IRS-III: A Broker for Semantic Web Services based Applications

In this paper we describe IRS-III which takes a semantic broker based approach to creating applications from Semantic Web Services by mediating between a service requester and one or more service providers. Business organisations can view Semantic Web Services as the basic mechanisms for integrating data and processes across applications on the Web. This paper extends previous publications on IRS by providing an overall description of our framework from the point of view of application development. More specifically, we describe the IRS-III methodology for building applications using Semantic Web Services and illustrate our approach through a use case on e-government

REDUCING THE VARIATIONS IN INTRA- AND INTERORGANIZATIONAL BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING – AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the semantic building block-based approach as a means for intra- and interorganizational business process modeling. It is described whether and why the semantic building block-based approach reduces the variations in distributed modeling projects in comparison to traditional modeling approaches. Our argumentation is grounded on the assumption that the specification of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) requires a detailed understanding of the intra- and interorganizational business processes. In order to enable the collaboration of services the underlying process structure must be explicated. In a laboratory experiment the variations of distributed process modeling in the traditional and the building block-based approach have been compared. It could be shown that the semantic building block-based approach leads to considerably fewer variations and, thus, to a more consistent view on the intra- and interorganizational process landscape

An open standard for the exchange of information in the Australian timber sector

The purpose of this paper is to describe business-to-business (B2B) communication and the characteristics of an open standard for electronic communication within the Australian timber and wood products industry. Current issues, future goals and strategies for using business-to-business communication will be considered. From the perspective of the Timber industry sector, this study is important because supply chain efficiency is a key component in an organisation's strategy to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Strong improvement in supply chain performance is possible with improved business-to-business communication which is used both for building trust and providing real time marketing data. Traditional methods such as electronic data interchange (EDI) used to facilitate B2B communication have a number of disadvantages, such as high implementation and running costs and a rigid and inflexible messaging standard. Information and communications technologies (ICT) have supported the emergence of web-based EDI which maintains the advantages of the traditional paradigm while negating the disadvantages. This has been further extended by the advent of the Semantic web which rests on the fundamental idea that web resources should be annotated with semantic markup that captures information about their meaning and facilitates meaningful machine-to-machine communication. This paper provides an ontology using OWL (Web Ontology Language) for the Australian Timber sector that can be used in conjunction with semantic web services to provide effective and cheap B2B communications

Open semantic service networks

Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control

Computer-Aided Knowledge Engineering for Corporate Information Retrieval

In 1987, Digital Equipment Corporation's internal Madret Information Services Group I Information Access Services (lAS) decided to build a single thesaurus system to support production and retrieval of multiple applications. This system TIMS (Thesaurus I Indexing Management System) bad to be dynamic and allow for easy modification and merging of volatile business terminology. A faceted approach was used for knowledge-base building and semantic representation. 1be system allowed the knowledge engineer to determine a classification structure and to develop relation types suited to a specific application's requirements

Semantic Platform for building coherent net of smart services

Information infrastrucrure of modern cities has been developping incredibly fast over last decades. Improvement of all kinds of services has been impatiently demanded by end users in all domains who where forced to keep up-to-date not to lose ground in their spheres of interest. As a result, the majority of services used now are high-quality services that meet the extended requirements of end users. They can be definitely called smart services. The proplem is that there are a lot of services, but they are not compatible with each other. They can hardly be considered as elements of complicated business processes. It leads to creation of new services with duplicating functionality. Observed dynamics of service market development and its short term prediction clearly shows that in near future it will be impossible to satisfy all requests for new services and service infrastructure will become overheated. At the level of enterprises the problem is commonly solved by means of enterprise service bus, at the level of WWW – due to building and overall application of semantic web services. For the level of cities still there are no solutions that allow building complex logical structures based on existing services. The most obvious way for services integration is their unification. Even this simple solution is unimplementable for two reasons. First, it requires huge resources that depend on the total number of services. Second, it can affect the functionality of the services that is inadmissible for end users. So, one can say that at the level of the city integration solutions based on enterprise service bus are too light but Internet oriented solutions such as semantic web servises are too heavy. In this paper we propose a platform for agile service integration that allows linking services using semantic technologies. The platform does not generate additional requirements to services or imposes any restrictions. It supports linking services and, thus, building a net of services. Furthermore, it can reveal possible links between services that can enrich the service infrastructure. Sematic technologies form the base for integration platform. The services and their peculiar features are described in the platform ontology using OWL language. The OWL description of the services clarifies reasonable cases and ways for services usage. Similar approach is used for describing logic of complex services application. The processes of services interaction are defined in ontologies as well. For logic description BPEL is used

Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation

Situational Enterprise Services

The ability to rapidly find potential business partners as well as rapidly set up a collaborative business process is desirable in the face of market turbulence. Collaborative business processes are increasingly dependent on the integration of business information systems. Traditional linking of business processes has a large ad hoc character. Implementing situational enterprise services in an appropriate way will deliver the business more flexibility, adaptability and agility. Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are rapidly becoming the dominant computing paradigm. It is now being embraced by organizations everywhere as the key to business agility. Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX on the other hand provide good user interactions for successful service discovery, selection, adaptation, invocation and service construction. They also balance automatic integration of services and human interactions, disconnecting content from presentation in the delivery of the service. Another Web technology, such as semantic Web, makes automatic service discovery, mediation and composition possible. Integrating SOA, Web 2.0 Technologies and Semantic Web into a service-oriented virtual enterprise connects business processes in a much more horizontal fashion. To be able run these services consistently across the enterprise, an enterprise infrastructure that provides enterprise architecture and security foundation is necessary. The world is constantly changing. So does the business environment. An agile enterprise needs to be able to quickly and cost-effectively change how it does business and who it does business with. Knowing, adapting to diffident situations is an important aspect of today’s business environment. The changes in an operating environment can happen implicitly and explicitly. The changes can be caused by different factors in the application domain. Changes can also happen for the purpose of organizing information in a better way. Changes can be further made according to the users' needs such as incorporating additional functionalities. Handling and managing diffident situations of service-oriented enterprises are important aspects of business environment. In the chapter, we will investigate how to apply new Web technologies to develop, deploy and executing enterprise services

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