A Minimalist Approach to Semantic Annotations for Web Processes Compositions

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new approach to the automated composition of distributed processes described as semantic web services. Current approaches, such as those based on OWLS and WSMO, in spite of their expressive power, are hard to use in practice. Indeed, they require comprehensive and usually large ontological descriptions of the processes, and rather complex (and often inefficient) reasoning mechanisms. In our approach, we reduce to the minimum the usage of ontological descriptions of processes, so that we can perform a limited, but efficient and useful, semantic reasoning for composing web services. The key idea is to keep separate the procedural and the ontological descriptions, and to link them through semantic annotations. We define the formal framework, and propose a technique that can exploit simple reasoning mechanisms at the ontological level, integrated with effective reasoning mechanisms devised for procedural descriptions of web services.

Goal Preservation by Choreography-Driven Matchmaking

“…Temporal logic is used to express both the constraints and the goal to achieve, enabling the automatic synthesis of a composition of activities. Finally, works like [18,6] propose approaches for goal-driven service composition based on planning. However, this task is accomplished without reference to any choreography.…”

“…However, this task is accomplished without reference to any choreography. In particular, in [18] the composition phase and the semantic reasoning phase (carried on on inputs and outputs) are separated and the latter is performed on a local basis only.…”

Service selection by choreography-driven matching

“…Let us introduce, as an example, a simple choreography (see Figure 1) that rules a flight reservation protocol, inspired to [24], with two roles: a Buyer and a Seller. The buyer sends a request to search for flights, specifying the departure location, the destination, and date.…”

“…Works like [24,9] propose approaches for goal-driven service composition based on planning. However, the task is accomplished without reference to any choreography.…”

“…However, the task is accomplished without reference to any choreography. In particular, in [24] the composition and the semantic reasoning phases (carried on on inputs and outputs) are separated and the latter is performed on a local basis only. In [14,19] web services are composed by composing their interaction protocols in a social framework, by means of a temporal logic.…”