On the analysis and refactoring of service interfaces for improving service integration efficiency

This thesis addresses the major challenges of system integration by proposing and implementing algorithms to analyse and simplify large and complex service interfaces. The proposed techniques elicit knowledge of the key artefacts - business entities, their attributes and relationships - and derive heuristics and rules, which in turn guide the derivation of permissible orders in which operations are invoked. The identification of the key aspects of service structure and behaviour assists service users with the comprehension of complex service interfaces and facilitates efficient and effective service integration, and therefore provides a major contribution to the field of service science