A Multifaceted Web Services Architecture: Toward a Meta-Service Framework for Service and Composition Development

Abstract

SOA is an architectural style that promotes solutions, especially service-based applications to support flexible business processes, where services are loosely coupled and interoperable components. Many methods have been developed in industry and academia. Yet the comparison frameworks show that these methods neither comply with SOA nor service orientation principles. Therefore, we need theoretical frameworks to guide developing methods and processes. A meta-service framework, representing the relationships between all the elements of a multifaceted services stack from different perspectives, would guide a development process. We propose an architecture made up of four interrelated facets that are: (F1) service contract description, (F2) modernization of legacy applications and databases, (F3) deployment and management, and (F4) service based applications by composition, including orchestration and choreography. Each facet is considered as a level of abstraction that is concreted into a phase of the process.