Semantic web services discovery regarded as a constraint satisfaction problem

Abstract

The web services discovery is a fundamental problem in semantic web services. The problem is to find services that can be combinedto form an admissible answer to a query. At the same time, constraint satisfaction is recognized as a fundamental problem in artificial intelligence. In this paper, we will investigate the connection between both problems. We will show that they are the same problem despite theirvery different formulation. The reason is that they can be recast as the following fundamental algebraic problem: given two relational structuresA and B, is there a homomorphism h : A → B? In our approach, the proposed homomorphism is a labelled graph homomorphism. The latteris based on simple conceptual graph which is considered as the kernel of most knowledge representation formalism built upon Sowa's model. Reasoning in this model can be expressed by a graph homomorphism.