj [Si, Sk] <0 and Sense [Qosi] = min then S1 FastWeather 125.44 13.5 86.4 80 91 4 Y
13 If Indef [Qosi] < ABS (Diff [Qosi]) <= Pref [Qosi] then
14 Fj (Si, Sk) = (ABS (Diffj [Sk, Sj]- Indef [Qosi]) / (Pref [Qosi] - S2 dotsfastweather 129.67 13.2 84.1 80 90 4 N
15 Indef [Qosi]);
16 else S3 WeatherForecast 261 1.8 58.1 80 94 3 Y
17 If ABS (Diffj [Sk, Sj]))> Pref [Qosi] then
18 Fj (Si, Sk) = 1 S4 WeatherFetcher 160 2.2 73.3 84 32 3 Y
19 else S5 WeatherService 190.5 12.4 54 80 8 2 N
20 Fj (Si, Sk) = 0
21 else S6 GlobalWeather 1463.5 2.4 53.5 84 42 2 Y
22 If Diffj [Sk, Sj]>0 and Sense [Qosi] = max then
23 If Indef [Qosi] <= Diffj [Sk, Sj] <= Pref [Qosi] then S7 ndfdXML 409.33 1.8 41.4 72 96 1 Y
24 Fj (Si, Sk) = (Diffj [Sk, Sj]- Indef [Qosi]) / (Pref [Qosi] -
25 Indef [Qosi]);
26 else 6.1. Skyline services computation
27 If Indef [Qosi]> Diffj [Sk, Sj] then
28 Fj (Si, Sk) = 0;
29 else In this demonstrative example, the two services S2 and S5
30 Fj (Si, Sk) = 1; are not in the Skyline result because S2 is dominated by S1 and
31 end for S5 is dominated by S1 too. The five services (S1, S3, S4, S6 and
32 end for
33 end for
S7) are not dominated by any other service, and they are
34 //Computing the preference degree : incomparable between them. The column “Is Skyline” of Table
35 For i = 1 to n do 3 indicates if a Web service is (or not) a skyline service.
36 For k = 1 to n do
37 nap = 0;
38 For j =1 to m do 6.2. Weighting QoS criteria
39 If Si <> Sk then
40 nap = nap + Fj (Si, Sk) * Weight [Qosj]; As described in section 2.2, the first step of the AHP method
41 end for
42 P (Si, Sk) = nap;
is to decompose the problem in hierarchal form. In our case
43 end for the problem of skyline service selection is on the top; the set
44 end for of criteria (response time, throughput, accessibility, good
45 //Calculation of the positive, negative and net flow
46 For i = 1 to n do
practices, material and class) in the intermediary level and the
47 temp1 = 0, temp2 = 0 last level contains the skyline services candidates (S1, S3, S4, S6
48 For j going of 1 in n do and S7).
49 temp1 = temp1 + P (Si, Sj); Table 4 shows the weights of criteria obtained (step 2 &3).
50 temp2 = temp2 + P (Sj, Sj);
51 end for Table 4. Weighting of QoS criteria.
52 PHpositive (Sj) = temp1;
time
Response

throughput

Accessibility

practices
Good

Documentati

Class

Weights
53 PHnegative (Sj) = temp2;
54 PHnet (Sj) = temp1 - temp2;
55 end for
56 Ranking Skyline services according to PHnet.

Response 1 3 2 4 5 3
time 0,35
6. A demonstrative case study
throughput 1/3 1 1/2 3 4 1/2 0,14
In this demonstrative example, we present a case study to
Accessibility 1/2 2 1 4 6 3 0,26
illustrate our approach using QWS DataSet [22].
The Web services of Table 3 give the same functionality to Good 1/4 1/3 1/4 1 2 1/2
consult meteorological data with different QoS metrics values. practices 0,07
They accept in input parameters the city and the country, and Material 1/5 1/4 1/6 1/2 1 1/2 0,05
return as response a set of information elements on the
Class 1/3 2 1/3 2 2 1 0,13

