A Comprehensive Approach to Service Adaptation

Abstract

In service-oriented computing (SOC), services are designed not just for a dedicated client, but for a family of potential clients who typically discover and compose services dynamically. For services to be generic and hence serviceable to different users in a given domain, the service variability among different clients must be analyzed and modeled into service components. Furthermore, effective methods for dynamically adapting services for different invocations and contexts must be provided. Nonetheless, the research on service variability management and service adaptation is still in early stage. In this paper, we survey representative software adaptation methods, and propose four types of service variability. Then we present practical adaptation methods for resolving the four types of service variability. The proposed adaption methods presented in this paper can be implemented in a typical Web service environment with WSDL, UDDI and BPEL.