TRENDS OF SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES AND BUSINESS

SUPPORT

Soon Jae Kwon

, Jin Sung Kim

and Emy Elyanee Mustapha

Department of Business Administration, Daegu University, 712-714, Daegu, South Korea

School of Business Administration, Jeonju University, 303 Cheonjam-Ro

Wansan-Gu, Jeonju, 560-759, Jeonbuk, South Korea

Keywords: Semantic web, Business application, Decision support, Knowledge management.

Abstract: The successful expansion of web services made it more complex and required more interventions from

users. Many researchers have tried to improve the comprehension ability of computers in supporting an

intelligent web service. One approach is by enriching the information with machine understandable

semantics. They applied ontology design, intelligent reasoning and other logical representation schemes to

design an infrastructure of the semantic web. Semantic web is considered as an intelligent access to

understanding, transforming, storing, retrieving, and processing the information gathered from

heterogeneous, distributed web resources. The purpose of this study is to investigate the research trends on

semantic web applications.

1 INTRODUCTION

Business transactions over the web are increasing

rapidly, and are allowing the users to reach the

information of product/service across a global

market (Trastour, Bartolini, and Preist, 2003).

However with more information available, more

human interventions are needed to find, access, and

understand. Therefore as the web grows in both size

and diversity, there is an increased need to automate

the web services (García-Sánchez, Valencia-García,

Martínez-Béjar, and Fernández-Breis, 2009). This is

because most of contents presented on the web are

primarily shown in a natural language form and

machine could not understand it. Therefore, a wide

gap has emerged between information machine

executable and information human readable (Ding,

Fensel, Klein, and Omelayenko, 2002). In order to

narrow the gap, semantic web was proposed and it

enabled the users to access the web resources

through semantic contents rather than the keywords

(Berners-Lee, Handler, and Lassila, 2001). The goal

of this study is firstly to explore the problems that

restrict the applications of web services and the

basic concepts, languages, and tools of the semantic

web. Then we highlight some of the researches,

solutions, and projects that have attempted to

combine the semantic web and business support, and

find out the pros and cons of the approaches.

2 SEMANTIC WEB

TECHNOLOGIES AND

SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES

2.1 Web Services Technologies

Web service is a phrase used to describe the way

and/or architecture in which assembled services can

be presented and used on a network. On the World

Wide Web, the web services can communicate with

other services (Muschamp, 2004), (Turban, King,

Mckay, Lee, and Viehland, 2008). The major

technologies supporting the current web services

include eXtensible Markup Language (XML),

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Universal

Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), and

Web Services Description Language (WSDL)

(Turban, King, Mckay, Lee, and Viehland, 2008).

Davies et al. (Davies, Fensel, and Richardson, 2004)

classified these technologies into three principal

building blocks which are XML Messaging

Capability, Service Description Capability and

Service Registration Capability. However, in spite of

the capabilities of the major web technologies

275

Kwon S., Kim J. and Mustapha E..

TRENDS OF SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES AND BUSINESS SUPPORT.

DOI: 10.5220/0003583402750279

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies (ICSOFT-2011), pages 275-279

ISBN: 978-989-8425-76-8

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

proposed by Davies et al. (Davies, Fensel, and

Richardson, 2004), there were limitations. For

example, UDDI does not provide a rich enough

description of a web service. In addition, even

though WSDL could describe the input/output

format of a web service, it has no crucial effects on

the web services execution and business process. In

response to these limitations, Tim Berners-Lee

referred to the future of the web as the ‘semantic

web’ – a second generation of the web (Berners-Lee,

Handler, and Lassila, 2001).

2.2 Semantic Web and Ontology

Representation

The semantic web documents are annotated with

meta-information along with human-readable

information, so that computers are able to cooperate

with the data in a similar process humans do

(García-Sánchez, Valencia-García, Martínez-Béjar,

and Fernández-Breis, 2009), (Davies, Fensel, and

Richardson, 2004). For this, ontology is the

backbone technology in producing semantic web

information (García-Sánchez, Valencia-García,

Martínez-Béjar, and Fernández-Breis, 2009).

2.2.1 Ontology

The widely used definition of ontology identifies the

concept of ontology as “a formal, explicit

specification of a shared conceptualization (Gruber,

1995)” (Ding, Fensel, Klein, and Omelayenko,

2002). Ontology is composed of five main

components which are Concepts, Relations,

Functions, Axioms and Instances (Gruber, 1995). A

Concept means a set of entities within a specific

domain. Then the Relations represent the interaction

between concepts of the domain. Functions mean

and/or formalize specific relations in which the nth

element of the relationship is unique for the n-1

preceding elements. Axioms are declarations that

allow defining constraints among concepts and

relations. Instances represent specific elements of

concepts (Gruber, 1995).

