Service Network Modeling Approaches: Overview, Classification, and Analysis

The emergence of Software-as-a-Service solutions and their open provisioning on web-based service platforms has initiated the research on service networks in recent years. Being a complex and dynamic distributed system of service systems, the maintenance and evolution of a service network has called for the definition of new modeling approaches. A formal model, providing a description of the complex relationships emerging between the independent network participants in the context of applications composed of cross-domain services, can support evolutionary decisions in the network. However, the variety of stakeholder perspectives on a service network and the different abstraction layers of a service-oriented application make the specification of a generic service network model a challenging task. This paper provides an extensive overview of the current research on service network modeling. It classifies existing modeling approaches according to the level of abstraction of the models they produce, ranging from a business to a technical perspective. Further, it presents a comparative analysis of service network modeling approaches against a set of properties evaluating the integration of different stakeholder perspectives, the support for heterogeneous specifications, and the adaptability to analysis needs of their models.