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

Cloud service localisation

The essence of cloud computing is the provision of software and hardware services to a range of users in dierent locations. The aim of cloud service localisation is to facilitate the internationalisation and localisation of cloud services by allowing their adaption to dierent locales. We address the lingual localisation by providing service-level language translation techniques to adopt services to dierent languages and regulatory localisation by providing standards-based mappings to achieve regulatory compliance with regionally varying laws, standards and regulations. The aim is to support and enforce the explicit modelling of aspects particularly relevant to localisation and runtime support consisting of tools and middleware services to automating the deployment based on models of locales, driven by the two localisation dimensions. We focus here on an ontology-based conceptual information model that integrates locale specication in a coherent way

Service broker for cloud service description language

Cloud Service Description Language (CSDL), initiative and discourse, is concentrated to deploy applications on various cloud platforms without modifying source-code. Semantic topology and orchestration of applications provides practical advantage for service providers with ability of interoperability, portability and unified interfaces. However, this has also resulted problems for consumers to identify the appropriate services spread over swarm platforms. The advantage, with common CSDL such as Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA), becomes problematic for consumers. Service providers will have different technical and business details such as: discovery, pricing, licensing or composition depending upon deployed platform; therefore, selection of service becomes challenging and requires human effort. Service Broker design is presented for TOSCA framework only; however, the suggested scheme is generic and adaptable to accommodate similar standards of CSDL

Towards runtime discovery, selection and composition of semantic services

Service-orientation is gaining momentum in distributed software applications, mainly because it facilitates interoperability and allows application designers to abstract from underlying implementation technologies. Service composition has been acknowledged as a promising approach to create composite services that are capable of supporting service user needs, possibly by personalising the service delivery through the use of context information or user preferences. In this paper we discuss the challenges of automatic service composition, and present DynamiCoS, which is a novel framework that aims at supporting service composition on demand and at runtime for the benefit of service end-users. We define the DynamiCoS framework based on a service composition life-cycle. Framework mechanisms are introduced to tackle each of the phases and requirements of this life-cycle. Semantic services are used in our framework to enable reasoning on the service requests issued by end users, making it possible to automate service discovery, selection and composition. We validate our framework with a prototype that we have built in order to experiment with the mechanisms we have designed. The prototype was evaluated in a testing environment using some use case scenarios. The results of our evaluation give evidences of the feasibility of our approach to support runtime service composition. We also show the benefits of semantic-based frameworks for service composition, particularly for end-users who will be able to have more control on the service composition process

Survey of Service Description Languages and Their Issues in Cloud Computing

Along with the growing popularity of cloud computing technology, the amount of available cloud services and their usage frequency are increasing. In order to provide a mechanism for the efficient enforcement of service-relevant operations in cloud environment, such as service discovery, service provision, and service management, a completed and precise service specification model is highly required. In this paper, we conducted a survey on existing service description languages applied in three different domains - general services, Web/SOA services, and cloud services. We discussed and compared the past literature from seven major aspects, which are: (1) domain, (2) coverage, (3) purpose, (4) representation, (5) semantic expressivity, (6) intended users, and (7) features. Additionally, two core dimensions semantic expressivity and coverage are employed to categorize and analyse the key service description languages by using Magic Quadrant methodology. These two dimensions are regarded as the most essential factors for the evaluation of a service description model. Based on this analysis, we concluded that Unified Service Description Language (USDL) is the language with the widest coverage from business, technical and operational aspects, while OWL-S is the one that has the highest semantic expressivity. At last, critical research issues on cloud service description languages are identified and analysed. The solution of these issues requires more research efforts on the standardization of cloud service specification, which will eventually enhance the development of cloud industry

Enhancing Service Lifecycle Management - Costing as Part of Service Descriptions

Outsourcing of IT and business processes results in an increased exchange of services. For inter-organizational service exchange to be successful, the participating network players have to establish unified and thus interoperable means of service description. An analysis of contemporary approaches identified a deficit of almost all approaches to address monetary aspects of a service, especially costs. This paper argues that costs are prevalent in almost all stages of a services’ lifecycle, and thus its’ role within Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) is paramount. Recognizing this discrepancy, the paper proposes a basic version of a costing model that allows for a multi-periodic depiction of service-related costs as part of a service description. It is modeled and implemented as an extension of USDL, the Unified Service Description Language. A case example from the financial services industry demonstrates the artifact’s applicability