Modeling Service-Oriented Software Development: Services Ecosystem

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel modeling approach called Services Ecosystem that applies the concept of ecosystems in ecology to Service-Oriented Software Development and Integration. For this purpose, an ecological system for software systems is proposed for the emerging Service-Oriented Computing paradigm, describing how participants interact with each other within their environments. Three emerging concepts, Service-Oriented Programming, Software Factories, and Service Grid, are employed to explain biotic and abiotic environments. Based upon the Services Ecosystem model, we demonstrate Services Ecosystem Model transformations by using a case example. The Services Ecosystem model is a novel approach for envisioning the Service-Oriented Computing paradigm in terms of an ecosystem in which the roles/perspectives of each participant and their relationships/interactions to environments are clearly described with a holistic view.