Service Oriented Framework for Lightweight Enterprise Applications

The augmenting demand for web based applications in a cloud computing concept is increasing the use of Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs). Service oriented reference architectures available in the literature are defined in high abstraction level, while the most popular available specifications and tools for service oriented development are conceived for huge applications and usually require important investments on developers training and on the infrastructuring for hosting servers. In counterpart, there are several lightweight frameworks based on the Model/View/Controller (MVC) concept, but such frameworks usually solve part of the problems of web based applications, and do not provide sufficient tools for service oriented development. The MVC frameworks let the system architect free to organise its software using any software design approach. This paper presents a lightweight framework for service oriented application design. Our framework integrates state of the art design patterns in a predefined software design approach to allow system architects to concentrate their attention on the customer’s needs, i.e., on the definitions of requirements, business processes and rules, and graphical user interfaces (GUI). The framework is focused on model driven design (MDD) and software reuse, in order to provide gains in software development and maintenance costs. The framework has been used in two web based applications, where the gains could be attested in practice.