Intelligent Web Services

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Intelligent Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
D. Fensel Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
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Contents
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The General Vision
• Semantic Web
• Web Services
• Semantic Web Services
• Application Areas
• Conclusions

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1. The General Vision
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
500 million user more than 3 billion pages
WWW
URI, HTML, HTTP
Static
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The General Vision
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Serious Problems in information
• finding
• extracting
• representing
• interpreting
• and maintaining

WWW
URI, HTML, HTTP
Static
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The General Vision
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
Bringing the computer back as a device for
computation
Dynamic
WWW
Semantic Web
URI, HTML, HTTP
RDF, RDF(S), OWL
Static
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The General Vision
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
Bringing the web to its full potential
Web Services
UDDI, WSDL, SOAP
Dynamic
WWW
Semantic Web
URI, HTML, HTTP
RDF, RDF(S), OWL
Static
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Semantic Web enabled Web Services
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The General Vision
Do not forget The story with the telephone!
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2. Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• It is the sucess of the web that creates serious
  needs for its improvement.
• The web uses the computer as a device for
  rendering information for the human reader but
  neither for information processing nor computing.
• The semantic web is aiming on bringing back the
  computer as a information processing device.

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Semantic Web

• The semantic web is based on machine-processable
  semantics of data.
• It will significantly change our information
  access based on a higher level of service
  provided by computers.
• It is based on new web languages such as XML,
  RDF, and OWL, and tools that make use of these
  languages.
• Applications are in areas such as Knowledge
  Management (eWork, eLearning, eGoverment, ...),
  Enterprise Application Integration, and eCommerce.

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• OntoknowledgeContent-driven Knowledge
  management through Evolving Ontologies
• IST project January 2000 October 2002

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Main achievements
• A ontology language proposal called OIL

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Main achievements
• A ontology language proposal called DAMLOIL

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Main achievements
• A ontology language proposal called OWL

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Main achievements
• A ontology language proposal called OWL.
• Several case studies for intranet applications
  and a methodology.

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Main achievements
• A ontology language proposal called OWL.
• Several case studies for intranet applications
  and a methodology.
• A three-layered software architecture for making
  the semantic web a reality.

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Main achievements
• A ontology language proposal called OWL.
• Several case studies for intranet applications
  and a methodology.
• A three-layered software architecture for making
  the semantic web a reality.
• A large number of interwoven web services that
  implement this vision.

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The goal of the On-To-Knowledge project is to
  support efficient and effective knowledge
  management.
• It focuses on acquiring, representing, and
  accessing weakly-structured on-line information
  sources
• Acquiring Text mining and extraction techniques
  are applied to extract semantic information from
  textual information.
• Representing XML, RDF, and OIL OWL are used for
  describing syntax and semantics of
  semi-structured information sources.
• Accessing Novel semantic web search technology
  and knowledge sharing facilities.

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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
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Semantic Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
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www.ontoknowledge.org
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
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Other IST projects
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• COG Corporate Ontology Grid, http//www.cogprojec
  t.org/.
• ESPERONTO Application Service Provision of
  Semantic Annotation, Aggregation, Indexing and
  Routing of Textual, Multimedia, and Multilingual
  Web Content, http// esperonto.semanticweb.org/.
• FF-POIROT Financial Fraud Prevention-Oriented
  Information Resources using Ontology Technology,
  http// www.starlab.vub.ac.be/research/projects/de
  fault.htmPoirot.
• GRACE Grid Search and Categorization Engine.
• HtechSight A knowledge management platform with
  intelligence and insight capabilities for
  technology intensive industries,
  http//banzai.etse.urv.es/htechsight/.
• IBROW An Intelligent Brokering Service for
  Knowledge-Component Reuse on the World Wide Web,
  http// www.ibrow.org/. Ibrow started in 1997
  where neither the term Semantic Web nor Web
  Services were coined or widely used.
• InDiCo Integrated Digital Conferencing.

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Other IST projects
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• MONET Mathematics on the Net, http//monet.nag.co
  .uk/ cocoon/monet/index.html.
• MOSES A modular and Scalable Environment for the
  Semantic Web.
• ONTO-LOGGING Corporate Ontology Modelling and
  Management System, http//www.ontologging.com/.
• SCULPTEUR Semantic and Content-Based Multimedia
  Exploitation for European Benefit.
• SEWASIE Semantic Webs and Agents in Integrated
  Economies, http//www.sewasie.org/.
• SPACEMANTIX Combining Spatial and Semantic
  Information in Product Data.
• SPIRIT Spatially-Aware Information Retrieval on
  the Internet, http//www.cs.cf.ac.uk/department/po
  sts/SPIRITSummary.pdf.

