Concept-Based Readability Measurement andAdjustment for Web Services Descriptions
Pananya Sripairojthikoon, Twittie Senivongse
Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
pananya.s@student.chula.ac.th, twittie.s@chula.ac.th

Abstract— Web Services is a technology for building distributed software applications that are built upon a set of information andcommunication standards. Among those standards is the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) which is an XML-based languagefor describing service descriptions. Service providers will publish WSDL documents of their Web services so that service consumers canlearn about service capability and how to interface with the services. Since WSDL documents are the primary source of service
information, readability of WSDL documents is of concern to service providers, i.e., service descriptions should be understood with easeby service consumers. Providing highly readable service descriptions can then be used as a strategy to attract service consumers.
However, given highly readable information in the WSDL documents, competitors are able to learn know-how and can copy the design tooffer competing services. Security attacks such as information espionage, client impersonation, command injection, and denial of service
are also possible since attackers can learn about exchanged data and invocation patterns from WSDL documents. While readability ofservice descriptions makes Web services discoverable, it contributes to service vulnerability too. Service designers therefore should
consider this trade-off when designing service descriptions. Currently there is no readability measurement for WSDL documents. We
propose an approach to such measurement so that service designers can determine if readability is too low or too high with regard toservice discoverability, service imitation, and service attack issues, and then can consider increasing or lowering service description
readability accordingly. Our readability measurement is based on the concepts or terms in service domain knowledge. Given a WSDL
document as a service description, readability is defined in terms of the use of difficult words in the description and the use of words thatare key concepts in the service domain. As an example, we measure readability of the WSDL document of E-commerce Web services, andexperiment on redesigning of WSDL terms to adjust readability.
Keyword— Concept Hierarchy, Ontology, Readability, Web Services
Pananya Sripairojthikoon has been working as a software engineer for Accenture Thailand since June 2012. She received B.Eng. in
Computer Engineering from King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand in 2010, and M.Sc. in Software Engineering from
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand in 2013. Her research interest includes service computing and application of semantic technology. This
research was conducted while she pursued a Master degree.

Twittie Senivongse is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn
University, Thailand. She received B.Sc. in Statistics from Chulalongkorn University in 1989, M.Sc. in Computing Science from Imperial
College, UK in 1992, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Kent, UK in 1997. Her research interest includes service computing
and application of semantic technology.