Automatic service composition based on behavioral descriptions

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of automatic service composition. We first develop a framework in which the exported behavior of a service is described in terms of a so-called execution tree, that is an abstraction for its possible executions. We then study the case in which such exported behavior (i.e. the execution tree of the service) can be represented by a finite state machine (i.e. finite state transition system). In this specific setting, we devise sound, complete and terminating techniques both to check for the existence of a composition, and to return a composition, if one exists. We also analyze the computational complexity of the proposed algorithms. Finally, we present an open source prototype tool, called ESC (E-Service Composer), that implements our composition technique. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first attempt to provide a provably correct technique for the automatic synthesis of service composition, in a framework where the behavior of services is explicitly specified. © World Scientific Publishing Company.