Semantic Service Mediation

The service mediation that decouples service interactions is a key component in supporting the implementation of SOA solutions cross enterprises. The decoupling is achieved by having the consumers and providers to interact via an intermediary. The earliest service mediations are keyword and value-based, which require both service providers and consumers to adhere same data formats in defining service interfaces and requests. This requirement makes it inadequate for supporting interactions among services in heterogeneous and dynamic environments. In order to overcome this limitation, semantics are introduced into service mediations, for more flexible service matchings. In this paper, we proposed a novel semantic service mediation. Different from existing semantic service mediations, our system uses ontologies not only for one-to-one service matchings, but also for one-to-multiple service matchings. By performing service correlation systematically as part of the service mediation, services can be composted automatically, without any programming efforts (neither composition rules nor process models). We argue that a service mediator like ours enables more flexible and on-demand mediation among services.