Semantic Web Process Lifecycle:
Role of Semantics in Annotation, Discovery, Composition and Orchestration
LSDIS Lab,
The Web
coupled with contemporary E-commerce and E-services is enabling a new networked
economy [1]. The scope of activities that processes span has moved from
intra-enterprise workflows coordinating multiple applications, predefined
inter-enterprise and B2B processes, to dynamically defined Web processes among
cooperating organizations. Components of
technical aspect of the solutions involve the technologies for information
exchange (from EDI to XML), software componentization (from CORBA to Web
Services), and workflow coordination and collaboration. Semantics is the new component to this mix,
as observed at the Amicaola workshop [2], which could enable support
both the scalability and increasingly more dynamic nature of these Web
processes. These Semantics-enabled and
empowered Web process, which we call Semantic Web Processes, involve pervasive
role of semantics in annotation (Semantic Annotation of Web Services),
discovery (Semantic Web Service Discovery), composition (Semantic Process
Composition), process execution/enactment (Semantic Web Process Orchestration),
and quality of service. In this talk, we
review some of the promises and challenges in applying semantics to each of the
steps in the Semantic Web Process lifecycle.
Complementing efforts such as DAML-S and WSMF, some of these ideas are
being pursued in the METEOR-S project at the LSDIS lab [3].
[1] A.
Sheth,
[2] A.
Sheth and R. Meersman, “Amicalola Report: Database and Information Systems Research
Challenges and Opportunities in Semantic Web and Enterprises,” SIGMOD
Record, 31 (4), December 2002, pp. 98-106
[3]
METEOR-S: Semantic Web Services and Processes - Applying Semantics in
Annotation, Quality of Service, Discovery, Composition, Execution, http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/proj/meteor/SWP.htm
Amit Sheth
is a Professor of Computer Science and Director of the LSDIS lab at the