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The pragmatic proof: Hypermedia API composition and execution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2016

RUBEN VERBORGH ,
DÖRTHE ARNDT ,
SOFIE VAN HOECKE ,
JOS DE ROO ,
GIOVANNI MELS ,
THOMAS STEINER  and
JOAQUIM GABARRO
RUBEN VERBORGH
Affiliation:
Ghent University – iMinds – Data Science Lab, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
DÖRTHE ARNDT
Affiliation:
Ghent University – iMinds – Data Science Lab, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
SOFIE VAN HOECKE
Affiliation:
Ghent University – iMinds – Data Science Lab, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
JOS DE ROO
Affiliation:
Agfa Healthcare, Moutstraat 100, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected])
GIOVANNI MELS
Affiliation:
Agfa Healthcare, Moutstraat 100, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected])
THOMAS STEINER
Affiliation:
Department LSI, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected])
JOAQUIM GABARRO
Affiliation:
Department LSI, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected])
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Abstract

Machine clients are increasingly making use of the Web to perform tasks. While Web services traditionally mimic remote procedure calling interfaces, a new generation of so-called hypermedia APIs works through hyperlinks and forms, in a way similar to how people browse the Web. This means that existing composition techniques, which determine a procedural plan upfront, are not sufficient to consume hypermedia APIs, which need to be navigated at runtime. Clients instead need a more dynamic plan that allows them to follow hyperlinks and use forms with a preset goal. Therefore, in this paper, we show how compositions of hypermedia APIs can be created by generic Semantic Web reasoners. This is achieved through the generation of a proof based on semantic descriptions of the APIs' functionality. To pragmatically verify the applicability of compositions, we introduce the notion of pre-execution and post-execution proofs. The runtime interaction between a client and a server is guided by proofs but driven by hypermedia, allowing the client to react to the application's actual state indicated by the server's response. We describe how to generate compositions from descriptions, discuss a computer-assisted process to generate descriptions, and verify reasoner performance on various composition tasks using a benchmark suite. The experimental results lead to the conclusion that proof-based consumption of hypermedia APIs is a feasible strategy at Web scale.

Keywords

compositionproofreasoningSemantic Webhypermedia APIsWeb APIs
Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 1 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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