UML-based service discovery framework

The development of service centric systems, i.e software systems constructed as compositions of autonomous services, has been recognised as an important approach for software system development. Recently, there has been a proliferation of systems which are developed, deployed, and consumed in this way. An important aspect of service centric systems is the identification of web services that can be combined to fulfill the functionality and quality criteria of the system being developed. In this paper we present the results of the evaluation of a UML-based framework for service discovery. This framework supports the identification of services that can provide the functionality and satisfy properties and constraints of service centric systems as specified during their design. Our approach adopts an iterative design process allowing for the (re-) formulation of the design models of service centric systems based on the discovered services. A prototype tool has been developed and includes (a) a UML integration module, which derives queries from behavioural and structural UML design models and integrates the results of the queries; and (b) a query execution engine, which performs queries against service registries based on similarity analysis.