An MDA-based Approach for Facilitating Adoption of Semantic Web Service Technology

1. An MDA-based Approach for Facilitating Adoption of Semantic Web Service Technology Dr. Gerald Gannod – gannod@asu.edu Division of Computing Studies and Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering Arizona State University John T.E. Timm – area51@asu.edu Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering Arizona State University EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

2. Introduction • Semantic Web Services • Semantic Web Service = Web Service + Semantic Description (service ontology) • Enables better search, discovery, selection, composition and integration • Steep learning curve and lack of tool support provide a barrier for widespread adoption EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

3. Introduction • Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) • Centered on development of models rather than program code • Primary goals include portability, interoperability and reusability • Focuses on using standard widely-adopted languages (e.g. UML) EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

4. Introduction • Software Product Lines • Share common, managed set of features • Strategic reuse of core assets including: source code, requirement specifications, software architectures, design models, test cases and processes • Benefits include: large-scale productivity gains, shorter time-to-market, higher product quality, increased customer satisfaction, decreased development and maintenance costs EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

5. Introduction • Previous Work • Dynamic service integration using Jini • Software specification using ACME • Automatic generation of glue code • Code generation using XMI and XSLT • Current Work • Uses similar approach • Web services are assets within a product-line architecture • Use MDA to enable OWL-S generation and product development EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

6. Contributions • Primary • Development of an approach which facilitates the adoption of semantic web service technologies using MDA techniques • Secondary • Development of tools that generate semantic descriptions for web services • Development of a framework for web service composition via the use of product line approaches EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

7. Approach • Philosophy • Development of semantic descriptions for web services should not require knowledge beyond that of UML • Requirements • Use both standard web services and semantic web services • Facilitate the composition of services to form applications EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

8. Approach • Process • Product-line strategy to facilitate service composition • Characterize a family of products within a product-line • Variability in products must be configured to meet specific requirements EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

9. Approach EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

10. Approach • E-Learning Domain Example • Domain Expert and Software architect create a service ontology • Architect creates a product-line architecture for the E-Learning domain • Domain expert identifies potential services to populate the product-line architecture EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

11. Approach • E-Learning Domain Example • Software developers create product-line framework for E-Learning (reusable core assets) • Developers also create services which support operations such as test/quiz management and content delivery • Finally, developers create the mediator which handles the mappings between the product-line architecture and specific service implementations using the service ontologies EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

12. Approach • Tools • Our focus is on creating tools which support this process by creating semantic descriptions of the service collaborations using OWL-S • We are looking at converting UML activity diagrams to OWL-S ServiceModel • Software architect and domain expert can focus on models rather than code • Have already built tools to perform lightweight syntactic matching of services EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

13. Approach • Once the product-line framework is in place, the domain expert can focus on creating new products by populating the framework with services • This should not require programming knowledge on the part of the domain expert EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

14. Discussion • The use of ontologies to describe the domain enable mapping and interchangeability of services • In order to avoid the learning curve and facilitate adoption of semantic web technologies, MDA-based techniques are utilized leveraging existing developer knowledge (UML) EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

15. Conclusions and Further Investigations • We are looking at alternative approaches (e.g. top-down versus bottom-up) • Perform several case studies using these techniques in domains with varying sizes starting with E-Learning • Look at alternatives to OWL-S for describing process semantics (e.g. BPEL) EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

16. Questions? EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

17. References • The OWL Services Coalition. Owl-s: Semantic markup for web-services. [Online] Available http://www.daml.org/services/owls/1.0/owl-s.html, December 2003. • Gerald C. Gannod, Sudhakiran V. Mudiam, and Timothy E. Lindquist. Automated Support for Service-Based Software Development and Integration. Journal of Software and Systems Special Issue on Automated Component-Based Software Engineering, 2004 (in press). • David Garlan, Robert T. Monroe, and David Wile. Acme: An Architecture Description Interchange Language. In Proceedings of CASCON’97, pages 169–183, Toronto, Ontario, November 1997. EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

18. References • Joaquin Miller and Jishnu Mukerji et al. MDA Guide Version 1.0.1. Technical Report omg/2003-06-01, Object Management Group, June 2003. • P. Clements and L. M. Northrop. Software Product Lines – Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley, 2002. • Edmund W. Clarke and Jeannette M. Wing. Formal Methods: State of the Art and Future Directions. Technical Report CMU-CS-96-178, Carnegie Mellon University, August 1996. Group report from the “Strategic Directions in Computing Research Formal Methods Working Group ACM Workshop”. EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop

19. References • Gerald C. Gannod and Sushant Bhatia. Facilitating automated search for web services. In Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, July 2004. • K. Sycara, M. Paolucci, A. Ankolekar, and N. Srinivasan. Automated discovery, interaction and composition of semantic web services. Journal of Web Semantics, 1(1), 2003 EDOC 2004 - MDSW Workshop