Semantic service dissemination architecture

Abstract

Currently service discovery and service request fulfillment are treated as being contiguous steps, assuming the semantic knowledge to be present to allow this. Alternately it is recognised that this is rarely possible and service discovery and service request are treated as two independent steps. In reality the service discovery and service request need to be treated separately but share knowledge if both functional and non-functional requirements are to be met in a consistent fashion. This paper proposes an architecture for service selection, service contract negotiation, dynamic service request configuration and quality of service monitoring. Our architecture is based on the belief that the semantic web is useful and powerful and allows ontological approaches but these approaches are underdeveloped. The benefits of the architecture, realized through the use of a common repository and ontological approaches, are support for a contract negotiation, which takes account of both functional and non-functional requirements, at time of service discovery. In addition the negotiation need not be based on a particular policy language and contract compliance can be monitored at time of service request. © 2006. Mark Nolan and Robert Redpath.