Model-Driven Development of a Mediation Service

Abstract

Although service-oriented architectures offer real benefits when pursuing application integration and business flexibility, there are still no satisfactory solutions for dealing with existing systems that need to cooperate while their services have no perfect match. In the case of incompatible services, a 'mediator' may be introduced which resolves (semantic) interoperability problems by intervening in the cooperation between systems. Building mediators is currently often a manual process, resulting in dedicated IT-driven solutions. This paper presents a framework to guide the development of mediators, with the following objectives: (i) uncover and capture the actual interoperability problem that needs to be solved; (ii) allow the involvement of non-IT (i.e., business) experts in the development of the solution; (iii) support evolution of the solution and re-use of results in case of changing interoperability requirements; (iv) facilitate automation of parts of the process. The framework is based on service-oriented, model-driven and semantic Web techniques. Available tool support for the different steps in the framework is indicated.