This project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) are currently a promising paradigm of the software development. Cooperating services are the key to the integration of heterogeneous distributed systems. To this end it is a fundamental problem to decide whether a service can be exchanged by another service which is more suitable for some purposes.
In this project this question is studied at the level of service models first. We will use open Workflow Nets (oWFN), a special class of Petri nets, as a service model. In particular, these models consider the novel concept of the operating guideline (OG) of a service S. The OG of S is an abstract representation of all services that can properly interact with S. For the results of the modelling level algorithms are developed and prototypically implemented.
Three aims should be achieved in this project:
Characterizing properties of exchangeability:
We study which properties P should be considered when a service S is exchanged by a service S’. Properties can be either gained or preserved by the exchange. The resulting properties will be classified. As a result, different definitions of exchangeability (with respect to P) can be identified.
Developing algorithms to decide the different kinds of exchangeability:
We enhance the model of oWFNs and the theory of operating guidelines such that every exchangeability definition is adequately reflected in the model. Next, for every exchangeability definition we develop an algorithm to decide whether services S can be exchanged (with respect to the respective exchangeability definition) by S’.
Developing efficient algorithms:
We implement the algorithms developed so far. However, these algorithms are often computationally expensive. Thus, we study the existence of more efficient algorithms. For that purpose we find sufficient criteria to decide exchangeability of (S, S’) on the structure of their oWFNs. We will work on patterns and antipatterns on the one hand and transformation rules on the other hand.
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