Integrated asset analysis framework for model-driven development of SOA based solutions

Abstract

In SOA based application development, a plethora of architectural constructs such as processes, services and components need to be built. This requires modeling of the application at different levels of abstraction such as business architecture, application architecture and runtime architecture. Model driven development (MDD) is hence considered the primary development approach for building SOA applications. Existing MDD methodologies and tools only support searching and discovery of assets, and do not support their analysis in order to determine their suitability for reuse. This often results in selecting potentially incompatible assets among the various layers of the solution, resulting in redundant asset customizations. In order to address this issue, we present a novel framework and methodology that enables the integrated analysis of existing assets associated across multiple abstractions of the solution from different asset repositories. This approach helps in creating a consistent asset reusability view across all the phases of SOA development with multiple reusable asset options to compare and select. We present an experimental evaluation of our methodology on real-life SOA assets distributed across multiple repositories and illustrate how our integrated mechanism can help consistently maximize reuse of assets in SOA development. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.