A framework for deriving semantic web services

  • Authors:

  • David Bell;Sergio Cesare;Nicola Iacovelli;Mark Lycett;Antonio Merico

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK UB8 3PH;Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK UB8 3PH;Svimservice S.p.A., Bari, Italy 70123;Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK UB8 3PH;Svimservice S.p.A., Bari, Italy 70123

  • Venue:
  • Information Systems Frontiers
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Web service-based development represents an emerging approach for the development of distributed information systems. Web services have been mainly applied by software practitioners as a means to modularize system functionality that can be offered across a network (e.g., intranet and/or the Internet). Although web services have been predominantly developed as a technical solution for integrating software systems, there is a more business-oriented aspect that developers and enterprises need to deal with in order to benefit from the full potential of web services in an electronic market. This `ignored' aspect is the representation of the semantics underlying the services themselves as well as the `things' that the services manage. Currently languages like the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) provide the syntactic means to describe web services, but lack in providing a semantic underpinning. In order to harvest all the benefits of web services technology, a framework has been developed for deriving business semantics from syntactic descriptions of web services. The benefits of such a framework are two-fold. Firstly, the framework provides a way to gradually construct domain ontologies from previously defined technical services. Secondly, the framework enables the migration of syntactically defined web services toward semantic web services. The study follows a design research approach which (1) identifies the problem area and its relevance from an industrial case study and previous research, (2) develops the framework as a design artifact and (3) evaluates the application of the framework through a relevant scenario.