2.2.2 KIF

Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) is one of

knowledge representation approaches designed with

the goal of graphically and/or textually representing

knowledge. These approaches include Concept Map

(CM), Semantic Networks, Conceptual Graphs

(CGs), KIF, the Common Logic (CL) Standard

Initiative, Unified Modeling Language (UML), and

Object-Process Methodology (OPM) (Dori, 2004).

KIF is a computer-oriented language designed for

the interchange of knowledge among disparate

computer application/systems. KIF has essential

features which allow users to make knowledge

representation decisions clear and allows the users to

establish new knowledge representation without

changing the language (Stanford Logic Group).

2.2.3 XML

XML is regarded as a mechanism for standardized

representation of other languages. It allows the users

to define their own (application-specific) markup

tags, attributes, data structure, and extract data from

documents (Ribiere and Charlton, 2002). Even

though XML is useful for data exchanging and

formalizing the structure of web documents, it states

nothing about semantics and its use (Davies, Fensel,

and Richardson, 2004).

2.2.4 RDF and RDF Schema

XML was designed to structure data, but the

resource description framework (RDF) was designed

to tell something about the data. The data

represented by RDF is called ‘meta data’.

Meanwhile, RDFS describes how to use RDF to

build RDF vocabularies. Therefore, RDFS is

regarded as a mechanism that helps the web service

developers to define a particular vocabulary for RDF

data and specify the kinds of objects to which there

attributes can be applied (Broekstra and Kampman,

2001). RDF helps in sharing knowledge (ontology)

through the web and reuse knowledge to define

other knowledge (Ribiere and Charlton, 2002).

2.2.5 Web Ontology Language (OWL)

If web users want to compare/match conceptual

information across the distributed knowledge-based

on the web, ontology should support the process. To

compare the information on the web, ontology has a

general mechanism to discover common meaning

(Alesso and Smith, 2005). OWL allows specifying a

terminological hierarchy using restricted set of first-

order formulas (Hsu, 2009). Therefore, OWL

facilitates greater machine readability of web

content than those supported by XML, RDF, and

RDFS (Alesso and Smith, 2005).

2.3 Semantic Web Services (SWS)

Semantic web service is regarded as a combination

of semantic web and web services. With regard to

ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies

276

web services interoperation and composition, the use

of semantic web technology in expressing web

services provide the possibility of an automated way

to achieve a specific user requirement (Davies,

Fensel, and Richardson, 2004).

3 SEMANTIC WEB-BASED

BUSINESS SUPPORT

3.1 Web Services Technologies

3.1.1 Ontology-based Semantic Web

Services

García-Sánchez et al. (García-Sánchez, Valencia-

García, Martínez-Béjar, and Fernández-Breis, 2009)

proposed the foundation of ontology-centered

semantic web services (SWS) which includes the

Business Processes and interaction between Human

Users and Intelligent Agents (IA) (García-Sánchez,

Valencia-García, Martínez-Béjar, and Fernández-

Breis, 2009). Firstly, the ontology operates as the

‘glue’ that binds together the other components.

Secondly, the ontology acts as universal

vocabularies so that web services and intelligent

agents can share knowledge. Thirdly, the ontology is

useful to semantically describe web service

capabilities and processes. Lastly, the negotiation

processes between agents may take place in

accordance with protocols represented in the

ontology. García-Sánchez et al. (García-Sánchez,

Valencia-García, Martínez-Béjar, and Fernández-

Breis, 2009) also proposed a multi-tier framework

for SWS. The framework is composed of four layers

which are Business Logic Layer, Semantic Web

Service Layer, Intelligent Agents layer, and

Application Layer.

3.1.2 DAML-S

DAML-S is a RDF-based language which defines

ontology through a set of basic classes and

properties. DAML-S especially provides the

required semantics to enable Semantic Web Services

(SWS). The DAML-S ontology for web services has

a resource and three key classes which are

ServiceProfile, ServiceModel and ServiceGrounding

(Davies, Fensel, and Richardson, 2004).

ServiceProfile informs us “what the service does.”

That is, it contains information that an agent would

require in order to determine whether the service

meets its needs.

3.1.3 Web Services Modeling Framework

(WSMF)

The recently proposed Web Services Modeling

Framework (WSMF) defines a fully developed

conceptual model for SWS. WSMF has two main

goals as follows. First, it defines description

elements for adding semantics to web services.

