Web Services Search Engine

Traditional monolithic applications have been challenged over the last couple of years by smaller units of functionality in order to respond to requirements of organizations for flexibility and dynamism. For a long time we got used to assemble our applications from various components which have well defined APIs. Web Services are leveraging the assembly process to the next level, allowing to mashup and compose applications from loosely coupled services offered over the Web - services which are reusable, discoverable and composable.

Web Services overcome problems of integration, as they were specifically developed to address problems of interoperability between applications. Before the advent of Web Services, we were using custom adapters to connect legacy applications. Web Services abstract from the specifics of implementation allowing reuse across different systems and configurations.

A new paradigm emerged in recent years – Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Many organizations have started redesigning their information systems to adopt SOA paradigms. While we have been experiencing a rapid growth in intra-organizational SOA, the growth of SOA utilizing public Web Services has not yet been so impressive. At seekda we believe that this problem is due to a lack of appropriate technologies allowing to search and acquire public Web Services. In our opinion the ability to discover and govern Web Services is an essential requirement for Service Oriented Architectures utilizing public Web Services. seekda’s mission is to overcome these problems and provide a technology platform facilitating both service consumers and service providers in finding and exploiting public Web Services. It is crucial for the Web of services (as an extension of the Web of pages) to have centralized facilities for access and control of service metadata and artifacts allowing service consumers to easily search and find appropriate Web Services. The Web based platform developed by seekda consists of two elements:

• Web Services Search Engine – provides facilities allowing consumers to search, find and review Web Services
• Web Services Marketplace – provides facilities enabling providers to sell Web Services

The affiliated seekda Web Services Marketplace will allow to trade service usage rights in a one-stop-shopping manner across different providers. seekda also aims to simplify purchases across different providers and unify the usage of services in bundles. We are addressing the need of solutions for real world business problems comprised of multiple services, by allowing the creation of service mashups. Interoperability issues between different providers will be handled by the marketplace allowing seamless exchange of providers and reducing integration costs for seekda customers.