Feature Model based on Design Pattern for the Service Provider in the Service Oriented Architecture

In Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), service contracts are widely used for designing and developing the features (e.g., services and capabilities) of Service Providers (SPs). Two of the most widely used traditional service contracts in SOA are: WSDL and WADL. We identify that these service contracts suffer from several problems, like: they only work for SOAP and REST communication technologies and do not rely on modeling SOA Design Patterns (DPs). One benefit of using SOA DPs is that they permit developing proven SPs for different platforms. In order to overcome these problems, we introduce a new DP-based Feature Model (FM), named FMSP, as a service contract that models the variability of SP features including 15 SOA DPs (e.g., Event-driven messaging DP) and their corresponding constraints. This permits to easily identify and develop valid SOA compound DPs. We demonstrate, through a practical case study and a developed tool, that our FMSP allows to automatically generate fully functional, valid, highly customized and DP-based SPs. We also show that our FMSP reduces the required effort and time to develop SPs.