Composite Patterns for Web API Search in Agile Web Application Development

The ever growing availability of Web APIs enables web designers to aggregate APIs for fast development of new mashups. However, a web designer may also use Web APIs in different development tasks, like completion of an existing mashup, or substitution of one or more Web APIs within it. A system that supports the web designer during Web API selection should behave differently according to the development scenario the web designer is acting in. In this paper, we propose composite patterns which include different perspectives on Web API descriptions in order to serve distinct mashup development scenarios. Moreover, we provide a framework of tools, techniques and mechanisms to support the web designer during Web API selection according to the composite patterns.