Dynamic web service composition based on operation flow semantics

Dynamic Web service composition is a process of building a new value added service using available services to satisfy the requester's complex functional need. In this paper we propose the broker based architecture for dynamic Web service composition. The broker plays a major role in effective discovery of Web services for the individual tasks of the complex need. The broker maintains flow knowledge for the composition, which stores the dependency among the Web service operations and their input, output parameters. For the given complex requirements, the broker first generates the abstract composition plan and discovers the possible candidate Web services to each task of the abstract composition plan. The abstract composition plan is further refined based on the Message Exchange Patterns (MEP), Input/Output parameters, QoS of the candidate Web services to produce refined composition plan involving Web service operations with execution flow. The refined composition plan is then transferred to generic service provider to generate executable composition plan based on the requester's input or output requirements and preferences. The proposed effective Web service discovery and composition mechanism is defined based on the concept of functional semantics and flow semantics of Web service operations. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.