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Other IST projects
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• SWAD-Europe W3C Semantic Web Advanced
  Development for Europe, http//www.w3.org/2001/sw/
  Europe/.
• SWAP Semantic Web and Peer-to-Peer, http//
  swap.semanticweb.org/.
• SWWS Semantic-Web-Enabled Web Services, http//
  swws.semanticweb.org/.
• VICODI Visual Contextualisation of Digital
  Content.
• WIDE Semantic-Web-Based Information Management
  and Knowledge-Sharing for Innovative Product
  Design and Engineering, http//www.cefriel.it/topi
  cs/research/ default.xml?id75.
• WISPER Worldwide Intelligent Semantic Patent
  Extraction Retrieval.
• WonderWeb Ontology Infrastructure for the
  Semantic Web, http//wonderweb.semanticweb.org/.

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3. Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Web Services will transform the web from a
  collection of information into a distributed
  device of computation.
• Web services should transform eCommerce from a
  nice application into a mass phenomena.
• Bringing E-commerce to its full potential
  requires a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) approach. Anybody
  must be able to trade and negotiate with
  everybody else.
• However, such an open and flexible E-commerce has
  to deal with many obstacles before it becomes
  reality!
• The issue is scalability and economy in price.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
Def 2. New concept for eWork and eCommerce
Def 3. New programming technology
Def 1. Software Architecture
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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Def 1. Web Services as a Software Architecture
  
• Web services are a new breed of Web
  application. They are self-contained,
  self-describing, modular applications that can be
  published, located, and invoked across the Web.
  Web services perform functions, which can be
  anything from simple requests to complicated
  business processes.
• Once a Web service is deployed, other
  applications (and other Web services) can
  discover and invoke the deployed service.
  
• IBM web service tutorial

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• ? Web Services connect computers and devices with
  each other using the Internet to exchange data
  and combine data in new ways.
• ? The key to Web Services is on-the-fly software
  creation through the use of loosely coupled,
  reusable software components.
• ? Software can be delivered and paid for as fluid
  streams of services as opposed to packaged
  products.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Def 2. Web Services as a new Concept for eWork
  and eCommerce
• Web Services, are Services accessible via the
  web
• Dieter Fensel, private definition

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Business services can be completely decentralized
  and distributed over the Internet and accessed by
  a wide variety of communications devices.
• The internet will become a global common platform
  where organizations and individuals communicate
  among each other to carry out various commercial
  activities and to provide value-added services.
• The dynamic enterprise and dynamic value chains
  become achievable and may be even mandatory.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Large companies shrink around their core
  competencies.
• Vica versa, virutal enterprises are set up on the
  fly reflecting current marketr needs.
• ?eWork and eCommerce will be the two sides of the
  same coin.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Def 3. Web Services as a programming technology
• Web Services are Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
  over HTTP
• current state of the art

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The web is organized around URIs, HTML, and HTTP.
• URIs provide defined ids to refer to elements on
  the web,
• HTML provides a standardized way to describe
  document structures (allowing browsers to render
  information for the human reader), and
• HTTP defines a protocol to retrieve information
  from the web.
• Not surprisingly, web services require a
  similar infrastructure around UDDI, WSDL, and
  SOAP.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
UDDI
WSDL
SOAP
URI
HTML
HTTP
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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• UDDI provides a mechanism for clients to find web
  services. A UDDI registry is similar to a CORBA
  trader, or it can be thought of as a DNS service
  for business applications.
• WSDL defines services as collections of network
  endpoints or ports. A port is defined by
  associating a network address with a binding a
  collection of ports define a service.
• SOAP is a message layout specification that
  defines a uniform way of passing XML-encoded
  data. In also defines a way to bind to HTTP as
  the underlying communication protocol. SOAP is
  basically a technology to allow for RPC over the
  web.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• UDDI, WSDL, and SOAP are important steps into the
  direction of a web populated by services.
• However, they only address part of the overall
  stack that needs to be available in order to
  achieve the above vision eventually.
• There are many layer requires to achieve
  automatic web service discovery, selection,
  mediation and composition into complex services.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
Layer / Standard
EDI
RosettaNet
ebXML
SOAP
OAGIS
Document type
X
X
X
Semantics
X
X
Process
X
X
Exchange Sequence
X
X
Packaging
X
X
X
Transport binding
X
X
X
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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Many organizations had the insight that message
  definition and exchange are not sufficient to
  build an expressive web services infrastructure.
• In addition to UDDI, WSDL and SOAP, standards are
  proposed such as WSFL, XLANG, ebXML, BPSS, BPML,
  WSCL, and BPEL4WS.
• Bringing web services to their full potential
  requires their combination with semantic web
  technology.

