Adding Semantics to Web Services (cancelled)

Despite being based on widely accepted standards, Web service technology has not realized its promise for internet-based integration between organizations. A significant stumbling block in this regard is the absence of a formal description of the meaning of the data exchanged by Web services. By implication, automatic discovery and automatic composition of Web services becomes unrealistic because of the potentially different interpretations of service descriptions and data exchanged at their interfaces. Semantic Web Services combines Semantic Web and Web service technologies to overcome these issues, and make services on the Web more “intelligent”. Based on semantic description frameworks, intelligent mechanisms are applied for automated discovery, composition, execution, and management of Web services. The tutorial explains how the application of semantics to Web services can overcome the deficiencies of the current Web Services technology stack of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI as a platform for integration, and how semantics in Web services can make them more “intelligent”, thus allowing automatic tasks (e.g. discovery, selection, composition, mediation, execution, monitoring, etc.) to be performed with respect to Web services. The Web Service Modelling Ontology provides the central theme for the tutorial. Moving from the conceptual model underlying WSMO, the tutorial goes on to explain the syntax and semantics of the languages used to express WSMO descriptions, before presenting and demonstrating reference implementations. The tutorial finishes with a hands-on session where attendees get a chance to create their own WSMO based applications and use the exiting WSMO-enabled systems.

Organization

The tutorial is a one-day activity co-located with ECOWS 2005. It will be held on Monday 14 November 2005 (to be confirmed).

For registration please enter the ECOWS registration procedure.

For further organizational information, e.g. regarding material and schedule, please contact the organizers directly.

Organizer / Presenters

John Domingue, Open University
E-mail: j.b.domingue@open.ac.uk

Dumitru Roman, DERI Innsbruck
E-mail: dumitru.roman@deri.org

Michal Zaremba, DERI Galway
E-mail: michal.zaremba@deri.org

Learning Objectives

Tutorial participants will gain a detailed understanding of the aims and challenges of Semantic Web Services, They will also become familiar with the design and specification of WSMO, the existing tools and implementations for WSMO, and gain an insight how they could apply Semantic Web Service technologies to their specific work or project.

Target Audience

The tutorial targets academics, industrial researchers, and developers interested in developing the next generation of Web service. Many of the issues addressed in the proposed tutorial go to the heart of how the Web can be meaningfully used as a platform for high-value, transactional, autonomic, and secure business applications. There are no specific perquisites on the knowledge that attendees require in terms of Semantic Web Services. The tutorial is self sufficient and starts with a brief description of Web Services going on to how Semantic Web Services provide an approach to these problems building on the existing Web Services technology stack.

Short Bio of presenters

John Domingue is the Deputy Director of the Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University, UK. He has published over 80 refereed articles in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Human Computer Interaction; he is involved in a number of projects and is currently a Co Principle Investigator on the UK EPSRC funded Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) project, the Scientific Director of the EU funded Integrated Project on Semantic Web Services DIP, and a chair of the WSMO working group.

Dumitru Roman is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a researcher at Digital Enterprise Research Institute Innsbruck. He is a component leader in the Adaptive Service Grid EU-funded project and the coordinator of the Web Service Modeling Ontology Working Group. In addition, he is a member of WSML and WSMX working groups. He is mainly interested in the conceptual modelling of semantic web services and different languages for specifying choreographies and orchestrations in the context of semantic web services. He is the main editor of the Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO) and co-authored many WSMO related documents. Before joining DERI Innsbruck, he received a Diploma Engineer in Computer Science from the University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. His diploma thesis tackled the problem of composition of semantically enabled services in the context of an open agent architecture using planning techniques. During the University years, he was involved also in reconfigurable hardware research. He is also a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA).

Michal Zaremba is a post-doctoral researcher at the National University of Ireland, Galway and leader of Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) cluster, currently driving research on the system architecture for Semantic Web Services. Michal Zaremba holds a Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering at the National University of Ireland and M.Sc. degree in computer science and management at the Wroclaw University of Technology in Poland. Over the last couple of years he has been involved in a number of EU projects such as DIP, Knowledge Web, SWWS, Moment, Smartisan and others. Michal Zaremba is also a contributor to WSMO and WSMX working groups. In WSMX working group he is defining the conceptual model of Semantic Web Services system, designing execution semantics and proposing the architecture for the system infrastructure. He is a chief architect and a leading developer of an open source implementation of the WSMX system, coordinating and controlling international group of over twenty developers across Europe to continue progress on platform development. Michal Zaremba is a contributor to specifications on joint EU-USA research on Semantic Web Services Architecture Committee and Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) submission to W3C. His current research interests include Semantic Web Services and its Architectures, eBusiness, Enterprise Application Integration, B2B Integration as well as Business Process Management. He has published several papers, given numerous presentations and a couple of tutorials related to Semantic Web Services and eBusiness at academic conferences and workshops.