System Design through the Exploration of Contemporary Web Services

Abstract

In this article, we develop a Contemporary Web Service (CWS) repository of system designs, which are encoded as metadata of contemporary web services. We examine if this CWS repository serves as an effective design tool for initial CWS design and as an effective support tool for business users and analysts working together on system design. The CWS repository reduces the cognitive load of both the analyst and the business user as they jointly explore the CWS repository of system designs. It supports an evolutionary approach to system design through rapid selection of appropriate CWS metadata. To accomplish that, we introduce several new design characteristics for the CWS repository. The evaluation results demonstrate that the CWS repository is an effective tool for supporting designers during initial service design, as well as for supporting business users and analysts during system design.