The Web Service Discovery Architecture

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the Web Service Discovery Architecture (WSDA). At runtime, Grid applications can use this architecture to discover and adapt to remote services. WSDA promotes an interoperable web service discovery layer by defining appropriate services, interfaces, operations and protocol bindings, based on industry standards. It is unified because it subsumes an array of disparate concepts, interfaces and protocols under a single semi-transparent umbrella. It is modular because it defines a small set of orthogonal multipurpose communication primitives (building blocks) for discovery. These primitives cover service identification, service description retrieval, data publication as well as minimal and powerful query support. The architecture is open and flexible because each primitive can be used, implemented, customized and extended in many ways. It is powerful because the individual primitives can be combined and plugged together by specific clients and services to yield a wide range of behaviors and emerging synergies.