The emergence of Semantic Web Services is stimulating the need for modern enterprises to efficiently and rapidly develop and deliver machineprocessable and machine-interpretable value-added services in order to automate a variety of tasks on the Web. However, semantic-based services are scarcely adopted and utilised as there are few real-life examples that demonstrate the possibilities and benefits of such services. Furthermore, there is a lack of service creation frameworks and technical platforms that purport to guide and promote simple, flexible, rapid, and unified engineering of semantic-based services. In addition, current semantic service platforms do not support the construction of semantic services that are intelligent beyond the application of ontologies. In this position paper, preliminary efforts that seek to address the challenges of simplifying and speeding-up the engineering process of intelligent semantic services are presented. The goal of the work presented in this paper is about providing service providers, designers, and consumers with simple, unified, and yet simple tools that can aid in the technical implementation of intelligent semantic-based services. The main contributions envisioned from this research is a conceptual service creation framework called iSemServ and a technological service creation platform, which is intended to simplify and support the phases of building intelligent semantic services in an integrated manner. The proposed research adopts a quantitative approach with the main focus on model-building, prototypes, laboratory experiments, and computer-based simulations.
The benefits of incorporating Semantic Web Services in web applications are well documented. However, both the real-world implementation and adoption of these services are still rather limited in practice. This is despite the promises that extend syntactic Web services with capabilities such as automatic service discovery, composition, and execution. Some of the barriers to the real-world implementation are the complexities and tool support related to the development of Semantic Web Services. In this article, the main challenge that is addressed is the tight coupling of existing Semantic Web Services (SWS) development platforms to specific semantic description languages and service description languages, which unintentionally lead to unbending service development environments. The main contribution in this article is therefore a model-driven approach called iSemServ that exploits mature technologies, such as UML, and model-transformation techniques for simplifying and semi-automating the development of SWS using description languages of choice, such as Web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S) and Web Application Description Language (WADL). A design science research methodology was employed in conducting the study. The suggested approach was practically implemented as an Eclipse plug-in and evaluated based on a real-world use case scenario and comparative analysis of related solutions. The evaluation results show that our proposed solution is relevant and appropriate in aiding the semi-automatic development of SWS, albeit with a number of limitations that could be addressed by extending the proposed practical solution.
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