A model driven method for promoting reuse in SOA-solutions by managing variability

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model-driven approach using MDA to manage Web service variability, aiming to enhance reuse in SOA by automating service realization across platforms with an extended WSDL meta-model.

Contribution

It proposes VarWSDL, an extension of WSDL, and a model-driven method to manage variability, improving reuse and platform independence in SOA services.

Findings

The method automates Web service realization across platforms.

VarWSDL effectively incorporates variability notions into Web services.

The approach promotes reuse by managing service variability systematically.

Abstract

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural paradigm that describes how organizations, people and systems provide and use services to achieve their goals and enhance productivity. Moreover, with the evolution of SOA, the focus in software development has shifted from applications to reusable services. However, the reuse in SOA is more seen as composition of fine-grained services rather than reuse of services implementation to build new services with additional functionalities. This can have some performance repercussions. Hence, in this paper, we propose a model driven method for managing Web service's variability based on MDA (Model Driven Architecture) as a way to promote reuse. In fact, through MDA, the method enables the automation of Web service's realization regardless of the supported platforms. Moreover, we present a WSDL extension meta-model called VarWSDL which enhances Web services by variability notions.