Semantic Web data description and discovery

Abstract

Currently we are experiencing the emergence of the fourth generation of the World Wide Web which is geared towards service and data provision using semantic and ontological information. Specifically, the objective is for data available on the Web to be described, retrieved, and used using semantic and contextual information. This paper presents a framework that allows such a polymorphic service provision through the introduction of user personas, semantic data descriptions that extend the WSDL and the UDDI protocols. In this way, Web data content is associated at run-time with different services and presentation manifests, according to the context and the environment it is invoked and used in. The framework and its associated architecture have been implemented in a prototype system that utilizes Web services technology.