Overview of Specification Tool Features

Key Features

· Service Specification Management - the tool allows for new service specifications to be created and edited. Links to any 3rd party specifications can be captures, as can details of the service type. For the latter this can be whether the service specification is Abstract or Concrete, and at what granularity it operates at (single operation service, business service, etc). The saving and loading of service specifications between different installations of the specification tool, is also supported.

· Facet Management - the tool allows facets to be created and edited. It is also possible to customise the tool so that a default set of facets are used whenever a new service specification is created. A default set of SeCSE facets are provided, but users can add their own if needs be.

· Facet Specification Management - the tool allows the user to create specifications that can be placed within facets. The tool is able to handle natural language specifications and those that are a derivative of XML. This includes XMI that can be used to represent UML.

· Editor Management - the tool allows the user to assign 3rd party editors to different specification types, which can then be launched directly from the tool. For example if the user has a preferred WSDL editor, then they can link this into the tool. A simple graphical viewer has been built into the tool for previewing UML diagrams.

· Specification Forms - although the Specification Tool is flexible enough to work with different types of specification languages and editors, it is also supports the use of specification forms for individual specifications. These forms present a user interface that enforces a certain structure onto a specification and in particular allows for better integration with other SeCSE tools. Specification forms have been created for all the SeCSE specification structures that have been defined within the project (where applicable)

· Specification generators - the tool also provides mechanisms to support the automatic generation of specifications - in particular WSDL and testing specifications. For the former, the tool draws upon an API that allows WSDL files to be generated from Java class files. For the latter, the tool makes use of Sannio's test facet generator to generate testing specifications.

· Facet Specification File Generation - once the user has built up their faceted specification they can use the tool to automatically generate XML based facet specification files. These files can then be incorporated within a SeCSE (or SeCSE-compliant) registry.

· Specification Schema Management - the tool supports the use and generation of schemas, which can then be uploaded to the registry alongside the specification files. For the structures/forms that have been developed within SeCSE, default schemas are used. If a new specification structure is developed, then the tool is able to infer a schema. These in turn can be altered or annotated (to help with their understanding).

· Consistency mechanisms - the tool contains mechanisms for checking consistency across specifications. These mechanisms check operation names within facet specifications to make sure they are consistent with one another (using the WSDL as the base).

· Integration with the SeCSE platform - the tool is ntegrated with the current release of the SeCSE platform. This allows users to publish their created specifications within the SeCSE workspace and within the SeCSE registry.

· Spellchecker and WordNet Thesaurus - where appropriate, support has been provided for spell checking and to allow the user to browse the WordNet thesaurus. Both these elements have been integrated into the tool so that corrections/new words can be easily added into specifications.

· Built-in Help - help files have been built into the tool to provide guidance in using some of its key features