SOCAM: a service-oriented computing architecture modeling method

Software architecture models are considered first-class artifacts in current software engineering best practices. Thus, usable and well-understood modeling methods are required for software architects. For this aim, several specific software architecture modeling methods as well as generic design methods included in software development methodologies are available. However, we believe, there is the lack of more specific guidance in current software architecture methods. One of the principal causes of such a lack of specific guidance is the general-purpose nature of these methods. Therefore, further efforts are required to define domain-specific software architecture methods. In this paper, we present SOCAM, a software architecture modeling method for Web Service-Oriented Systems. We illustrate the use of SOCAM with a customization of the well-known SOA test application case: the Sun Adventure Builder system. A comparative analysis of SOCAM with other methods reveals a number of benefits of our method over the other approaches. Also, a survey research method evaluation confirms some of these benefits such as the fact that SOCAM is perceived as more useful than certain general-purpose methods.