Service-Oriented Software Engineering: A Guidance Framework for Service Engineering Methods

Method engineering techniques albeit proven effective for paradigms such as function, object and component, are pertinent to limited aspects of service orientation (SO). The comparison frameworks show that the produced methods neither conform to SO design principles nor to SOA, which is an issue. This paper proposes a framework to guide engineering methods for service-oriented software engineering. It describes a method by its aggregates and the relationships between elements such as Service Science (SS), SO, SOA, SOC, and Web. The paper also describes the guidance for method engineering. The framework consists of two layered categories of entities: (C1) conceptual foundation entities: SS, SO, and SOA, and (C2) realization infrastructure entities: SOC and Web. These entities request and provide services from/to each other. The framework comprehensively describes the SOSE environment, enforces the construct service with fundamental properties and principles, produces SOSE methods that address the challenges of software engineering, and benchmarks the existing SOSE methods.