Re: [regrep] Dynamic Discovery/Binding/Invocation

[ewallace@cme.nist.gov]

Joseph Chiusano asked

>Is anyone using ebXML Registry for dynamic discovery/binding/invocation
>of Web Services? More specifically:
>
>- A Web Service would dynamically discover another Web Service;
>
>- It would use the discovered Web Service's interface definitions (e.g.
>WSDL document) to dynamically construct message definitions that conform
>to the discovered Web Service's interface definitions;
>
>- It would then map its data to these messages definitions and invoke
>the discovered Web Service;
>
>If no one is using an ebXML Registry this way, how close are we to this?
>It seems to me that the "dynamically constructed messages definitions",
>and - even more so - the dynamic mapping, would be challenging. Does
>this fall more under semantic technologies? If so, will it ever be
>possible?

We have been working for a while on similar problems in our
Automated Methods for Integrating Systems [AMIS] project.  There are lots of
hard problems here such as: discovering semantic links, defining semantic maps,
building non-lossy tranformations between models/schemas.  This is made
worse by the complexity of the content models for even "simple" transactions
in popular ebusiness message suites such as OAGIS BODs or CIDX Chem 
eStandards. 

Will it ever be possible?  Perhaps, although under very constrained 
conditions with better tools and with standard transaction suites built
with a different design philosophy.  IMHO start with extendable semantic 
models of business objects and build process and interface definitions from 
these.

-Evan

[AMIS]  "The Challenges of Automated Methods for Integrating Systems," 
Libes, Don., et al.
http://www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/challenge.pdf