Tutorial Date: 31 May 2009

Semantic Web Services and their role within Enterprise Processes and a Service Web [Full Day]



Service-Oriented Computing is commonly lauded as a silver bullet for Enterprise Application Integration, inter-organizational business processes implementation, and even as a general solution for all complex applications. Still, the level of automation provided by traditional technologies is limiting the benefits that can be achieved. Semantic Web Services extend Web Services with semantic annotations in order to circumvent these limitations, better supporting the automation of service discovery, composition, mediation and execution. In this tutorial we present an introduction to Semantic Web Services technologies covering a wide range of topics ranging from formalisms, to their interpretation and use within concrete scenarios. We briefly introduce current Web Services technologies and standards. We present WSMO, a highly expressive formalism for describing Semantic Web Services. We describe a reference architecture for Semantic Execution Environments able to process WSMO descriptions in order to automate the discovery, composition and mediation of Web Services and how this can support further automation within the life-cycle of Business Process Management systems. We additionally introduce a lighter set of formalisms, namely WSMO-Lite and MicroWSMO, aimed at supporting a scalable application of Semantic Web Services technologies over the Web. Finally, we help attendants to get better acquainted with the notions exposed through a hands-on session using state of the art technologies.


Agenda


Time

Event
09.00 Introduction - John Domingue

The introduction will cover the basic concepts underlying Web Services, Semantic Web Services and Semantic Business Process Modelling. The relationship between the above and 'standard' Semantic Web will be described. Finally, emerging trends such as cloud computing, mobile services and the Future Internet will be outlined.
09.30 WSMO Overview - Carlos Pedrinaci

Research in semantic Web services aims to increase the level of automation that can be achieved while manipulating Web services. Several approaches have been proposed so far, the most prominent ones being WSMO, OWL-S, WSDL-S, and more recently, SAWSDL. In this part of the tutorial we shall present WSMO which provides ontological specifications for the core elements of semantic Web services. We will introduce the main entities it is composed of and we will explain how they can be interpreted and manipulated in order to increase the level of automation that can be achieved when discovering, selecting, composing, mediating, executing and monitoring Web services.
10.30 Coffee Break
11.00 Service Web Concepts - Jacek Kopecky and Elena Simperl

The early World-Wide Web was composed almost exclusively of documents -
read-only sources of data and information. As the Web has matured, and
especially with the advent of Web 2.0, increasing numbers of functionality-providing services have been published on the Web, including APIs of sites such as Flickr and Facebook. Through interconnections such as "mashups", these services form a growing Service Web. To stimulate its real expansion, we extend the Service Web with semantic technologies to help users to easily find available services and mash them up, enabling ad-hoc and dynamic use or Web services in a manner similar to how users currently browse and peruse the Web of
documents. Employing Web 2.0 approaches, users can both use and create lightweight semantic descriptions of Web services. In thetutorial, we present WSMO-Lite and MicroWSMO, complementary technologies for semantic
description of the two prevailing types of Web services - WSDL-based and RESTful.
11.45 Semantic BPM - Agata Filipowska

This part of the tutorial will motivate and explain how the combination of Business Process Management (BPM) and Semantic Web Services (SWS) can eliminate the limitations that current BPM technology exhibits. Starting from a short introduction of the state of the art in BPM and process execution, we will motivate the need for the use of semantics to address current challenges in BPM. We will also present a consolidated technical framework that integrates SWS into BPM technology.
12.30 - 14.00 Lunch
14.00 Demo and Handson Super - Agata Filipowska and Carlos Pedrinaci

In order to consolidate the concepts and ideas previously presented, in this part of the tutorial we shall demonstrate how BPM and SWS technologies can be integrated to enhance the state of the art. After a short demonstration, the participants will be guided through the use of the tools presented in their own computers.
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00 Demo and use of SOA4All Technologies - Elena Simperl, Jacek Kopecky and Carlos Pedrinaci

The last part of the tutorial will be devoted to using tools for creating lightweight semantic annotations for services using WSMO-Lite and MicroWSMO editors. After a short demonstration, the participants will be guided through the use of the tools presented in their own computers.
17.00 Wrap up
17.30 Close