Using Domain Ontology for Service Replacement Tasks: An Empirical Evaluation

Organizations increasingly use information technology (IT) to integrate their business processes into the processes of their suppliers, customers, and other third parties. An important IT approach is the realization of composite services that organize elementary software services under a shared workflow. Any failure of an elementary service can severely impact the process. The failed service must be examined and, ultimately, be replaced. In solving that task, the process designer must consider the quality-of-service (QoS) of the process. However, the heterogeneity of service descriptions puts the burden on the designer. This research empirically evaluates how designers can use a domain ontology, namely the QoS aggregation ontology, for the replacement task. We report on a laboratory experiment to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of using the ontology vis-à-vis an aggregation table. The results provide evidence for the usefulness of the domain ontology that specifies problem-solving knowledge required for a time-critical task

A Method for Bridging the Gap between Business Process Models and Services

Many proposals in the literature are consensual in making business processes as the starting point of a Service-Oriented system development lifecycle. However, there is no systematic approach that can be easily applied in practice. We argue that an effective SOA approach requires an integrated view of organizational business processes, where services are explicitly related to business models components. Accomplishing these requirements is vital for bridging the gap between business needs and their supporting services. This work proposes a top-down method for service identification and analysis from business process models. Each step of the method implements a set of heuristics that are also specified. The method is presented in detail, and constitutes a systematic guide for service identification and analysis. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the use of the method in practice