Honavar, Vasant

We propose a specification-driven approach to Web service composition. Our framework allows the users (or service developers) to start with a high-level, possibly incomplete specification of a desired (goal) service that is to be realized using a subset of the available component services. These services are represented using labeled transition systems augmented with guards over variables with infinite domains and are used to determine a strategy for their composition that would realize the goal service functionality. However, in the event the goal service cannot be realized using the available services, our approach identifies the cause(s) for such failure which can then be used by the developer to reformulate the goal specification. Thus, the technique supports Web service composition through iterative reformulation of the functional specification. We present a prototype implementation in a tabled-logic programming environment that illustrates the key features of the proposed approach.