Towards a lightweight model driven method for developing SOA systems using existing assets

Developing SOA based systems and migrating legacy systems to SOA are difficult and error prone tasks, where approaches, methods and tools play a fundamental role. For this reason, several proposals have been brought forward in literature to help SOA developers. This paper sketches a novel method for the development of systems based on services, i.e., adhering to the SOA paradigm, which follows the model driven paradigm. Our method is based on a “meet-in-the-middle” approach that allows the reuse of existing assets (e.g., legacy systems). The starting point of this method is a UML model representing the target business process and the final result is a detailed design model of the SOA system. The method, explained in this paper using a simple running example, has been applied successfully within an industrial project.