THE JOURNAL OF CHINA UNIVERSITIES OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2007
ZHANG Jian-yin, YANG Fang-chun, SU Sen
Detecting feature interactions in Web services with model
checking techniques
CLC number TP393.4 Document A Article ID 1005-8885 (2007) 03-0108-05
Abstract As a platform-independent software system, a Web
service is designed to offer interoperability among diverse and
heterogeneous applications. With the introduction of service
composition in the Web service creation, various message
interactions among the atomic services result in a problem
resembling the feature interaction problem in the
telecommunication area. This article defines the problem as
feature interaction in Web services and proposes a model
checking-based detection method. In the method, the Web
service description is translated to the Promela language – the
input language of the model checker simple promela interpreter
(SPIN), and the specific properties, expressed as linear temporal
logic (LTL) formulas, are formulated according to our classifi-
cation of feature interaction. Then, SPIN is used to check these
specific properties to detect the feature interaction in Web
services.
Keywords feature interactions, web services, model checking,
detection
1 Introduction
It is well known that the feature interaction problem is one of
the important bottlenecks for the development of new
telecommunication services. In the telecommunication area,
feature is defined as a “unit of one or more telecommunications
or telecommunications management based capabilities that a
network provides to a user” by Bellcore. The feature
interaction problem, first coined in the early 80’s by Bellcore,
mainly includes interactions that occur because the
requirements of multiple features are not compatible, and the
interactions that occur when a feature behaves differently in the
presence of other features [1]. A typical example is the
interactions between call waiting and call forwarding when
busy, both of which are subscribed by the same user. The
related research study can be found in Refs. [15].
Received date: 2006-09-15
ZHANG Jian-yin ( ), YANG Fang-chun, SU Sen
State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
E-mail: marcozjy@gmail.com
As a platform-independent software system, a Web service
is designed to offer interoperability among diverse and
heterogeneous applications. However, sometimes an
individual Web service cannot fulfill the complex and
increasing user demands. Thus, service composition, a
technique to incorporate and orchestrate different individual
services, is introduced to adapt to various user preferences and
contexts. However, service composition results in a great deal
of frequent and complex message interactions, which lead to
the potentiality of similar problems in the Web services
domain. Here, we define the problem as feature interaction in
Web services, the problem resulting from the abnormal
message interactions among the composed services in the
service composition scenarios. In this article, we analyze the
problem and propose a detection method with model checking
techniques, one of the promising verification approaches.
The remaining sections of this article are organized as
follows: Section 2 introduces the feature interaction in Web
services. Section 3 provides a short description of the model
checking technique. Section 4 describes our detection method
in detail. Finally, Sect 5 concludes this article and mentions
the future research.
2 Feature interactions in Web services
The feature interaction problem has become a major roadblock
to implement new services in the telecommunication area. With
the application of service composition techniques in the Web
services domain, feature interaction in Web services also
becomes one of the obstacles of new service creation. It may
negatively impact the service quality and robustness, reduce
the service scalability, and even lead to the failure of service
composition in practice.
Since service creation in Web services is based on a more
open, flexible, and diverse method, feature interactions in Web
services are quite different from those in telecom in the
following points:
1) Feature abstract is an important problem in the Web
services domain. The clarity of telecom feature abstraction
based on the functional nature greatly advances the related
research. However, it is different in the Web services domain.