Adapter Patterns for Resolving Mismatches in Service Discovery

The theme of service-oriented computing is largely centered on reusing already existing services. Service providers model common features among potential applications, realize them as reusable services, and publish in service registries. Service consumers discover appropriate services and subscribe them. In developing application with reusable services, there exists a key technical problem, called mismatch problem which is a gap between the required feature and the feature of a candidate service. The adaptability of available services is a key factor in determining the reusability of the published services by resolving mismatches. Hence, we claim that the design of adapters should be an essential activity for developing service-oriented applications. In this paper, we identify recurring mismatch types in discovering services. And, we present four adapter patterns handling the mismatch problems. By using the adapter patterns, service providers could develop highly reusable services, and service consumers will be able to reuse more services available.