QoSOnt: a QoS Ontology for Service-Centric Systems

TLDR

The authors develop QoSOnt, a generic ontology for quality‑of‑service concepts aimed at fostering consensus and enabling reuse across multiple domains. QoSOnt is constructed with a focus on service‑centric systems, detailing its structure and illustrating its use through the ongoing SQRM application. The SQRM prototype demonstrates the ontology’s benefits, notably standardising QoS specifications and enhancing machine‑readable understanding of QoS requirements.

Abstract

This paper reports on the development of QoSOnt: an ontology for quality of service (QoS). Particular focus is given to its application in the field of service-centric systems. QoSOnt is being developed to promote consensus on QoS concepts, by providing a model which is generic enough for reuse across multiple domains. As well as the structure of the ontology itself an example application currently in development - SQRM (service QoS requirements matcher) - is discussed. This application is used to highlight some of the advantages of the ontology including standardisation and the level of machine understanding of QoS specifications which can be achieved.