A framework for deriving semantic web services

Web service-based development represents an emerging approach for the development of distributed information systems. Web services have been mainly applied by software practitioners as a means to modularize system functionality that can be offered across a network (e.g., intranet and/or the Internet). Although web services have been predominantly developed as a technical solution for integrating software systems, there is a more business-oriented aspect that developers and enterprises need to deal with in order to benefit from the full potential of web services in an electronic market. This ‘ignored’ aspect is the representation of the semantics underlying the services themselves as well as the ‘things’ that the services manage. Currently languages like the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) provide the syntactic means to describe web services, but lack in providing a semantic underpinning. In order to harvest all the benefits of web services technology, a framework has been developed for deriving business semantics from syntactic descriptions of web services. The benefits of such a framework are two-fold. Firstly, the framework provides a way to gradually construct domain ontologies from previously defined technical services. Secondly, the framework enables the migration of syntactically defined web services toward semantic web services. The study follows a design research approach which (1) identifies the problem area and its relevance from an industrial case study and previous research, (2) develops the framework as a design artifact and (3) evaluates the application of the framework through a relevant scenario

Shortest Paths Based Web Service Selection in Internet of Things

The connecting of things to the Internet makes it possible for smart things to access all kinds of Web services. However, smart things are energy-limited, and suitable selection of Web services will consume less resources. In this paper, we study the problem of selecting some Web service from the candidate set. We formulate this selection of Web services for smart things as single-source many-target shortest path problem. We design algorithms based on the Dijkstra and breadth-first search algorithms, propose an efficient pruning algorithm for breadth-first search, and analyze their performance of number of iterations and I/O cost. Our empirical evaluation on real-life graphs shows that our pruning algorithm is more efficient than the breadth-first search algorithm

Building sustainable parking lots with the Web of Things

Peak-time traffic woes create considerable amount of stress and environmental pollution resulting in an economic loss. Research innovations in areas such as the Web of Things are able to curtail some of these issues by creating scalable and sustainable environments like parking lots, which provide motorists with access to convenient parking spots. We present a scalable parking lot network infrastructure that exposes parking management operations through a judicious mashup of physical things\u27 services within a parking lot. Our system uses service-oriented architecture, allowing motorists to reserve parking spots in advance. In doing so, our proposed system leverages the use of HTTP and Wi-Fi for the Web enablement and interoperability of things within a parking spot and elevates it as a Smart Parking Spot on the Web. Our suggested semantic Web-based structure for representing things makes it possible to query physical things\u27 states and services depending on their capabilities and other relevant parking-related parameters. Our performance evaluation reveals that a maximum of 40 % time is saved to find parking spots and also 40 % reduction in air pollution is observed. © 2013 Springer-Verlag London

Mixing the reactive with the personal: Opportunities for end-user programming in personal information management

The transition of personal information management (PIM) tools off the desktop to the Web presents an opportunity to augment these tools with capabilities provided by the wealth of real-time information readily available. In this chapter, we describe a personal information assistance engine that lets end-users delegate to it various simple context- and activity-reactive tasks and reminders. Our system, Atomate, treats RSS/ATOM feeds from social networking and life-tracking sites as sensor streams, integrating information from such feeds into a simple unified RDF world model representing people, places and things and their time-varying states and activities. Combined with other information sources on the web, including the user's online calendar, web-based e-mail client, news feeds and messaging services, Atomate can be made to automatically carry out a variety of simple tasks for the user, ranging from context-aware filtering and messaging, to sharing and social coordination actions. Atomate's open architecture and world model easily accommodate new information sources and actions via the addition of feeds and web services. To make routine use of the system easy for non-programmers, Atomate provides a constrained-input natural language interface (CNLI) for behavior specification, and a direct-manipulation interface for inspecting and updating its world model

Extending the Internet of Things to the future Internet through IPv6 Support

Emerging Internet of Things (IoT)/Machine-to-Machine (M2M) systems require a transparent access to information and services through a seamless integration into the Future Internet. This integration exploits infrastructure and services found on the Internet by the IoT. On the one hand, the so-called Web of Things aims for direct Web connectivity by pushing its technology down to devices and smart things. On the other hand, the current and Future Internet offer stable, scalable, extensive, and tested protocols for node and service discovery, mobility, security, and auto-configuration, which are also required for the IoT. In order to integrate the IoT into the Internet, this work adapts, extends, and bridges using IPv6 the existing IoT building blocks (such as solutions from IEEE 802.15.4, BT-LE, RFID) while maintaining backwards compatibility with legacy networked embedded systems from building and industrial automation. Specifically, this work presents an extended Internet stack with a set of adaptation layers from non-IP towards the IPv6-based network layer in order to enable homogeneous access for applications and services