Proposing Minor Changes to the OWL-S Service Profile

I have been reviewing the ProfileHierarchy mechanism that the OWL-S 
Coalition put together to allow the definition of a taxonomy of 
profiles.  Such a taxonomy should, in principle, allow the distinction 
between the different types of services.  For example, it may allow to 
define a profile that is specific for Information Services, another that 
is specific for Transportation Services.

The problem with the taxonomy of profiles the way it is constructed now 
is that it does not match the rest of the profile,  for example in the 
definition of the taxonomy different properties of the classes are used 
directly instead of using the serviceParameter/serviceCategory mechanism 
that is proposed by the rest of the Profile.  The second problem is that 
some features described in the Profile, such as inputs and outputs, may 
be specific of the service and do not generalize to a class of services.

I propose therefore to define the following two properties:  
serviceClassification and serviceProduct.  The first one is used to 
specify the type of service that is provided given some classification 
scheme.  The second one is used to define a Product given a product 
classification scheme.  The two properties are defined as follows:

  <!-- Map the Profile to a Service Type -->

  <rdf:Property rdf:ID="serviceClassification">
    <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Profile"/>
    <rdfs:range rdf:resource="&xsd;#anyURI"/>
  </rdf:Property>

(Here I used the anyURI mechanism that the OWL-S coalition is using to 
stay in OWL DL)

  <!-- Map the Profile to a Product Type -->
 
  <rdf:Property rdf:ID="serviceProduct">
    <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Profile"/>
    <rdfs:range rdf:resource="&xsd;#anyURI"/>
  </rdf:Property>

The current Profiles Hierarchy can be redefined to be a hierarchy of 
services.

The two files: Profile.owl and ProfileHierarchy.owl contain the changes.

--- Massimo

Received on Saturday, 11 September 2004 03:02:16 UTC