A Framework for Dynamic Web Services Composition

Dynamic composition of web services is a promising approach and at the same time a challenging research area for the dissemination of service-oriented applications. It is widely recognised that service semantics is a key element for the dynamic composition of Web services, since it allows the unambiguous descriptions of a service’s capabilities and parameters. This paper introduces a framework for performing dynamic service composition by exploiting the semantic matchmaking between service parameters (i.e., outputs and inputs) to enable their interconnection and interaction. The basic assumption of the framework is that matchmaking enables finding semantic compatibilities among independently defined service descriptions. We also developed a composition algorithm that follows a semantic graph-based approach, in which a graph represents service compositions and the nodes of this graph represent semantic connections between services. Moreover, functional and non-functional properties of services are considered, to enable the computation of relevant and most suitable service compositions for some service request. The suggested end-to-end functional level service composition framework is illustrated with a realistic application scenario from the IST SPICE project.