Transitional resource meta-model: Generating restful service to implement complex activity

Abstract

Service-oriented architecture is widely adopted in the development of web information system. The construction of web service, however, is challenging, since it should not only meet up with intensively changing requirements but also be capable of handling complex activity where multiple entities are involved. The traditional RESTful service is restricted in implementing complex activity since it is single-resource-oriented. Using SOAP services to implement is possible but time-consuming, thus not adaptive to the sensitive requirements change. Therefore, a Transitional Resource Meta-model (TRM) is proposed in this paper to generate the RESTful service with the capability of executing complex activity in a flexible and fast way. Our proposed model functions on describing the complex activity by using a state transfer sequence for multiple entities as well as generating the service interface and controlling the execution of the service. A case study is given to represent the construction process and generation results of TRM, and a comparison with REST-based architecture and SOAP-based architecture is provided at the end to show the advantages of TRM approach. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.