An MDD annotation methodology for Semantic Enhanced Service Oriented Architectures

Service Oriented Architectures are increasingly being used to achieve interoperability among heterogeneous systems. SOAs help developers to integrate different architectures in order to reuse legacy systems and extend software boundaries. Semantics could improve SOA features adding a common understanding of the resources shared among different systems. Model Driven Development could be useful to produce a scalable and neutral methodology for guiding developers through software development and integration processes, employing reusable approaches and platform independency. In this context it is necessary to understand how we can use the MDD approach to enhance Service Oriented Architecture with semantics. This paper proposes to use a common visualization of ontologies and services, based on the industry-standard UML modelling language and its profiling system, to solve the resources annotation process in a SOA context. A first analysis of the main UML approaches for modelling ontologies is followed by the explanation of a general method for describing service interfaces and the resources exchanged among them.