Service-Oriented Computing Research Roadmap

TLDR: There is a need to merge technology with an understanding of business processes and organizational structures, a combination of recognizing an enterprise's pain points and the potential solutions that can be applied to correct them.

Abstract: Summary Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a new computing paradigm that utilizes services as the basic constructs to support the development of rapid, low-cost and easy composition of distributed applications even in heterogeneous environments. The visionary promise of Service-Oriented Computing is a world of cooperating services where application components are assembled with little effort into a network of services that can be loosely coupled to create flexible dynamic business processes and agile applications that may span organisations and computing platforms. SOC is being shaped by, and increasingly will help shape, modern society as a whole, especially in the areas of dynamic and ondemand business and education, health and government services. The subject of SOC is vast and enormously complex, spanning many concepts and technologies that find their origins in diverse disciplines that are woven together in an intricate manner. In addition, there is a need to merge technology with an understanding of business processes and organizational structures, a combination of recognizing an enterprise's pain points and the potential solutions that can be applied to correct them. The material in research spans an immense and diverse spectrum of literature, in origin and in character. As a result research activities at both worldwide as well as at European level are very fragmented. This necessitates that a broader vision and perspective be established—one that permeates and transforms the fundamental requirements of complex applications that require the use of the SOC paradigm. This will further enhance the value proposition of ServiceOriented Computing and will facilitate the formulation of a Services Research Roadmap leading to more effective and clearly inter-related solutions and better exploitation of research results. This document provides the necessary background for deciding on potential future research programmes in SOC and places on-going research activities and projects in the broader context of a SOC Roadmap. This research roadmap launches four pivotal, inherently related, research themes to SOC: service foundations, service composition, service management and monitoring and service-oriented engineering. The viewpoints presented in this document partly result from intensive discussions experts with various backgrounds led in parallel workgroup and in plenary sessions that took place during the International Dagstuhl Seminar on Service-Oriented Computing held November 15-18, 2005, in Schloss Dagstuhl, Wadern. Each theme is introduced briefly from a technology, state of the art and scientific challenges standpoint. From the technology standpoint a comprehensive review of state of the art, standards, and current research activities in each key area is provided. From the state of the art the major open problems and bottlenecks to progress are identified. Several of these obstacles arise due to the current lack of interdisciplinary research in the field, which is considered to be a major impediment that limits added economic growth through deployment and use of services technology. Finally, the scientific challenges that tackle the found obstacles are formulated. These are long-term visions that serve as integration platforms and demonstrators for an holistic approach to Service Oriented Computing in the identified key areas. These future research activities form a sound background for deciding on potential future programmes in SOC.