Assessing Service Protocols Adaptability Using Protocol Reduction and Graph-Search with Backtracking Techniques

In this paper we propose a new kind of adaptability assessment that decides whether service protocols of a requestor and a provider are adaptable, computes their adaptation degree, and identifies conditions that determine when they can be adapted. We also propose a technique to implement this adaptability assessment: we first reduce a service protocol into an abstracted service protocol through proposed reduction rules, based on which, we then construct an adaptation matrix using an adapted depth-first search with backtracking technique. Based on this matrix, we compute the adaptation degree and identify necessary conditions. This assessment provides a key criterion to the requestor for selecting the most suitable service protocol from functionally-equivalent candidates according to her specific business requirements.