Transformation of Intermediate Nonfunctional Properties for Automatic Service Composition

Service-oriented computing provides an evolving paradigm for flexible and scalable applications of open systems. Web services and their automatic composition are in the mainstream of the evolution of new value-added services. Functional and non-functional aspects are considered together for automatic service composition (ASC). After locating suitable functionality for the required composition, non-functionalities are considered to select the final set of services. Non-functional properties (NFPs) obtained from users or identified during planning or discovery usually have abstract concepts that cannot be identified at the selection stage. In this paper, we propose a transformation technique for automatic composition that identifies binding information in the selection stage from intermediate abstract NFPs. The classification of abstraction level in NFPs, a model to define abstract and concrete NFPs, and an algorithm for transformation from intermediate to concrete level are presented. The identification of the binding information is based on domain ontologies for services. Evaluation in our algorithm according to characteristics of NFPs is shown. Our work will contribute to modeling and identification of NFPs for ASC.