Semantic Web Services

verfasst von: Dieter Fensel, Federico Michele Facca, Elena Simperl, Ioan Toma

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

A paradigm shift is taking place in computer science: one generation ago, we learned to abstract from hardware to software, now we are abstracting from software to serviceware implemented through service-oriented computing. Yet ensuring interoperability in open, heterogeneous, and dynamically changing environments, such as the Internet, remains a major challenge for actual machine-to-machine integration. Usually significant problems in aligning data, processes, and protocols appear as soon as a specific piece of functionality is used within a different application context.

The Semantic Web Services (SWS) approach is about describing services with metadata on the basis of domain ontologies as a means to enable their automatic location, execution, combination, and use. Fensel and his coauthors provide a comprehensive overview of SWS in line with actual industrial practice. They introduce the main sociotechnological components that ground the SWS vision (like Web Science, Service Science, and service-oriented architectures) and several approaches that realize it, e.g. the Web Service Modeling Framework, OWL-S, and RESTful services. The real-world relevance is emphasized through a series of case studies from large-scale R&D projects and a business-oriented proposition from the SWS technology provider Seekda.

Each chapter of the book is structured according to a predefined template, covering both theoretical and practical aspects, and including walk-through examples and hands-on exercises. Additional learning material is available on the book website www.swsbook.org. With its additional features, the book is ideally suited as the basis for courses or self-study in this field, and it may also serve as a reference for researchers looking for a state-of-the-art overview of formalisms, methods, tools, and applications related to SWS.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Scientific and Technological Foundations of Semantic Web Services

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction

Abstract

The principled combination of semantic and service-oriented technologies has been motivated by the need to provide robust and scalable interoperability solutions in both closed and open IT environments. Several research efforts have addressed the formal semantic descriptions of computational artifacts in order to automate their use and reuse in software systems. Based on previous works in formal software specification and knowledge engineering, the latest development in this area is the concept of “Semantic Web Services” (SWS), which foresees the usage of service descriptions via machine-understandable metadata on the basis of domain ontologies as a means to enable their automatic location, execution, combination and usage. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Semantic Web Services in step with the actual practice in the field. It introduces the main socio-technological components that ground the Semantic Web Services vision (Web and service science, but also Web services in their SOAP and REST version) and several approaches realizing it, as well as its recent resource-oriented extensions and underlying communication and coordination infrastructure. The real-world relevance is pinpointed through a series of case studies in large-scale R&D projects from the last years and a business-oriented proposition by the Semantic Web Services technology provider Seekda.