Categorial Link: REST Service Composition Based on Category Theory

Abstract

This paper describes a new and generic REST service composition framework that uses 6 algebraic rules to drive resource-resource compositions in different domains. The generalization is achieved by two techniques borrowed from Category Theory: 1) decomposition of a REST system into cohesive link and communication layers, and 2) uniform representation of resource interfaces and resource compositions as categorial links. Within this framework, we introduce three types of categorial links: basic, nested and concurrent, and we show that many domain tasks in hyperlink pipeline, call control and media workflows can be accomplished efficiently by these links. The preliminary experiments indicate the approach is feasible.