Composition of mismatched web services in distributed service oriented design activities

The composition of heterogeneous web services is a key aspect of usability and applicability of web services in different application domains such as business applications, healthcare, and e-government. Current research has developed different techniques to achieve effective composition of web services. Unfortunately, they fail to ensure a perfect match in the composition of web services. This paper investigates the composition of web services and how to effectively employ web services in the design activities. Objectives of this work are twofold. Firstly, to proposes a new technique that assists users to resolve a mismatch in the composition of web services. Secondly, to implement, validate, and evaluate the proposed technique within the context of design activities thus establishing a workbench called Service Oriented Design Activities (SODA). SODA provides a web-based design infrastructure that allows loosely coupled design teams to collaborate on different services, and to enable them to resolve any mismatch between heterogeneous design services. Other anticipated advantages include interoperability of design services, improving designer capabilities, and the reduction of product development time. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.