A prominent research focus, especially in the context of EU public funding, has been the systematic use of the Internet for new ways of value creation in the services sector. This idea of service networks in the Internet, frequently dubbed the Internet of Services or Web service ecosystems, wants to make services tradable in digital media. In order to enable communication and trade between providers and consumers of services, the Internet of Services requires a standard that creates a "commercial envelope" around a service. This is where the Unified Service Description Language (USDL) comes into play as a normative and balanced unification of business, operational and technical service information. The unified description established by USDL is machine-processable, considers technical and business aspects of a service as well as functional and non-functional attributes.
The lecture provides a detailed look into USDL spanning the conceptual design, in-depth walk throughs of invidividual modules (for legal aspects, pricing, service levels, etc.) as well as tooling and methods. The individual lectures come in the form of pre-recorded videos showing powerpoint slides and demos with accompanying narration.
Additional Resources
- Normative scientific reference: D. Oberle, A. Barros, S. Heinzl, U. Kylau. A Unified Description Language for Human to Automated Services. Information Systems, 2012
- Most comprehensive documentation: A. Barros, D. Oberle (eds.) Handbook of Service Description: USDL and its Methods. Springer, 2012
- Tools
o USDL Editor for Experts: http://usdleditor.sourceforge.net/
o USDL Editor light for Novices: http://usdleditorlight.sourceforge.net/
o USDL Marketplace: http://sourceforge.net/projects/usdlmarketplace
o USDL Model and XML Schema: http://sourceforge.net/projects/usdlmodel
o Logistics Example: Located in the SVN repository of http://sourceforge.net/projects/usdlmodel
- Slides available at http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-29240
