Semantic Web Services

Definition

Semantic Web Services (SWS) is a research area developing theory, technology, standards, tools, and infrastructure for working with distributed, networked services. As its name indicates, SWS has arisen from the cross-fertilization of challenges and approaches from the Web services and Semantic Web areas. The central theme of SWS is the enrichment of Web services technology with knowledge representation and reasoning technologies (including but not limited to those associated with the Semantic Web). The starting point for most SWS approaches is the use of expressive, declarative descriptions of the elements of dynamic distributed computation, with a particular focus on services, processes that are encapsulated by services, and message-based conversations between service providers and consumers. (Depending on the approach, other relevant concepts might include goals, transactions, roles, commitments, mediators of various kinds, etc.) These descriptions, in turn, are seen as...