22
 As for the test of consistency (step 4 of the AHP method), In this step, the preference degree (Outranking degree) is
it is illustrated by the following calculus: computed between each two Skyline services (See Table 5),
max = (6,37 + 6,20 + 6,35 + 6,15 + 6,19 + 6,41)/6 = 6,28. the expression (3) is used as follows:
To calculate the coherence indicator, the expression (1) is Pi (S6, S7) =  Wi * Fi (S6, S7) =0,35*0 + 0,14*0,172 +
used as follows: 0,26*1 + 0,07* 1 + 0,05*0 + 0,13*0 = 0,354.
IC = (max-1) / (N-1) = (6,28-1) / (6-1) = 0,06
While the Coherence ratio is calculated as follows Table 6. Degree of preference calculation.
according to the expression (2):
S1 S3 S4 S6 S7 +  = + -  -
RC = 100 * (IC / ACI) = 100 * (0,06 / 1,24) = 0,04.
Coherence ratio is equal to 0,04 which is less than 0.1, this S1 0,490 0,750 0,750 0,820 2,810 2,726
means that weights allocated to QoS criteria are consistent and 0,014 0,260 0,610 0,680 1,564 0,615
S3
user judgments are sufficient. The QoS Weights can be used in
the next step to rank Skyline services. S4 0,035 0,392 0,610 0,694 1,739 0,724

S6 0,035 0,048 0,005 0,354 0,453 -1,867

6.3. PROMETHEE-based Ranking
S7 0,000 0,000 0,000 0,350 0,350 -2,199

6.3.1. Preference function

In the first step, we choose a preference function among the - 0,084 0,949 1,015 2,320 2,549
six offered. We have chosen the V-Shape with indifference
criterion. With V-Shape, values of Preference and Indifference 6.3.4. Positive, negative and net flows values
threshold (p, q) have to be allocated by the user for every During this step, we compute the positive flow (+), the
criterion. In this demonstrative example we use the values of negative flow (-) and the net flow () for every service
Table 5. Skyline, using expressions (4), (5) and (6).
Table 5. Set of selected parameters.
The application of PROMETHEE II allows giving a
complete ranking of Skyline services as shown in Table 6.
Criteria

time
Response

throughput

Accessibility

practices
Best

Documentation

Class

Table 7. Ranked Skyline Services.

Rank Service Net flow

st
Preference 1 S1 2,726
5 3 4 6 4 1
threshold nd
2 S4 0,724
Indifference 0,5 0,5 0,4 1 0,5 0,2
threshold rd
3 S3 0,615
Way of min max max max max max
preference 4th S6 -1,867
5th S7 -2,199
In our proposal, the parameter “way of preference” is
added to know if the criterion is to be maximized or 7. Experiment
minimized. In our study case, only the criterion “response
time” is to be minimized, all others criteria (throughput, In this section, we present an experimental evaluation of our
accessibility, best practices, material and class) are to be approach of ranking Skyline services. We perform all the
maximized. experiments on the computer with Core Duo CPU 2,01GHz,
2,09 GHz and 2Go memory. In our evaluation, we
6.3.2. Preference intensity computation experimented with both real-world datasets.
We use preference function N° 5 (Figure 3, expression (7))
to calculate preference intensity between every two Skyline 7.1. The QWS Dataset
services for each criterion. For example, the preference
intensity between both services S6 and S7 is calculated as In our experiments, we have used the publically available
follows: QWS DataSet1 [22] [23], which comprises measurement of
G1 (S6) - G1 (S7) = 1463.5 - 409.33 = 1 054,170. nine QoS metrics; it contains 2507 Real-World Web Services.
The Criterion response time is to be minimized, therefore The objective of this database is to give to the researchers in
G1 (S6) - G1 (S7) > p1 then F1 (S6, S7) = 0,000. the field of service computing, a dataset to experiment their
The preference intensity between the two services S6 and S7 is works.
computed for each QoS criterion.
7.1.1. Skyline computing
6.3.3. Preference degree calculus
1
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~qmahmoud/qws/index.html

23
 We consider that all services for the QoS DataSet offer the
same functionality. For the Skyline computing we used BNL
algorithm, due to its simplicity and large usability [12]. For
eight QoS metrics, the skyline result returns 117 services
among 2507 services, for 3 and 4 metrics, the skyline result
contains only 12 services among 2507.
Skyline results, due to the time spent in computing the
preference intensity and the preference degree between each
couple of Skyline services. This execution time is reduced
considerably by reducing the decision space focusing only on
interesting services that are not dominated by any other
service. If we apply PROMETHEE directly as it is proposed
in existing approaches [8], [9] and [17] on a complete datasets,
the execution time will increase more and more.
The performance evaluation in Figure 5 shows that our
approach has overcome the computational limitation of
MCDM aggregation methods [24] by applying them
(PROMETHEE) on a reduced number of alternatives using
Skyline method. For example, for eight QoS metrics and 2705
services, the space decision is reduced to 127 Skyline services
only.

