A Social Description Revolution - Describing Web APIs' Social Parameters with RESTdesc

Functionality makes APIs unique and therefore helps humans and machines decide what service they need. However, if two APIs offer similar functionality, quality attributes such as performance and ease-of-use might become a decisive factor. Several of these quality attributes are inherently subjective, and hence exist within a social context. These social parameters should be taken into account when creating personalized mashups and service compositions. The Web API description format RESTdesc already captures functionality in an elegant way, so in this paper we will demonstrate how it can be extended to include social parameters. We indicate the role these parameters can play in generating functional compositions that fulfill specified quality attributes. Finally, we show how descriptions can be personalized by exploring a user’s social graph. This ultimately leads to a more focused, on-demand use of Web APIs, driven by functionality and social parameters.