WSIPL: An XML scripting language for integrating web service data and applications

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Lo, Eric | Cheung, David W. | Ng, C.Y. | Lee, Thomas

Affiliations: Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong | Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development, Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Data processing and integration on heterogeneous data sources often require intensive human resources on coding, but applications developed for this purpose are usually inflexible to fulfill dynamic business requirements. To-date, the Web Service paradigm standardizes the programmatic interfaces for application-to-application communication. It has gained a considerable momentum as a means of facilitate processing and integrating heterogeneous data sources. To take full advantage of Web Services, we proposed an approach in which all operations and data sources are exposed as Web Services. Based on that approach, a novel declarative scripting language called WSIPL (Web Services Integration and Processing Language) is designed to drive the data integration and processing tasks via Web Services in minimal programming efforts. The reference architecture of a WSIPL system and implementation issues are discussed. Industries deployed with this technology found that WSIPL can successfully enhance their data integration and processing systems with higher flexibility and efficiency.

Keywords: Web services, data integration, XML, workflow

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An international journal, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 25-41, 2006