OptimAX: Optimizing Distributed ActiveXML Applications

The Web has become a platform of choice for the deployment of complex applications involving several business partners. Typically, such applications interoperate by means of Web services, exchanging XML information. We present OptimAX, an optimization Web service that applies at the static level (prior to enacting an application) in order to rewrite it into one whose execution will be more performant. OptimAX builds on the ActiveXML (AXML) data-centric Web service composition language, and demonstrates how database-style techniques can be efficiently integrated in a loosely-coupled, distributed application based on Web services. OptimAX has been fully implemented and we describe its experimental performance.