The Future of Web Services

Much of the Web's success can be attributed to its simplicity. It offers a straightforward means by which static information could be published and interconnected on a global basis. The Web Services initiative effectively adds computational objects to the static information of yesterday's Web and as such offers a distributed services capability over a network. Web Services have the potential to create new paradigms for both the delivery of software capabilities and the models by which networked enterprises will trade.Today's Web Services technology, useful though it is, will be enhanced over the next 2-5 years by the harnessing of Semantic Web technology to deliver a step change in capability. Web Services provide an easy way to make existing (or indeed new) components available to applications via the Internet. However, currently, Web Services are essentially described using semi-structured natural language mechanisms, which means that considerable human intervention is needed to find and combine Web Services into an end application.The Semantic Web will enable the accessing of Web resources by semantic content rather than just by keywords. Resources (in this case Web Services) are defined in such a way that they can be automatically ‘understood’ and processed by machine. This will enable the realisation of Semantic Web Services, involving the automation of service discovery, acquisition, composition and monitoring. Software agents will be able automatically to create new services from already published services, with potentially huge implications for models of eBusiness.Having identified limitations in current Web Services technology, this paper will survey existing research in Semantic Web Services, most notably USA's DAML-S initiative and the European WSMF work, and describe BT's research into creating a set of tools to support next-generation Semantic Web Services.

[1]  Dieter Fensel,et al.  Ontologies: A silver bullet for knowledge management and electronic commerce , 2002 .

[2]  Bob J. Wielinga,et al.  CommonKADS: a comprehensive methodology for KBS development , 1994, IEEE Expert.

[3]  Bernhard Bauer,et al.  Extending UML for agents , 2000 .

[4]  Michael N. Huhns,et al.  Interaction-Oriented Programming , 2000, AOSE.

[5]  Berthold Daum,et al.  System Architecture with XML , 2002 .

[6]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  Analysis and Design using MaSE and agentTool , 2001 .

[7]  James A. Hendler,et al.  The Semantic Web" in Scientific American , 2001 .

[8]  Dieter Fensel,et al.  Conclusions: Ontology‐driven Knowledge Management – Towards the Semantic Web? , 2003 .

[9]  R. Laddaga.  Creating robust software through self-adaptation , 1999, IEEE Intelligent Systems and their Applications.

[10]  John Hasling.  Group discussion and decision making , 1975 .

[11]  Marlon Dumas,et al.  Pattern Based Analysis of BPEL4WS , 2002 .

[12]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  A translation approach to portable ontology specifications , 1993, Knowl. Acquis..

[13]  Dieter Fensel,et al.  Towards the Semantic Web: Ontology-driven Knowledge Management , 2002 .

[14]  Matjaz B. Juric,et al.  Business process execution language for web services , 2004 .

[15]  L. Shapley,et al.  Optimizing group judgmental accuracy in the presence of interdependencies , 1984 .

[16]  James A. Hendler,et al.  Semi-automatic Composition ofWeb Services using Semantic Descriptions , 2003, WSMAI.

[17]  Jean-Marc Jézéquel,et al.  Making Components Contract Aware , 1999, Computer.

[18]  D. Box,et al.  Simple object access protocol (SOAP) 1.1 , 2000 .

[19]  Michael Winikoff,et al.  Prometheus: A Methodology for Developing Intelligent Agents , 2002, AOSE.

[20]  Ivar Jacobson,et al.  The Unified Modeling Language User Guide , 1998, J. Database Manag..

[21]  Frank Leymann,et al.  Web services: Distributed applications without limits - An Outline , 2003 .

[22]  Carlos Angel Iglesias,et al.  A Survey of Agent-Oriented Methodologies , 1998, ATAL.

[23]  Paul Muschamp.  An introduction to Web Services , 2004 .

[24]  John F. Sowa,et al.  Conceptual Graphs for Knowledge Representation , 1993, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[25]  Fausto Giunchiglia,et al.  A knowledge level software engineering methodology for agent oriented programming , 2001, AGENTS '01.

[26]  Brad J. Cox,et al.  Planning the software industrial revolution , 1990, IEEE Software.

[27]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  A framework for representing knowledge , 1974 .

[28]  Ian Horrocks,et al.  The Semantic Web: The Roles of XML and RDF , 2000, IEEE Internet Comput..

[29]  James A. Hendler,et al.  Dynamic Ontologies on the Web , 2000, AAAI/IAAI.

[30]  Dieter Fensel,et al.  The Web Service Modeling Framework WSMF , 2002, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[31]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  A framework for representing knowledge" in the psychology of computer vision , 1975 .

[32]  Frank Leymann,et al.  Web services and business process management , 2002, IBM Syst. J..

[33]  Frank van Harmelen,et al.  Sesame: A Generic Architecture for Storing and Querying RDF and RDF Schema , 2002, SEMWEB.

[34]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  A Translation Approach to Portable Ontologies , 1993 .