Int. J. Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2014 241 Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. A loosely coupled architecture for automatic composition of web services applications Juan Carlos Zuñiga* Electronic Systems Engineering Department, University of São Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, S/N Trav.3, No. 158, CEP 05508-900, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Email: juan.carlos@usp.br *Corresponding author José J. Pérez-Alcázar and Luciano A. Digiampietri School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, University of São Paulo, Av. Arlindo Bettio 1000, CEP 03828-000, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Email: jperez@usp.br Email: digiampietri@usp.br Silvio Ernesto Barbin Telecommunications and Control Engineering Department, University of São Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, S/N Trav.3, No. 158, CEP 05508-900, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Email: barbin@usp.br Abstract: Semantic web research aims to provide mechanisms to combine several web services to offer a new value-added service that satisfies the user’s request. A number of methods and tools have been proposed for this purpose. However, none of these approaches offers a complete solution from the standpoint of a decoupled, inter-organisational, domain-independent and ready for use by end users who do not have an in-depth technical knowledge. To overcome these limitations, this paper provides a loosely coupled architecture to develop applications based on web services composition, in which architectural modules can be integrated in different ways, ranging from inter-organisational sources, which support different levels of automation and composition methods, to diverse application domains. We described the input and output requirements for each module and implemented the following decoupled modules: interface (for non-technical users), translator (using the ANTLR tool), composer (using a hierarchical planner) and executor (based on workflows). Keywords: SOA; service-oriented architecture; web service composition system; semantic web services; web services applications. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Zuñiga, J.C., Pérez-Alcázar, J.J., Digiampietri, L.A. and Barbin, S.E. (2014) ‘A loosely coupled architecture for automatic composition of web services applications’, Int. J. Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.241–251. Biographical notes: Juan Carlos Zuñiga received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of São Paulo. His research interests are related to web services, service composition and semantic web. José J. Pérez-Alcázar is a Professor at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, University of São Paulo. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. His research interests are related to artificial intelligence, databases, information systems and software engineering. Luciano A. Digiampietri is a Professor at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, University of São Paulo. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Campinas. His research interests are related to semantic web, databases, social network analysis, scientometrics and scientific workflows.