A Unified Description Language for the Internet of Services

Abstract

In order to enable communication and trade between providers and consumers of services, the Internet of Services requires a standard that creates a "commercial envelope" around a service. Therefore, research in Texo centered around a description language for arbitrary services, such as human or platform services. Consequently, the Unified Service Description Language (USDL) is a major outcome of Texo and allows a normative and balanced unification of service information. The unified description established by USDL is machine-processable, and considers technical and business aspects of a service as well as functional and non-functional attributes. USDL has been built according to the design science approach, whose major research questions are answered in this article. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.