ASSM: Toward an automated method for service specification

One of the key activities needed to construct a quality service-oriented solution is specification of the architectural elements. Selection of an appropriate and proven method for specification of the elements consisted of services, flows, and components is thus fundamental to successful service-oriented system development in an enterprise. Existing methods for service specification ignore the automation capability while providing human-based prescriptive guidelines, which mostly are not applicable at enterprise scales. This paper proposes a novel method called ASSM (Automated Service Specification Method) that automatically specifies the architecturally significant elements of service-oriented systems. Therefore, ASSM effectively specifies the architectural elements of the service models. Model transformations such as ASSM, automate the labor-intensive activities and lead the architect to focus on more important activities, which need human intelligence, and eventually enable efficient development of service-based solutions.