0 Chapter XXII Web Services Management: Toward Effcient Web Data Access Farhana H. Zulkernine Queen’s University, Canada Pat Martin Queen’s University, Canada Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. absTracT The widespread use and expansion of the World Wide Web has revolutionized the discovery, ac- cess, and retrieval of information. The Internet has become the doorway to a vast information base and has leveraged the access to information through standard protocols and technologies like HyperText Markup Language (HTML), active server pages (ASP), Java server pages (JSP), Web databases, and Web services. Web services are software applications that are accessible over the World Wide Web through standard communica- tion protocols. A Web service typically has a Web- accessible interface for its clients at the front end, and is connected to a database system and other related application suites at the back end. Thus, Web services can render effcient Web access to an information base in a secured and selective manner. The true success of this technology, however, largely depends on the effcient man- agement of the various components forming the backbone of a Web service system. This chapter presents an overview and the state of the art of various management approaches, models, and architectures for Web services systems toward achieving quality of service (QoS) in Web data access. Finally, it discusses the importance of autonomic or self-managing systems and provides an outline of our current research on autonomic Web services. InTroDucTIon The Internet and the World Wide Web have gradu- ally become the main source of information with regard to extent, versatility, and accessibility. Products and services are being traded over the Internet more than ever before. Due to the cost of building and maintaining functionality in a service, outsourcing and acquiring services from