Automatic location of services

Abstract

The automatic location of services that fulfill a given need is a key step towards dynamic and scalable integration. In this paper we present a model for the automatic location of services that considers the static and dynamic aspects of service descriptions and identifies what notions and techniques are useful for the matching of both. Our model presents three important features: ease of use for the requester, efficient pre-filtering of relevant services, and accurate contracting of services that fulfill a given requester goal. We further elaborate previous work and results on Web service discovery by analyzing what steps and what kinds of descriptions are necessary for efficient and usable automatic service location. Furthermore, we analyze intuitive and formal notions of match that are of interest for locating services that fulfill a given goal. Although having a formal underpinning, the proposed model does not impose any restrictions on how to implement it for specific applications, but proposes some useful formalisms for providing such implementations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.