A metadata service for service oriented architectures

Service oriented architectures provide a modern paradigm for web services allowing seamless interoperation among network applications and supporting a flexible approach to building large complex information systems. A number of industrial standards have emerged to exploit this paradigm with the development o f the J2E E and .N E T infrastructure platforms, communication protocol SOAP, d e scription language WSDL and orchestration languages BPEL, XLANG and WSCI. At the same time the Semantic Web enables automated use of ontologies to describe web services in a machine interpretable language. To enable process composition and large scale resource integration over heterogeneous sources a new research in itiative is needed. Current initiatives have identified the role of Peer-to-Peer networks and Service Oriented Architectures to enable large scale resource communication an d integration. However this approach neglects to identify or utilise the role of Semantic Web technologies to promote greater automation and reliability using service semantics, thus a new framework is required adopting Peer-to-Peer networks, Service Oriented Architectures and Semantic Web technologies. In this context, this thesis presents a management an d storage framework for a distributed service repository over a super peer network to facilitate process composition

A Framework for Automated and Composable Testing of Component-based Services

International audienceThe vision of service-oriented computing has been largely developed on the fundamental principle of building systems by composing and orchestrating services in their flow of control. Therefore, software development is nowadays notably influenced by service-oriented architectures (SOAs), in which the quality of software systems is determined by the quality of the involved services and their actual composition. Despite the efforts on improving their individual quality, adding or replacing services in an evolving system can introduce failures, thus compromising the satisfaction of the system's functional and extra-functional requirements, which is translated as a lack of trust in the SOA vision. Thus, a key issue for the industrial adoption of SOA is providing service providers, integrators, and consumers the means to build confidence that services behave according to the contracted quality conditions. In this paper we present a first version of PASCANI, a framework for specifying and executing automated, composable, and traceable test specifications for service-oriented systems. From a test specification, PASCANI generates a configuration of testing services compliant with the Service Component Architecture (SCA) specification, that can be composed to integrate different testing strategies, being their tests traceable in an automated way. Our evaluation results show the applicability of the framework and a substantial gain in the tester's effort for developing tests

Semantic model-driven development of service-centric software architectures

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural paradigm that has received much attention. The prevalent focus on platforms such as Web services, however, needs to be complemented by appropriate software engineering methods. We propose the model-driven development of service-centric software systems. We present in particular an investigation into the role of enriched semantic modelling for a modeldriven development framework for service-centric software systems. Ontologies as the foundations of semantic modelling and its enhancement through architectural pattern modelling are at the core of the proposed approach. We introduce foundations and discuss the benefits and also the challenges in this context

Semantic model-driven development of web service architectures.

Building service-based architectures has become a major area of interest since the advent of Web services. Modelling these architectures is a central activity. Model-driven development is a recent approach to developing software systems based on the idea of making models the central artefacts for design representation, analysis, and code generation. We propose an ontology-based engineering methodology for semantic model-driven composition and transformation of Web service architectures. Ontology technology as a logic-based knowledge representation and reasoning framework can provide answers to the needs of sharable and reusable semantic models and descriptions needed for service engineering. Based on modelling, composition and code generation techniques for service architectures, our approach provides a methodological framework for ontology-based semantic service architecture

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study

Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper, we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views, approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered, guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table