Investigating web services on the world wide web

Searching for Web service access points is no longer attached to service registries as Web search engines have become a new major source for discovering Web services. In this work, we conduct a thorough analytical investigation on the plurality of Web service interfaces that exist on the Web today. Using our Web Service Crawler Engine (WSCE), we collect metadata service information on retrieved interfaces through accessible UBRs, service portals and search engines. We use this data to determine Web service statistics and distribution based on object sizes, types of technologies employed, and the number of functioning services. This statistical data can be used to help determine the current status of Web services. We determine an intriguing result that 63% of the available Web services on the Web are considered to be active. We further use our findings to provide insights on improving the service retrieval process.