Dynamic binding and fail-over of comparable Web service instances in a services grid

Abstract

A computing services grid. The grid can include a service desk coupled to one or more computing service instances. Each service instance can conform to an interface which is common to all service instances in the grid. A routing component can be disposed in the grid. Specifically, the routing component can route individual service requests to individual ones of the service instances. An instance selection service is used to satisfy QoS characteristics associated with the requester of the service. The grid further can include a service instance monitoring component. The monitoring component can monitor the performance of individual service instances charged with processing individual service requests. Fail-over logic can be configured to re-route service requests from selected service instances to others of the service instances where the monitoring component detects a fail-over condition in the selected service instances. In that regard, fail-over conditions can include error conditions and a performance deficiency conditions in which the performance of a selected service instance lags behind guaranteed levels of performance.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.