Methods, apparatuses and systems facilitating classification of web services network traffic

A method facilitating the classification of web services network traffic, comprising:

• discovering, at a network device, one or more web services based on web service invocation messages received at the network device;
• maintaining a tracking list data structure comprising, for each discovered web service, a web service identifier corresponding to the web service and a transaction count associated with the web service;
• incrementing, responsive to a message indicating a new web services network transaction, a transaction count associated with the web service identified in the message;
• presenting, in a user interface, one or more of the web service identifiers and corresponding transaction counts, wherein the user interface allows for selection of one or more web service identifiers;
• and
• configuring, responsive to selection of a web service identifier, a network traffic classification mechanism to identify the web service corresponding to the web service identifier, comprising:
• creating a traffic class identifier corresponding to the web service;
• creating at least one matching rule defining an attribute of the web service;
• associating the at least one matching rule to the traffic class identifier in the traffic classification mechanism;
• receiving an interface definition document defining the attributes of the web service;
• processing the interface definition document to identify at least one traffic class corresponding to the web service, comprising:
• defining a first traffic class corresponding to the web service;
• defining at least a second traffic class corresponding to an operation of the web service;
• and
• associating at least the second traffic class as a child traffic class of the first traffic class in a hierarchical traffic classification scheme;
• and
• configuring a network traffic classification mechanism to identify the at least one traffic class based on at least one attribute obtained from the web services definition document.

An apparatus facilitating the classification of web services network traffic, comprising

• a packet processor operative to
• detect data flows in network traffic traversing a network;
• a traffic classification database operative to
• match data flows against a plurality of traffic classes, wherein each traffic class in the plurality of traffic classes is defined by at least one matching attribute;
• a web services classification module operative to
• identify web services in the data flows traversing the network;
• discover one or more web services based on web service invocation messages received at the packet processor;
• maintain a tracking data structure comprising, for each discovered web service, a web service identifier corresponding to the web service and a count of the number of web services network transactions detected in the data flows traversing the network;
• increment, responsive to a message indicating a new web services network transaction, a transaction count associated with the web service identified in the message;
• present, in a user interface, one or more of the web service identifiers and corresponding transaction counts, wherein the user interface allows for selection of one or more web service identifiers;
• and
• create, responsive to selection of a web service identifier, a traffic class in the traffic classification database for a selected web service in the data structure, wherein at least one matching rule associated with the traffic class includes the web service identifier associated with the web service;
• receive an interface definition document defining the attributes of the selected web service and an operation of the selected web service;
• process the interface definition document to identify at least a first traffic class corresponding to the selected web service and at least a second traffic class corresponding to the operation of the selected web service;
• and
• create the at least the first traffic class and the second traffic class in the traffic classification database, wherein at least one matching rule associated with the corresponding first traffic class and second traffic class is based on one or more of the attributes in the interface definition document.