Stefania Galizia

IRS-III: A broker-based approach to semantic Web services

A factor limiting the take up of Web services is that all tasks associated with the creation of an application, for example, finding, composing, and resolving mismatches between Web services have to be carried out by a software developer. Semantic Web services is a combination of semantic Web and Web service technologies that promise to alleviate these problems. In this paper we describe IRS-III, a framework for creating and executing semantic Web services, which takes a semantic broker-based approach to mediating between service requesters and service providers. We describe the overall approach and the components of IRS-III from an ontological and architectural viewpoint. We then illustrate our approach through an application in the eGovernment domain.

IRS-III: a broker for semantic web services based applications

In this paper we describe IRS-III which takes a semantic broker based approach to creating applications from Semantic Web Services by mediating between a service requester and one or more service providers. Business organisations can view Semantic Web Services as the basic mechanism for integrating data and processes across applications on the Web. This paper extends previous publications on IRS by providing an overall description of our framework from the point of view of application development. More specifically, we describe the IRS-III methodology for building applications using Semantic Web Services and illustrate our approach through a use case on e-government.

Choreography in IRS-III – coping with heterogeneous interaction patterns in web services

In this paper we describe how we handle heterogeneity in web service interaction through a choreography mechanism that we have developed for IRS-III. IRS-III is a framework and platform for developing semantic web services which utilizes the WSMO ontology. The overall design of our choreography framework is based on: the use of ontologies and state, IRS-III playing the role of a broker, differentiating between communication direction and which actor has the initiative, having representations which can be executed, a formal semantics, and the ability to suspend communication. Our framework has a full implementation which we illustrate through an example application.

Deploying semantic web services-based applications in the e-government domain

Joining up services in e-Government usually implies governmental agencies acting in concert without a central control regime. This requires to the sharing scattered and heterogeneous data. Semantic Web Service (SWS) technology can help to integrate, mediate and reason between these datasets. However, since a few real-world applications have been developed, it is still unclear which are the actual benefits and issues of adopting such a technology in the e-Government domain. In this paper, we contribute to raising awareness of the potential benefits in the e-Government community by analyzing motivations, requirements and expected results, before proposing a reusable SWS-based framework. We demonstrate the application of this framework by showing how integration and interoperability emerge from this model through a cooperative and multi-viewpoint methodology. Finally, we illustrate added values and lessons learned by two compelling case studies: a change of circumstances notification system and a GIS-based emergency planning system, and describe key challenges which remain to be addressed.

A Formal Model for Classifying Trusted Semantic Web Services

Semantic Web Services (SWS) aim to alleviate Web service limitations, by combining Web service technologies with the potential of Semantic Web. Several open issues have to be tackled yet, in order to enable a safe and efficient Web services selection. One of them is represented by trust. In this paper, we introduce a trust definition and formalize a model for managing trust in SWS. The model approaches the selection of trusted Web services as a classification problem, and it is realized by an ontology, which extends WSMO. A prototype is deployed, in order to give a proof of concept of our approach.

A DLP system with object-oriented features

The paper presents DLV+ a Disjunctive Logic Programming system with object-oriented constructs, including classes, objects, (multiple) inheritance, and types. DLV+ is built on top of DLV (a state-of-the art DLP system), and provides a graphical user interface that allows to specify, update, browse, query, and reason on knowledge bases. Two strong points of the system are the powerful type-checking mechanism, and the advanced interface for visual querying.

A Framework for Selecting Trusted Semantic Web Services

Trusted semantic Web services might play a key role in the Future Internet. In this paper, we describe WSTO our comprehensive trust based framework supporting the selection and invocation of semantic Web services. Our framework combines the Web Services Modelling Ontology (WSMO) with a classification framework developed in the IBROW project. Our approach is generic enough to be able to account for a wide variety of trust models including those based on security, policy and end-user recommendations. Expanding on earlier work within this paper, we describe the model in detail.

The Choreography Model for IRS-III

This paper describes how we manage the interaction between different heterogeneous web services through choreographies within IRS-III. IRS-III is a framework and platform for developing WSMO based semantic web services. Our choreography framework is based on the KADS system-client co-operation model that represents communication through two dimensions: the message direction and which actor has the initiative. Our formalism is state based and is thus compliant with Abstract State Machine (ASM) model used within WSMO. In addition to describing our approach in this paper we provide a formal semantics for IRS Choreography and a full implementation which we illustrate through an example application.