Abstract

Early advances in the field of quantum computing have provided new opportunities to tackle intricate problems in diverse areas as cryptography, optimization, and simulation. However, current methodologies employed in quantum computing often require, among other things, a broad understanding of quantum hardware and low-level programming languages, posing challenges to software developers in effectively creating and implementing quantum services. This paper advocates the adoption of Software Engineering principles in the field of quantum computing, thereby establishing a higher level of hardware abstraction that allows developers to focus on application development. With this proposal, developers will be able to design and deploy quantum services with less effort, similar to the facilitation provided by Service-Oriented Computing in the development of conventional software services. The present study introduces a Continuous Deployment strategy adapted to the development of quantum services, which covers the creation and deployment of such services. For this purpose, an extension of the OpenAPI Specification is proposed that allows the generation of services implementing quantum algorithms. The proposal was validated through the creation of an API with diverse quantum algorithm implementations, and evaluated through a survey of various developers and students who were introduced to the tool, with positive results.