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intelligence of the SCM Engine will largely depend
on the use of the COMANCHE ontology. In this
context, the SCM Engine will select service
components (i.e. SW Services and Internet Services)
and will synthesise Composite Service Descriptions
(CSDs). A Composite Service Description (CSD) is
the specification of the software configuration of a
Home Environment. It specifies which SW Services
(SW Components) will need to be installed on which
devices of the Home Environment, and how these
services will need to be configured on each device.
SCM procedures are typically triggered by device
agents on the SCM GW. Configuration is done
through the Device Agent entity that realises a web
service based interface towards the SCM engine.
The main functional purpose of the Service
Selector is the matching of SCM needs to Service
Profiles. SCM requirements will be represented by
the instantiations of the Home Environment and
Context Ontology (integrated in the COMANCHE
ontology). Service Profiles will be represented by
the instantiations of the Service Profile Ontology
(also integrated in the COMANCHE ontology).
The main functional purpose of the Service
Composer is the synthesis of Composite Service
Descriptions (CSDs). A successful, executable
composition correctly combines and configures a set
of compatible components to achieve the
composition’s overall goal. Full automation of
composition is still the object of ongoing, highly
speculative research with little short-term hope
(Kim, 2004). However, partial automation of
composition, with a human controller as the most
significant decision mechanism, seems a feasible
goal. The Service Composer will adopt a user
interactive approach for service composition and
configuration. Relatively simple, fully automated
SCM cases will only be considered for a limited set
of remote diagnostics and repair applications. The
Service Composer functionality will be primarily
based on the use of the Service Process Model. User
input as well as instantiations of the Home
Environment and Context Ontology and User and
Business Domain Ontology will be queried and
exploited for this purpose.
The SCV (Service Consistency Validator)
Interface will be used for interacting with the
Service Consistency Validator of the SCM Provider
Infrastructure. The SCV Interface will be internal to
the SCM Provider infrastructure. The SCM Engine
will make use of this interface in order to request the
execution of off-line consistency validation tests
with regard to a formulated CSD. The output of
these tests will be communicated by the Consistency
Validator to the SCM Engine.
The UIC (User Input Collection) Interface will
serve interactions with users. The UIC Interface will
be external to the SCM Provider infrastructure. It
will be based on the use of Web Services (WSDL,
SOAP). The UIC Interface will allow the interaction
of the SCM Engine with the back-end of a Web
Server or a Home Gateway or any other network
element exposing a user interface.
The EC (Event Collection) Interface will allow
the collection of SCM-related events. These events
will be collected from Home Service Providers (e.g.
a device fault event reported by a remote diagnostics
service provider, a request for a service upgrade,
etc), home gateways (e.g. a malfunction detection
event), and SCM Gateways (Service Execution
Errors). Apart from the interface with the SCM
Gateways allowing the notification of Service
Execution Errors, all other interfaces with Home
Service Providers, and Home Gateways will be
considered as proprietary and out of the scope of the
present specification.
The KMF Interface is the Knowledge
Management Framework interface. All requests that
need to be done to the KMF will be carried out by
this interface. This includes fetching ontology
instantiations and the update of the Knowledge Base
according to events received by the SCM Engine’s
EC Interface.
The SCM Flow Manager is responsible for the
coordination of the operations performed by the
SCM Engine. All messages and flows are controlled
by this component, so that the procedures the SCM
Engine is responsible for can be carried out
successfully.
4 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
FRAMEWORK
The Knowledge Management Framework (KMF) is
responsible for formulating and maintaining valid
and consistent instantiations of the COMANCHE
ontology. These instantiations are created through
discovering and collecting/importing knowledge
from Attribute Providers and Context Providers as
depicted in
Figure 7. The KMF is composed of a
number of components that are described in detail
bellow:
Attribute Providers. The Attribute Providers
publish and supply persistent knowledge
instantiations relating to services, user profiles, and
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