Detecting Architectural Mismatches Between Web Services

Given the advantages of building systems from pre-built and pre-tested components instead of building new ones each time, why then is this not the norm in software engineering? The answer appears to be that building systems this way currently requires a similar amount of effort to building one from scratch. This is because of the work required to successfully integrate components with differing assumptions into a single system. The work stems from faults in the system caused by these differing assumptions, such faults can be termed "Architectural Mismatches". In this paper we give a brief introduction to this concept and to that of "architectural styles" which will form part of the proposed solution. We introduce web services, which we use throughout the work as our example components. Then we discuss the current state of our work on a web service architectural style and the collation of the set of architectural assumptions designers of web services might make. Finally we give an outline of work still to do and tool support needed to test and demonstrate our findings. © 2007 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Printed and published by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details