Creating and utilizing section-level Web service tags in service replaceability

Abstract

Web Services are used as reusable components in different types of applications. The correct discovery, combination and sequential use are main problems in Web service-based applications. In order to solve these issues, service matchmaking, classification and clustering techniques are usually proposed including Web service tagging. However, more specific problems of service matchmaking, such as service replaceability, require annotation techniques at finer levels of granularity in order to draw more detailed conclusions on the service use. In this work, a technique for service annotation on Web service description sections is proposed that focuses on port type, operation and message sections. Different classification algorithms are employed in section-level tagging. The use of this technique in the service matchmaking problem of service replaceability is demonstrated. Both techniques have been evaluated on datasets of real Web Services demonstrating the usefulness of the automated process for section-level service annotation and of the suggested matches for service replaceability. © 2017, Springer-Verlag London.