A Feature Modeling Support for Non-Functional Constraints in Service Oriented Architecture

It is important in service oriented architecture (SOA) to separate functional and non-functional requirements for services because different applications use services in different non-functional contexts. In order to maximize the reusability of services, a set of constraints (e.g., dependency and mutual exclusion constraints) among non-functional requirements tend to be complicated to maintain. Currently, those non-functional constraints are informally specified in natural languages, and developers need to ensure that their applications satisfy the constraints in manual and ad-hoc manners. This paper proposes a model-driven development framework, through the notion of feature modeling, to explicitly and graphically specify non-functional constraints in SOA. The proposed framework allows developers to validate non-functional constraints in their applications in an automatic and consistent way. This paper also describes how the proposed framework is implemented and effectively used for service-oriented application development.