Semantic Web data description and discovery

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.

1. Introduction

The World Wide Web has evolved from a collection of interlinked static pages to a dynamic environment whereby services and data can be registered, discovered, selected and invoked in a seamless fashion. The latest evolutionary pattern that is taking shape in the area of Web technologies is the use of semantically enriched information that allows for customizable service and data provision in Web enabled environments. Over the past couple of years we are experiencing the emergence of new publish/subscribe protocols for Web Services. These include the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) [17], [19], the Universal Description Discovery, and Invocation (UDDI) [18], and the Business Process Enactment Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), to name a few. However, very little work has been reported on the use of ontological information that would assist, first to associate contextual information with the offered services, and second to dynamically bind data with services according to the environment they are invoked and used in.