Abstract:
Web application hybrids, popularly known as mashups,
are created by integrating services on the Web using their
APIs. Support for finding an API is currently provided by
generic search engines or domain specific solutions such
as Google and ProgrammableWeb. Shortcomings of both these solutions in terms of and
reliance on user tags make the task of identifying an API
challenging. Since these APIs are described in HTML documents,
it is essential to look beyond the boundaries of current
approaches to Web service discovery that rely on formal
descriptions. In this work, we present a faceted approach
to searching and ranking Web APIs that takes into
consideration attributes or facets of the APIs as found in
their HTML descriptions. Our method adopts current research
in document classification and faceted search and
introduces the serviut score to rank APIs based on their utilization
and popularity. We evaluate classification, search
accuracy and ranking effectiveness using available APIs
while contrasting our solution with existing ones.