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4. Semantic Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Imagine a travelling service
• Decompose into elementary services
• Describe elementary services by goals instead of
  hardwiring them.
• Keep the human programmer out of the loop to keep
  it economic, on demand, and scalable.
• You cannot achieve this vision without semantic
  web technology that maintains selection and
  combination of heterogeneous web services during
  runtime.

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Semantic Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Mechanized support is needed in finding and
  comparing vendors and their offers. Machine
  processable semantics of information allows to
  mechanize these tasks.
• Mechanized support is needed in dealing with
  numerous and heterogeneous data formats. Ontology
  technology is required to define such standards
  better and to map between them.
• Mechanized support is needed in dealing with
  numerous and heterogeneous business logics.
  Mediation is needed to compensate these
  differences, allowing partners to cooperate
  properly.

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Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Very important is to reflect the loose coupling
  and scalable mediation of web services in an
  appropriate modeling framework.
• Therefore, we developed a full-fledged Web
  Service Modeling Framework (WSMF). It provides a
  rich conceptual model for the development and the
  description of web services as a prerequisite to
  combine web service with semantic web technology.

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Semantic Web Services
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Fully enabled E-commerce based on workable web
  services requires a modeling framework that is
  centered around two complementary principles
• Strong de-coupling of the various components that
  realize an eCommerce application. This
  de-coupling includes information hiding based on
  the difference of internal business intelligence
  and public message exchange protocol interface
  descriptions.
• Strong mediation service enabling anybody to
  speak with everybody in a scalable manner. This
  mediation service includes the mediation of
  different terminologies as well as the mediation
  of different interaction styles.

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Semantic Web Services

• The WSMF consists of four main different
  elements
• ontologies that provide the terminology used by
  other elements
• goal repositories that define the problems that
  should be solved by web services
• web services descriptions that define various
  aspects of a web service
• and mediators which bypass interoperability
  problems.

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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF)
Ontologies
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Ontologies interweave human understanding of
  symbols with their machine processability.
• In a nutshell, Ontologies are formal and
  consensual specifications of conceptualizations,
  an understanding that can be communicated across
  people and application systems.

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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF)
Ontologies
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• - In our framework ontologies are used to define
  the terminology that is used by other elements of
  WSMF specifications.
• - Therefore, they enable reuse of terminology as
  well as interoperability between components
  referring to the same or linked terminology.

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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF) Goals
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The description of a goal specifies objectives
  that a client may have in case he consults a web
  service. A goal specification consists of two
  elements
• Pre-conditions describe what an web service
  expect for enabling it to provide its service.
• Post-conditions describe what a web service
  returns in response to its input.
• Goal specifications should be kept separate from
  actual web service description because there is
  an n2m mapping between them, i.e., the same web
  service can serve different goals and obviously
  different (competing) web services can serve the
  same goal.

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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF)
Mediators
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• For an open and flexible environment such as
  web-based computing, adapters are an essential
  means to cope with the inherit heterogeneity.
  This heterogeneity can wear many cloths
• Mediation of data structures.
• Mediation of business logics.
• Mediation of message exchange protocols.
• Mediation of dynamic service invocation. A web
  service may invoke other web services to provide
  its functionality. This can be done in a
  hard-wired manner, however, it can also be done
  more flexible by just referring to certain
  (sub-)goals.

