IRS III: a platform and infrastructure for creating WSMO based semantic web services

The IRS project has the overall aim of supporting the automated or semi-automated construction of semantically enhanced systems over the inter-net. IRS-I supported the creation of knowledge intensive systems structured acording to the UPML framework and IRS-II integrated the UPML framework with web service technologies. In this paper we describe IRS-III. Within IRS-III we have now incorporated and extended the WSMO ontology. Our extensions to WSMO include the addition of input and output roles to goals and web services and a new type of mediator. As well as summarizing our additions to WSMO we outline the architecture of IRS-III and the associated interfaces

An Environment for Development of Semantic Web Services

Semantic Web Services (SWSs) are specified in a semantic markup language to enable other services (and agents) to reason about their capabilities, in order to decide whether a SWS should be invoked or not. In this paper an environment for development and description of SWSs is presented. This environment, called ODE SWSDesigner, consists of a graphical interface, which allows users to carry out the design and characterization of SWSs at a conceptual level, and a set of software modules, which verify the design correctness and perform the translations from the graphical descriptions to the languages used to specify SWSs. ODE SWSDesigner provides support for a layer-based framework that we have proposed with the aim of enabling a language -independent development of SWSs. This framework is based on the use of problemsolving methods that are considered as highlevel specifications from which SWS descriptions can be generated and verified

Conceptual fit: A criterion for COTS selection

COTS systems selection consists in evaluating the user requirements with respect to characteristics of candidate systems, using a set of criteria. One criterion that has received little attention is what we call conceptual fit. The criterion assesses the fit between the conceptual structure of the user requirements and that of a system. We evaluate the fit in terms of the existing misfits. We formally define the notion of conceptual misfit and we present a method that determines the conceptual misfits between the user requirements and a set of candidate systems. The method consists in defining a superschema, the mapping of the conceptual schemas of the candidate systems and of the user requirements to that superschema, and the automatic computation of the existing conceptual misfits. The method has been formalized in UML/OCL. We have conducted an exploratory experiment with the aim of evaluating the feasibility, difficulty and usefulness of the method, with positive results. We believe that the conceptual fit criterion could be taken into account by almost all existing COTS selection methods.Preprin

A High-Level Scheme for an Ontology-Based Compliance Framework in Software Development

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Software development market is currently witnessing an increasing demand for software applications conformance with the international regime of GRC for Governance, Risk and Compliance. In this paper, we propose a compliance requirement analysis method for early stages of software development based on a semantically-rich model, where a mapping can be established from legal and regulatory requirements relevant to system context to software system business goals and contexts. The proposed semantic model consists of a number of ontologies each corresponding to a knowledge component within the developed framework of our approach. Each ontology is a thesaurus of concepts in the compliance and risk assessment domain related to system development along with relationships and rules between concepts that compromise the domain knowledge. The main contribution of the work presented in this paper is a case study that demonstrates how description-logic reasoning techniques can be used to simulate legal reasoning requirements employed by legal professions against the description of each ontology

Approaches to Semantic Web Services: An Overview and Comparison

Abstract. The next Web generation promises to deliver Semantic Web Services (SWS); services that are self-described and amenable to automated discovery, composition and invocation. A prerequisite to this, however, is the emergence and evolution of the Semantic Web, which provides the infrastructure for the semantic interoperability of Web Services. Web Services will be augmented with rich formal descriptions of their capabilities, such that they can be utilized by applications or other services without human assistance or highly constrained agreements on interfaces or protocols. Thus, Semantic Web Services have the potential to change the way knowledge and business services are consumed and provided on the Web. In this paper, we survey the state of the art of current enabling technologies for Semantic Web Services. In addition, we characterize the infrastructure of Semantic Web Services along three orthogonal dimensions: activities, architecture and service ontology. Further, we examine and contrast three current approaches to SWS according to the proposed dimensions

Integrating Distributed Sources of Information for Construction Cost Estimating using Semantic Web and Semantic Web Service technologies

A construction project requires collaboration of several organizations such as owner, designer, contractor, and material supplier organizations. These organizations need to exchange information to enhance their teamwork. Understanding the information received from other organizations requires specialized human resources. Construction cost estimating is one of the processes that requires information from several sources including a building information model (BIM) created by designers, estimating assembly and work item information maintained by contractors, and construction material cost data provided by material suppliers. Currently, it is not easy to integrate the information necessary for cost estimating over the Internet. This paper discusses a new approach to construction cost estimating that uses Semantic Web technology. Semantic Web technology provides an infrastructure and a data modeling format that enables accessing, combining, and sharing information over the Internet in a machine processable format. The estimating approach presented in this paper relies on BIM, estimating knowledge, and construction material cost data expressed in a web ontology language. The approach presented in this paper makes the various sources of estimating data accessible as Simple Protocol and Resource Description Framework Query Language (SPARQL) endpoints or Semantic Web Services. We present an estimating application that integrates distributed information provided by project designers, contractors, and material suppliers for preparing cost estimates. The purpose of this paper is not to fully automate the estimating process but to streamline it by reducing human involvement in repetitive cost estimating activities