Using UML to Model Web Services for Automatic Composition

There is a great interest paid to the web services paradigm nowadays. One ofthe most important problems related to the web service paradigm is theautomatic composition of web services. Several frameworks have beenproposed to achieve this novel goal. The most recent and richest framework(model) is the Colombo model. However, even for experienced developers,working with Colombo formalisms is low-level, very complex and timeconsuming.We propose to use UML (Unified Modeling Language) to modelservices and service composition in Colombo. By using UML, the web servicedeveloper will deal with the high level graphical models of UML avoiding thedifficulties of working with the low-level and complex details of Colombo. To beable to use Colombo automatic composition algorithm, we propose torepresent Colombo by a set of related XML document types that can be abase for a Colombo language. Moreover, we propose the transformation rulesbetween UML and Colombo proposed XML documents. Next Colomboautomatic composition algorithm can be applied to build a composite servicethat satisfies a given user request. A prototypical implementation of theproposed approach is developed using Visual Paradigm for UML.