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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF)
Mediators
Order information Car Daimler 230 SE 23.000

Bestellinformation Daimler 230 SE
27.000

Ontology translation Service
product catalogue1
product catalogue2
Business1
Business2
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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF)
Mediators
Semantic Web enabled Web Services
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The Web Service Modeling Framework (WSMF)
Mediators versus Capabilities
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Web services need description related to the
  message exchange protocol.
• Can you hear me? Messages from a web service
  requester to a web service provider and vice
  versa are sent over networks like the Internet.
  Networks can be reliable as well as unreliable.
• Do you understand me? Second, even when
  receiving a message it is not at all clear
  whether one understoods a message (Bbusiness
  signals in ebXML).
• Do you agree? Acknowledgement here means legal
  binding steps like accepting an offer.

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DAML-S
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• We have not defined a concrete web-based syntax
  for WSMF, i.e., we did no define any web-based
  mark up language.
• Here we take DAML-S as a starting point and
  extending it with the necessary modeling features
  that are missing there.
• An EU/US ad hoc committee is set up to unify both
  proposals.

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SWWS
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• A new IST project will start in September
  2002 on Semantic Web enabled Web Services
  (SWWS) in line with the mentioned ideas.
• Partners are
• University of Innsbruck (coordinator)
• University of Ireland, Galway
• FZI Karlsruhe, Germany
• Hewlett-Packard, UK, Ireland, and US
• iSOCO, Spain
• Ontotext, Bulgaria
• Oracle, U.S.A.
• BT Labs., UK

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SWWS
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The main objectives of SWWS are
• Provide a comprehensive Web Service description
  framework.
• Define a Web Service discovery framework.
• Provide a scalable Web Service mediation
  platform.
• The adivisory board of SWWS has more than 70
  companies as members.
• More infos are under swws.semanticweb.org

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SWWS www.ontoweb.orgswws.semanticweb.org
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Over 70 industrial in the advisory board

ying_at_cs.vu.nl.
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5. Applications
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Knowledge Management
• Enterprise Application Integration
• eCommerce

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Knowledge Management
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The competitiveness of companies in quickly
  changing markets depends heavily on how they
  exploit and maintain their knowledge.
• Increasingly, companies realize that their
  intranets are valuable repositories of corporate
  knowledge.
• Knowledge Management is about leveraging
  corporate knowledge for greater productivity, new
  value, and increased competitiveness.

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Knowledge Management
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The World-Wide Web (WWW) has drastically boosted
  the availability of electronic information.
• However, the main burden in information access,
  extraction, and interpretation still rests with
  the human user.
• To deal with this, several document management
  systems entered the market. However, these
  systems have severe weaknesses.

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Knowledge Management
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Searching information Existing keyword-based
  search retrieves irrelevant information that uses
  a certain term in a different meaning, and misses
  information when different terms with the same
  meaning about the desired content are used.
• Extracting information Currently, human browsing
  and reading is required to extract relevant
  information from information sources and they
  need to manually integrate information spread
  over different sources.

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Knowledge Management
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Maintaining weakly structured text sources is a
  difficult and time-consuming activity when such
  sources become large. Keeping such collections
  consistent, correct, and up-to-date requires
  mechanized representations of semantics that help
  to detect anomalies.
• Automatic document generation would enable
  adaptive websites that are dynamically
  reconfigured according to user profiles or other
  aspects of relevance.

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Knowledge Management
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The Semantic Web will provide much more automated
  services based on machine-processable semantics
  of data, and on heuristics that make use of these
  metadata.
• Currently, we see many projects and products that
  are close to the market employing such concepts
  and ideas.

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Enterprise Application Integration
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The integration of data, information, knowledge
  processes applications and business becomes
  more and more important.
• Therefore, the Enterprise Application Integration
  area will have soon a major share of the overall
  spent IT expenses. A number of reasons are
  responsible for this trend.
• Therefore, some studies estimate that up to 75
  of the future IT budgets are spent on Enterprise
  Application Integration tasks.

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Enterprise Application Integration
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Up to now, many companies trying to solve their
  integration needs by adhoc integration projects,
  however, adhoc integration do not scale.
• Therefore, after a phase of adhoc integration
  companies start to search for the Silver bullet
  that may help to solve the growing problem.
• They are now in the phase were they are willing
  to buy a global integration platform.

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Enterprise Application Integration
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• However, global integration requires serious
  investments and time.
• A successful integration strategy must combine
  the advantages of adhoc and global integration
  strategies.
• Learning from adhoc integration means to make
  sure that we must reflect business needs as the
  driving force for the integration process.
• Learning from global integration means to make
  sure that we must create extendable and reusable
  integrations.

