Design Time Validation of Service Orientation Principles Using Design Diagrams

Design principles of Services ensure reliability, scalability and reusability of software components. Services that follow the design principles are robust to changes and are largely reusable in multiple scenarios but in similar domains. To-date there is no systematic approach to apply these design principles to Services design that will ensure Service quality. Errors in Service design stage often pass through multiple levels of amplification to subsequent stages of development and maintenance. Early detection of Service design faults reduces the cumulative effect on succeeding stages of service development. It is important to validate that the Services follows the principles at design time. In this paper, we present a formal rigorous approach to check the adherence of the Services designed for an enterprise solution to the Service orientation principles using design diagrams. We introduce a set of "mapping rules" by which relevant aspects of design diagrams can be used for validating the Services' adherence to design principles. We also present the results of an empirical study to assess the feasibility of our new approach.