Discovering semantic web services with process specifications

Abstract

Service discovery is one of the crucial issues for service-oriented architectural model. Recently the trend is towards semantic discovery by which semantic descriptions are the basis for service matchmaking instead of simple search based on service attributes. OWL-S is a widely adopted semantic specification for Web Services which comprises three profiles. Among those, process model is the profile that describes dynamic behaviour of Web Services in terms of functional aspects and process flows, and is generally aimed for service enactment, composition, and monitoring. This paper presents a new approach to use OWL-S process model for service discovery purpose. A Web Service can have its internal process described as an OWL-S process model specification, and a service consumer can query for a Web Service with a particular process detail. Matchmaking will be based on flexible ontological matching and evaluation of constraints on the functional behaviour and process flow of the Web Service. The architecture for process-based discovery is also presented. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2006.