A Flexible Extension of WSDL to Describe Non-Functional Attributes

Internet of Things (IOT) connects visible physical things to information network and extends the network data source from edge servers to visible physical objects, and Web service (WS) can play a role of real thing's representation in information system. In order to describe a complete object, its service must contain both functional and non-functional information, because they are important attributes and the keys to distinguish things from each other. As a standard of WS, Web Service Description Language (WSDL) cannot describe an object with its all information, as WSDL provides no method for describing services' non-functional aspect while it only focuses on functional parts. This paper proposes a flexible extension of WSDL to describe non-functional attributes. Based on principles and standards of Model Driven Architecture (MDA), the process consists of a WSDL metamodel extension and transformation between UML models and XML syntax. Base On the basis of our extension model, the mapping from a physical object to a web service will be more accurate and complete. In this way, WSDL can completely describe a physical object in the form of a service.