Matchbox: a framework for dynamic configuration of service matching processes

Abstract

Service discovery in global software markets is performed by brokers who act as intermediaries between service requesters and service providers. In order to discover services, brokers apply service matching for determining whether the specification of a provided service satisfies the requester's requirements. Brokers can already choose between a lot of different service matching approaches considering different service properties (structural, behavioral, and non-functional properties). Different matching approaches can be combined into configurable matching processes leading to a high matching quality (e.g., accurate matching results). However, this combination and configuration is a manual procedure and has to be repeated for different requesters' or market requirements regarding matching quality. In this paper, we propose our framework MatchBox, which supports a broker in reusing existing matching approaches and combining them in a model-driven way based on a reconfigurable model of the matching process. Using this reconfigurable model, MatchBox takes care of control and dataflow between matching approaches and executes the modeled processes automatically. As a case study, we integrated eleven matchers into MatchBox to demonstrate that it remains flexibility and reduces effort for a broker at the same time.