A Semantically Enabled Service Oriented Architecture

• Published in: Web Intelligence Meets Brain Informatics Vol. 4845; pp. 367 - 381
• Main Authors: Anicic, Darko, Brodie, Michael, de Bruijn, Jos, Fensel, Dieter, Haselwanter, Thomas, Hepp, Martin, Heymans, Stijn, Hoffmann, Jörg, Kerrigan, Mick, Kopecky, Jacek, Krummenacher, Reto, Lausen, Holger, Mocan, Adrian, Scicluna, James, Toma, Ioan, Zaremba, Michal
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Springer Berlin / Heidelberg 2007; Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Abstract State Machine; Artificial intelligence; Business Process Execution Language; Computing: general; Enterprise Application Integration; Fault Handling; Service Orient Architecture; User interface design & usability
• ISBN: 9783540770275; 3540770275
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77028-2_22

The researchers in DERI Innsbruck have been building an execution infrastructure for the Semantic Web Services (SWS) based on the Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm of loosely coupled components. While SOA is widely acknowledged for its potential to revolutionize the world of computing, that success depends on resolving several fundamental challenges, and especially in the case of open SOA environment the existing specifications do not address several issues. We aim in DERI Innsbruck to define a skeleton of the SWS system and implement the overall infrastructure with the aim of automating service discovery, negotiation, adaptation, composition, invocation, and monitoring as well as service interaction requiring data, protocol, and process mediation. We call this infrastructure a Semantically Enabled Service oriented Architecture (SESA). While there are already several specifications in the space for Web Services there are still elements missing, for example there is no specification describing how the particular components/services of the SWS infrastructure would work together. That work is carried out by DERI researchers in standardization bodies such as OASIS and W3C. In the near future a service-oriented world will consist of an uncountable number of services. Computation will involve services searching for services based on functional and non-functional requirements and an interoperating with those that they select. Services will not be able to interact automatically and SOAs will not scale without signification mechanization of a fixed set of components/services. Hence, machine processable semantics are critical for the next generation of computing, services and SOAs, to reach their full potential. The contribution of DERI Innsbruck is to define and implement the fixed set of services of an infrastructure that must be provided to enable a dynamic discovery, selection, mediation, invocation and inter-operation of the Semantic Web Services to facilitate the SOA revolution towards open environments. We recognize in DERI Innsburck that SOA outside of tightly controlled environment cannot succeed until/unless the semantics issues are addressed. Only with semantics can critical subtasks can be automated leaving humans to focus on higher level problems.