Service interface synthesis in business networks

Abstract

We propose a framework to allow the analysis of service interfaces, useful for interoperability in heterogeneous settings such as business networks. The framework supports analysis of large and overloaded operational signatures to derive focal artefacts, namely the underlying business objects of services. A more simplified and comprehensive service interface layer is created based on these, and rendered into semantically normalised interfaces, given an ontology accrued through the framework from service analysis history. This opens up the prospect of supporting capability comparisons across services, and run-time request backtracking and adjustment, as consumers discover new features of a service’s operations through corresponding features of similar services. This paper provides a first exposition of the service interface synthesis framework, describing algorithms for business object derivation and service behavioural interface generation. A prototypical implementation and analysis of web services drawn from commercial logistic systems are used to validate the algorithms and identify open challenges and future research directions.