Feature Model as a Design-pattern-based Service Contract for the Service Provider in the Service Oriented Architecture

Abstract

In Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), many feature modeling approaches of Service Provider (SP) have been proposed, notably: the two widely used service contracts WSDL and WADL. By studying these approaches, we found that they suffer from several problems, notably: they only work for specific communication technologies (e.g., SOAP or REST) and they do not explicitly model SOA Design Pattern (DPs) and their compounds. One major benefit of using a DP or a compound DP is to develop SPs with proven design solutions. In this paper, in order to overcome these problems, we propose an approach that integrates Software Product Line (SPL) techniques in the development of SPs. Essentially, we propose a Feature Model (FM), which is the defacto standard for variability modeling in SPL, for the feature modeling of SP. This FM, named F M SP , is designed as a DP-based service contract for SP that models different features including 16 SOA DPs and their compounds that are related to the service messaging category. Its objective to enable developers to generate fully functional, valid, DP-based and highly customized SPs for different communication technologies. Through a practical case study and a developed tool, we validate our F M SP and demonstrate that it reduces the development costs (effort and time) of SPs.