Design of a Domain-Specific Language Based on a Technology-Independent Web Service Framework

Nowadays web services gain more and more importance in allowing a standardized access to remote information without being tied to a specific form of presentation. The majority of such data interfaces is either based on the architectural REST style following World Wide Web specifications or the more protocol-oriented SOAP, which allows the definition of XML transfer structures. In this paper we introduce an extensible framework for the abstraction of technological differences between service technologies like REST and SOAP. It provides the basis for the design of a domain-specific language (DSL), which allows the technology-independent declaration of web services. A code generator derived from the DSL grammar translates the service declarations into corresponding framework elements and creates stub methods for the implementation of the services' business logic.