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Enterprise Application Integration
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• Purpose-driven. We need to identify the major
  integration needs in terms of business processes
  and to structure our integration efforts around
  these needs.
• Extendable. We use Ontologies for publishing the
  information of data sources and for aligning it
  with business needs. By using Ontologies for
  making information explicit we ensure that our
  integration efforts can be extended in response
  to new and changed business needs.
• Reusable Use web service technology to reflect
  further integration needs based on
  standardization. Web services as a vendor and
  platform independent software integration
  platform are of critical importance.

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Enterprise Application Integration
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• We expect that Enterprise Application Integration
  will be the major application are of Semantic Web
  technology before it will take the next logical
  step
• the integration of several organizations,
  i.e., eCommerce.

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eCommerce
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• eCommerce in business to business (B2B) is not a
  new phenomenon.
• However, the automatization of business
  transactions has not lived up to the expectations
  of its propagandists.
• Establishing a eCommerce relationship requires a
  serious investment and it its limited to a
  predefined number of trading partners.

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eCommerce
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• However, the Internet and the World Wide Web
  (WWW) have drastically changed the online
  availability of data and the amount of
  electronically exchanged information.
• Internet-based electronic commerce provides a
  much higher level of openness, flexibility and
  dynamics that will help to optimize business
  relationships.
• Anytime, anywhere, and anybody eCommerce provides
  completely new possibilities.

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eCommerce

• Instead of implementing one link to each
  supplier, a supplier is linked to a large number
  of potential customers when he is connected to
  the marketplace.
• A supplier or customer can choose between a large
  number of potential customers and can optimize
  his business relationships.
• A supplier or customer can change its business
  relationships reflecting new demands from his
  market.
• This enables virtual enterprises and vica versa
  it enables to brake large enterprises up into
  smaller pieces that mediate their eWork
  relationship based on eCommerce relationships.

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eCommerce

• However, enabling flexible and open eCommerce has
  to deal with serious problems.
• Heterogeneity in the product, catalogue, and
  document description standards of the trading
  partner.
• Effective and efficient management of different
  styles of description becomes a key obstacle for
  this approach.

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eCommerce Openess

• Openness of eCommerce cannot be achieved without
  standardization.
• This we can learn from the web!
• Here, we also require standardization of the
  actual content, i.e., we require Ontologies.

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eCommerce Flexibility

• Flexibility of eCommerce cannot be achieved
  without multi-standard approaches.
• Ontology need to be implemented as networks of
  meaning where from the very beginning,
  heterogeneity is an essential requirement for
  this Ontology network.
• Tools for dealing with conflicting definitions
  and strong support in interweaving local theories
  are essential in order to make this technology
  workable and scalable.

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eCommerce Flexibility

• Dynamic of eCommerce requires standards that act
  as living entities.
• Products, services, and trading modes are subject
  of high change rates.
• Ontologies are used as a means of exchanging
  meaning between different agents.
• They can only provide this if they reflect an
  inter-subjectual consensus.
• By definition, they can only be the result of a
  social process.

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eCommerce Flexibility

• For this reason, Ontologies cannot be understood
  as a static model.
• An Ontology is as much required for the exchange
  of meaning as the exchange of meaning may
  influence and modify an Ontology.
• Consequently, evolving Ontologies describe a
  process rather than a static model.
• Ontologies must have strong support in versioning
  and must be accompanied by process models that
  help to organize evolving consensus.

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6. ConclusionsThe Invisible Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The best tool is the tool you do not see when
  you use it.
• Only in case it brakes or it disturbes you in
  reaching your purpose it become the center of
  your focus.
• The invisible web is a device for smooth
  information access and fully enabled eCommerce.

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The Invisible Web
Semantic Web enabled Web Services

• The Invisible web describes the vision of a web
  that is
• based on machine-processable semantics
• a distributed device of computation and services
• based on intelligent web services by combining
  semantic web and web service technology.
• It provides new tools, methods, and business
  cases for Enterprise Application Integration and
  eWork.
• It provides new tools, methods, and business
  cases for Supply Chain Management and Virtual
  Enterprises.

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OntoWeb

• EU funded Thematic Network
• Homepage www.ontoweb.org
• Mailing list
• seweb-list_at_cs.vu.nl
• ontoweb-list_at_cs.vu.nl
• Next meeting December 16-18, 2002 in

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