To address the challenges mentioned, we need to analyze the characteristics of Web Services and the best practices for Web Services development in order to explore the possibility of enhancing the existing software development methodology with the inclusion of Web Services specific activities for SOA application development. With this as our research basis, our approach for carrying this research is described in the following section.

 

Research approach

Our approach is to first study an existing agile methodology and identifies gaps in the methodology. The second is to study the Web Services development steps to identify the steps specific to Web Services. The third is to study the Web Services characteristics and its best practices. The result of these is the proposed methodology for Web Services development. The workflow of our approach is shown in Figure 1.

 

 

Fig. 1: Research Approach

 

Analysis Study

A. Software Components, Web Services and SOA Application

 

A component is a reusable software building block: a pre-built piece of encapsulated application code that can be combined with other components and with additional code to produce custom application [1]. A software component is an independently deliverable package of reusable software services. Software components are the reusable building blocks of SOA application. The relationship of software component, Web Services and SOA application is shown in Figure 2. The development of Web Services is based on software component through public interfaces exposed for services consumption. For example, Order Analyzer and Order Generator are software components derived from objects/classes. The Order Processor is a web service that uses components Order Analyzer and Order Generator to provide richer business functionality as building blocks for SOA application.

 

Fig. 2: Web Services CBD Development