Integration of Heterogeneous Web Service Components

Integrated value-added Web services can be developed by combining existing Web service components that are often heterogeneous in many aspects, such as having different interfaces and data encoding schemes. Web service integration also has to face the challenge that Web service components evolve frequently in response to business needs. This paper describes a three-layer-structured model for building reliable Web service compositions. The proposed layered structure can significantly reduce the complexity of integrating heterogeneous service partners. Furthermore, the evolution of a Web service component can be supported by making a rather minor amendment to the mapping file corresponding to this particular component.