A survey on adaptation decision-making of business processes and the affected web service compositions

When changes occur in the business processes and their implemented Web service compositions, the Web service compositions are required to be adapted at run-time to accommodate the changes. To guide development of new decision-making algorithms and corresponding frameworks for management of Web service compositions, there is a need to examine and classify problems involved in adaptation. In this paper, we studied the existing work in the area of adaptation of Web service compositions and performed a classification of problems in adaptation decision-making for business processes and their affected Web service compositions. We classify the adaptation decision-making problems using the 5WH question and propose six dimensions of classifications of problems in adaptation decision-making: causes of the adaptation (corresponding to When), goals of the adaptation (corresponding to Why), scope of the adaptation (corresponding to Where), adaptation decision-maker (corresponding to Who), planning of the adaptation (corresponding to How), and changes made by adaptation (corresponding to What). The classification identifies aspects that are not studied sufficiently in the past works and helps us explore the requirements for adaptation decision-making software. The study observes that autonomic business-driven decision-making is a promising research area, with many unsolved challenges and there is a gap on business-driven decision-making for concurrent adaptation of multiple Web service composition instances.