Business service identification and modelling with context support

Abstract

Current approaches for service-oriented architecture (SOA) do not fully recognize and align the notion of business as a service. While motivation, value creation and outsourcing are primary concerns in the business domain, componentization is an important paradigm in the software domain. Using the service metaphor to describe concerns in both domains can lead to confusion. PROSERVE is developed as an approach, based on a service context scheme and service trees, to overcome the shortcomings of existing service modelling frameworks. By providing a matrix for how different types of participants can interact within and across domains, rules can be derived for extracting context-views and context-interaction for services. Moreover, a service tree can be used as a visual metaphor for selective abstraction, allowing details to be toggled in the context they exist in. A prototype support tool, based on the PROSERVE metamodel, provides proof of concepts for context-supported service modelling.