Client side estimation of a remote service execution

Many use cases, concerning the monitoring and controlling of real physical instruments, demand deep interaction between users and services that virtualize the access to such instruments/devices. In addition, in order to realize high interoperable solutions, SOA-based Web/Grid Service technologies must be adopted. When the access to one of these services is performed via internet using a Web Service call, the remote invocation time becomes critical in order to understand if an instrument can be controlled properly, or the delays introduced by the wire and the serialization/deserialization process are unacceptable. This paper thus presents methodologies and algorithms, based on a 2k factorial analysis and a Gaussian Majorization of previous service execution times, which enables the estimation of a generic remote method execution time. Furthermore it suggests three different software architectures, where the developed algorithms and methodology could be integrated in order to automatically profile the end-to-end service. It is worth noting that our proposals are validated using suitable benchmarks and extensive tests coming out from a real (not simulated) environment. In addition, the outcome of this paper have been used in the realization of a service for remote control, monitor, and manage of a pool of instruments/devices.