Unraveiling Crosscutting Concerns in Web Services Middleware

Abstract

Service-oriented architectures are designed to support loose coupling between interacting software applications. Using Web services technology, SOAs support the creation of distributed applications in a heterogeneous environment. The ultimate SOA goal is to let developers write applications that are independent of the specific services they use - applications that select and integrate services on the fly. Currently, service developers use the Web services description language to describe their services and publish the documentation in a registry. Service clients can browse these registries to find a service that matches their need and to determine how to communicate with it. By analyzing the WSDL documentation, the client can integrate the service and invoke it through XML-based SOAP communication. The Web Services Management Layer provides adaptive middleware that uses dynamic AOP to solve several crosscutting concerns in service-oriented architectures.