Context-Based Matching and Ranking of Web Services for Composition

In this work, we propose a two-step, context-based semantic approach to the problem of matching and ranking Web services for possible service composition. We present an analysis of different methods for classifying Web services for possible composition and supply a context-based semantic matching method for ranking these possibilities. Semantic understanding of Web services may provide added value by identifying new possibilities for compositions of services. The semantic matching ranking approach is unique since it provides the Web service designer with an explicit numeric estimation of the extent to which a possible composition makes sense. First, we analyze two common methods for text processing, TF/IDF and context analysis; and two types of service description, free text and WSDL. Second, we present a method for evaluating the proximity of services for possible compositions. Each Web service WSDL context descriptor is evaluated according to its proximity to other services' free text context descriptors. The methods were tested on a large repository of real-world Web services. The experimental results indicate that context analysis is more useful than TF/IDF. Furthermore, the method evaluating the proximity of the WSDL description to the textual description of other services provides high recall and precision results.