One of the key results of ASG is the semantic service provisioning architecture . The ASG service provisioning features describe the most prominent features of this architecture. They are achievements on the technological level, which are appointed by the application of an ASG compliant platform for service provision. On business level these achievements lead to a reduction of costs in development and maintenance. Furthermore the platform supports continuous adaptation of service centric applications towards environmental changes and upcoming business needs. The ASG service provisioning features are in detail:
1. Seamless integration of heterogeneous external services
External service integration is achieved by the provision of an elaborated methodological approach embedded into a set of integrated tools. These tools assist the user in her task of integrating external services into the ASG platform. Starting point for integration is a domain-specific ontology from which a specific type system is derived. ASG supports the mapping of existing heterogeneous services to this specific type system. Integrated services are augmented with semantic descriptions regarding service functionality and non-functional properties.
Benefits:
The seamless integration of heterogeneous external services reduces the maintenance and modification costs for large numbers of external services. It has the potential to ease integration of services and data formats. The architecture allows an easy discovery and interoperability of integrated services.
2. On-demand creation of service compositions
Automated semantic-enabled service composition enables the creation of new services by composing existing services on-demand and at run-time for individual user requests. For this purpose, the semantically described functionality of services is used.
Benefits:
Current service integration, based on manual programming, makes it hard to cost-effectively maintain and modify the complex service world. ASG lifts the interface to services from a manual to a logical level, and supports service composition based on automated tools. The adaptive service composition implies a cost reduction in service provision.
3. Reliable service provision with assured quality of service
ASG supports the description, negotiation and realisation of non-functional service quality parameters. In cases of service failures or violations of agreed quality parameters, the platform reacts adaptively through re-enactment, re-binding or re-composition activities.
Benefits:
The future service world will be based on global and dynamic services, which can be composed to answer the needs of complex service requests. Dynamic service re-enactment, re-binding or re-composition provide alternative solutions for non-reliable services, thus provides the end-customer with a reliable service delivery.
