An abstract model of service discovery and binding

José Luiz Fiadeiro (1) , Antónia Lopes (2) , Laura Bocchi (1)

1 Department of Computer Science
2 Department of Informatics [Lisbon]

We propose a formal operational semantics for service discovery and binding. This semantics is based on a graph-based representation of the configuration of global computers typed by business activities. Business activities execute distributed workflows that can trigger, at run time, the discovery, ranking and selection of services to which they bind, thus reconfiguring the workflows that they execute. Discovery, ranking and selection are based on compliance with required business and interaction protocols and optimisation of quality-of-service constraints. Binding and reconfiguration are captured as algebraic operations on configuration graphs. We also discuss the methodological implications that this model framework has on software engineering using a typical travel-booking scenario. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first to provide a clear separation between service computation and discovery/instantiation/binding, and to offer a formal framework that is independent of the SOA middleware components that act as service registries or brokers, and the protocols through which bindings and invocations are performed.

Mots clés: Business-reflective run-time configurations; Dynamic reconfiguration; Quality-of-service constraints; Service binding; Discovery; Ranking; Service level agreement; Service-oriented computing

José Luiz Fiadeiro, Antónia Lopes, Laura Bocchi. An abstract model of service discovery and binding. Formal Aspects of Computing, 2010, 23 (4), pp.433-463. ⟨10.1007/s00165-010-0166-z⟩. ⟨hal-00636204⟩