Enabling Web services: towards service grids

Web services are emerging technologies that can be considered as the result of the continuous improvement of Internet services due to the tremendous increase in demand that is being placed on them. They are rapidly evolving and are expected to change the paradigms of both software development and use, by promoting software reusability over the Internet, by facilitating the wrapping of underlying computing models with XML, and by providing diverse and sophisticated functionality fast and flexibly in the form of composite service offerings. The different facets of Web services are identified and a flexible approach to engineering complex Web services is adopted in the form of a proposed framework for the development of Web services. After the examination of its main constituent parts, it is argued that its full potential and that of Web service engineering in general, is realized through the gradual formation of a rich service grid offering value-added supporting functionality and therefore the main desirable properties of such a service grid are highlighted. Finally, the paper outlines a validation approach for the proposed framework and assembles important pointers for future work and concluding remarks.