Second, it also defines description elements for

providing web services as a scalable infrastructure

for e-Commerce (Davies, Fensel, and Richardson,

2004). The four main elements of WSMF are

Ontologies, Capability repositories, Web services,

and Mediators.

3.1.4 Semantic Web Services and

Multi-agent System

García-Sánchez et al. (García-Sánchez, Valencia-

García, Martínez-Béjar, and Fernández-Breis, 2009)

proposed a framework for semantic web services

and multi-agent system (SEMMAS). The framework

consists of 7 agents and they are grouped in 3 main

categories. Firstly, the group consist of Service

owners/providers agents (Provider Agent and

Service Agent). Secondly, Service consumers agents

(Customer Agent, Discovery Agent and Selection

Agent). The consumers suggest their preferences and

state the goal. Discovery agent is in charge of

searching in the semantic web services repository.

Selection agent is in charge of selecting the most

relevant service from the set of services

recommended by the discovery agent. Thirdly are

the Framework management agents (Framework

Agent and Broker Agent). Framework Agent and

Broker Agent perform management tasks just like

Managers. Framework Agent is responsible for

checking and ensuring a correct role of the platform.

Broker agent has to resolve the interoperability

issues.

3.1.5 Ontology Editors and SWS Browser

Ontology editor helps web service developers to

build ontology. In details, it allows Inspecting,

Browsing, Codifying and Modifying of ontologies

and thus supports development and maintenance of

the ontologies (Grosso, Eriksson, Fergerson,

Gennari, Tu and Musen, 1999). In addition, aside

from offering editing support, semi-automated tools

in ontology development help SWS developers to

improve the overall productivity. By using the tools,

developer can discover new concepts and stipulate

relationships among concepts. Through the EU 5th

Framework Project entitled Semantic Web-enabled

TRENDS OF SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES AND BUSINESS SUPPORT

277

Web Services (SWWS), an SWS browser was

introduced to demonstrate the possibilities of using

semantics in Defining, Searching, Combining and

Invoking web services (Ball, 2004).

3.2 Semantics in Business

3.2.1 Knowledge-based Systems (KBS)

Due to dependent on various systems in business,

information is accumulated in data warehouse which

raised many problems in managing the information.

Therefore, many approaches were proposed to solve

those problems. Biletskiy & Ranganathan (Biletskiy

and Ranganathan, 2008) proposed an Invertable

Semantic/Software Application Development

Framework (ISADF) for the KBS. The Protégé-2000

manages the background domain ontology (RDFS).

ISADF can accept the input source documents in

forms of Excel tables, Word tables, formatted text,

and XML document.

3.2.2 Query on the Semantic Web

Fikes et al. (Fikes, Hayes, and Horrocks, 2004)

presented the OWL query language (OWL-QL) as a

standard protocol for query-answering in semantic

web services. It specifies the Semantic Relationships

among Query, Query answer, and the Knowledge

Base. Through the query-answering dialogues, it

supports the answering agent to execute the

automated reasoning facility to give answers for

queries. An OWL-QL query-answering dialogue is

initiated by a client sending a query to an OWL-QL

server. An OWL-QL query is an object necessarily

containing a query pattern consisting of a collection

of OWL sentences in which some URI refers are

considered to be variables.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

This study is a discussion about the research trends

on semantic web and its applications in business.

The study is focused on the characteristics of the

web services, web services technologies, semantic

web technologies, and semantic web services.

Through the study, we were able to know that

semantic web technology is trying to offer a new and

higher level of web service to the online users. The

services are overcoming the limitations of traditional

web technologies/services. Therefore, most of

information processing activities will be executed by

computers.

The main elements required to develop a

semantic web-based business support are business

logics, ontology, ontology languages, intelligent

agents, applications, and etc. In using/managing the

infrastructure of the semantic web services; software

developers, service consumers, and service providers

are the main representatives. Some researchers

integrated those technologies, languages, tools,

mechanisms, and applications into a semantic web

services framework. Therefore, future directions of

the semantic web-based business support should be

start over from the infrastructure.

Finally, to expand the semantic web-based

business support semantic web services developers

have to accomplish three main tasks before the

execution of the services. Firstly, an organization

which wants to carry out the semantic web services

has to clarify their business processes logics. Clearer

business logics will lead the developers/users to

more meaningful ontology repositories. Secondly, to

develop ontology with business processes logics,

developers have to select an appropriate ontology

representation/manipulation language. Thirdly, for

an effective semantic web services and business

support, developers need helps from the framework

management agents, service consumer agents, and

service owner agents. Therefore, before activating

the service, cooperation mechanism/module for the

agents will be needed for the developers/users.

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