Figure 4. Dimensionality vs Size of Skyline result.

Varying the number of QoS metrics (dimensionality) from
3 to 9, the Skyline result changes as depicted in Figure 4.
As it can be seen, the search space is reduced for the user;
only pertinent Skyline services are proposed which are not
dominated by any other service. Also, we can note that the
size of the Skyline result increases significantly with the
increase of the number of QoS parameters.
Figure 5. Ranking algorithme evaluation.
7.1.2. Ranking Skyline services
Table 8 shows the Top-10 skyline services with eight QoS 7.2. The NBA DataSet
attributes. The result demonstrates that our approach can
The NBA Dataset2 consists of 21 961 tuples containing
capture the user preferences and retrieve the best Skyline
statistics about 17 skills of basketball players during regular
services according to the user preferences with a better
season in the period between 1946 and 2009.
compromise between different criteria of selection.
Table 9. Comparing of Top-10 NBA players with other
approaches.
Table 8. Top-10 Skyline services results.
Rank Our approach Skyline frequency SKYRANK
Rank Service Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8
st
1 G. Mcginnis 1974 M. Jordan1986 G. Mcginnis 1974
1st S1161 41 97 43,1 99 73 100 84 1
2nd M. Jordan 1988 G. Mcginnis 1974 H. Olajuwon 1988
2nd S832 57 98 34,6 100 73 100 84 1
rd
3rd J. Erving 1975 M. Jordan1987 C. Barkley1985
3 S1610 80 99 36,3 100 80 100 87 13
th
4 J. Erving 1973 W. Chamb.1961 H. Olajuwon 1989
4th S2200 78 100 35,3 100 67 78 72 1
th
5 J. Erving 1974 C. Barkley 1987 C. Barkley 1987
5th S1556 65 99 31,6 100 80 89 65 21
6th M. Jordan 1987 C. Barkley 1985 M. Jordan1987
6th S760 68,83 100 21,4 100 73 100 80 7,33
th
7th M. Malone 1981 M. Richardson 1979 A. Iverson 2004
7 S170 63,8 99 18,1 100 73 78 84 1,8
th
8 W. Chamb.1963 H. Olajuwon1988 M. Jordan 1986
8th S1482 71,16 99 21,9 100 78 89 89 16,44
th
9 M. Jordan 1986 H. Olajuwon1989 J. Stackhouse 2000
9th S462 99 99 31,1 100 73 100 84 2
10th M. Jordan 1989 M. Jordan 1988 D. Robinson 1993
10th S1390 57 91 27,3 97 83 89 93 14

We are retained 10 dimensions: points scored (PTS), total

7.1.3. Performance evaluation
rebounds (REB), assists (AST), field goal made (FGM),
From this experimentation we can see that the execution
time increases significantly with the increase of the size of the
2
www.basketballreference.com

24
steals(STL), blocks (Blk), turnover, Free Goals Attempted
(FGA), Free Throws Made (FGM), Free Throws Attempted
(FTA), Free Throws Made (FTM). The skyline result returns
252 players among 21 961. After assigning weights for each
dimension using AHP method, the Skyline players are ranked
using PROMETHEE II.
The ranking result depends on the weights assigned and the
preferences (Preference and Indifference threshold) expressed
by the user on the 10 dimensions. Comparing the ranking
results of our approach with other works of [16] and [25], as
shows in Table 9, we can see that the most players reported by
this works (G. Mcginnis 1974, M. Jordan 1988, M.
Jordan1987, M. Jordan1989) are returned by our approach.
8. Conclusion
In this paper, the problem of Skyline services ranking is
handled, taking into consideration the preferences and the
subjectivity of the user. Our hybrid proposed approach, called
SkyAP-S3, combines three methods of Multi-Criteria Decision
Making: the Skyline method is used to reduce the number of
candidate services to be considered in the decision space, the
AHP method for weighting selection criteria and the
PROMETHEE method for the ranking of Skyline services,
exploiting outranking relationships and preferences functions
(preference and indifference thresholds). This approach allows
giving the user the best Skylines services, with a better
compromise between different selection criteria. We
developed our ranking algorithm based on PROMETHEE
method. The experimental evaluation illustrates that our
approach can capture the user preferences and retrieves the
best Skyline services. As for a future work, we plan to extend
this work to QoS-based Web service composition; another line
of future research is to perform large-scale experiments with a
large number of Web services.
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