The capability matching of Web services

A large number of Web services are already available on the Web, and the type and number of Web services are growing on a daily basis. As the Web service paradigm becomes popular and more and more applications are developed or deployed as Web services, the need for defining different matches of Web services becomes manifest. This has raised an interesting research point for defining Web service matches. We concentrate on the vital part of Web service matching - capability matching - and formally analyse and define exact match and plug-in match of Web service capabilities using abstract finite-state machine approaches. Based on the above work, we propose a new lightweight capability description language of Web services (SCDL) and explore the major stages of service capability matching. We then focus on plug-in match and formally define it using formal logic methods. Moreover, we provide feasible approaches and solutions for comparing two service capabilities. The work presented in this paper lays down a solid foundation for tackling the challenges of Web service discovery and composition.