Requirements for a Service Description Language - Findings from a Delphi Study

The USDL has been designed as a means to describe services so that they can be traded via the Internet. The previous parts outlined the status-quo of service description research and practice and highlighted by feature comparison that USDL outstands related approaches in various concerns. However, for evaluating the actual worthiness of a modeling language such as USDL, potential users will consider the fit of the language with the contingent influences their organizations have to deal with. To fill this gap, the purpose of this chapter is to identify requirements for a service description language from potential USDL users. The presented research takes a semiotic theory perspective to the design of modeling languages. Through a Delphi study approach, i.e., an anonymous, written multi-stage survey process, the chapter elaborates a set of requirements. The requirements can be used to ex-post test if the features of the USDL actually address the users’ needs and to recheck the underlying assumptions of the USDL design and development process. While finding broad consent with most requirements, we also observed differentiated needs related to the intended use of the USDL.

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