Web Services Discovery Utilizing Semantically Annotated WSDL

To make semantic Web services accessible to users, providers use registries to publish them. Unfortunately, the current registries use discovery mechanisms which are inefficient, as they do not support discovery based on the semantics of the services and thus lead to a considerable number of irrelevant matches. Semantic discovery and matching of services is a promising approach to address this challenge. This paper presents an algorithm to match a semantic Web service request described with SAWSDL against semantic Web service advertisements. The algorithm is novel in three fundamental aspects. First, the similarity among semantic Web service properties, such as inputs and outputs, is evaluated using Tversky's model which is based on concepts (classes), their semantic relationships, and their common and distinguishing features (properties). Second, the algorithm, not only takes into account services' inputs and outputs, but it also considers the functionality of services. Finally, the algorithm is able to match a semantic Web service request against advertisements that are annotated with concepts that are with or without a common ontological commitment. In other words, it can evaluate the similarity of concepts defined in the context of different ontologies.