Model-based discovery of Web services

Web services are software components that can be discovered and employed at runtime using the Internet. Conflicting requirements towards the nature of these services can be identified. From a business perspective, Web services promise to enable the formation of ad-hoc cooperations on a global scale. From a technical perspective, a high degree of standardization and rigorous specifications are required to enable the automated integration of Web services. A suitable technology for Web services has to mediate these needs for flexibility and stability. In this paper a new approach to the description of Web service semantics is introduced. It is a visual approach based on the use of software models and graph transformations and allows for the description of innovative services while providing a precise matching concept. An implementation using current standards and tools is available.