Usage Profiles: A Process for Discovering Usage Patterns over Web Services and its Application to Service Evolution

As part of web services life-cycle, providers frequently face decision about changes without a clear understanding of the impact on their clients. The identification of clients’ consumption patterns constitutes invaluable information to support more effective decisions. In this paper, the authors present a framework that supports the discovery of service usage profiles, to bring awareness on the distinct groups of consumers, and their usage characterization in terms of detailed service functionality. The framework encompasses a process to cluster client applications and derive usage profiles. The paper also discusses how usage profiles can help to access the real impact on clients of incompatible changes performed over service descriptions, and presents a usage-oriented compatibility assessment algorithm. Experimental results are presented for both the profile discovery process and profile-based compatibility analysis. Usage Profiles: A Process for Discovering Usage Patterns over Web Services and its Application to Service Evolution