Automated Holistic Service Composition: Modeling and Composition Reasoning Techniques

Many real-world applications are complex, involving many user "choices", such as different functionalities, different ways to achieve a goal, etc. Conventional automated service composition models do not consider such potential choices, or simply consider them independently. Also, existing service composition models do not model exceptions and automated composition approaches require that after an exception, the original system goal should still be achieved. This may not be feasible for some exceptions. Thus, the service composition model should also consider alternate goals after exceptions occur. In this paper, we first define the concept of multi-functionality and develop a holistic service composition model. Since most existing composition reasoning techniques can only handle a single functionality, we extend them and develop new algorithms for automated holistic service composition. A case study system is used to illustrate how our approach automatically generates a holistic workflow for a system with multiple functionalities.