Editorial - Special Issue on Model-driven Service-oriented architectures

Model-driven approaches to software development have proliferated in recent years owing to the availability of techniques based on metamodelling and model transformations, such as the meta-object facility (MOF) and the query view transformation (QVT) standards. During the same period, service-oriented architecture (SOA) has become the major trend towards the development of distributed applications. SOA is an architecture style for developing distributed applications in which application parts can only interact by referring to each others’ services. SOA has many potential benefits, such as service reuse and the possibility of enacting business processes through orchestration, using executable languages like Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). Model-driven approaches allow the separation of implementation issues from the essential purposes of software systems and in this respect, they match the purpose of identifying services and separating them from their implementations advocated by SOA. Therefore, there are good reasons to apply model-driven approaches to the development of services and SOAs. The combination of these two research areas is the main topic of this special issue, which addresses advances in methods and modelling techniques for services and their compositions (including design concepts, languages, metamodels, profiles and specification frameworks); advances in methodological guidance for the model-driven service development process and advances in model transformations (or mappings) targeted to deploy services and their compositions in services platforms.