Semantics for Web Services Characterization

At the Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services
<http://www.w3.org/2005/04/FSWS/workshop-report.html> we indeed found
that good scenarios are few and far between but that there is energy
within the community to share work that has been experimental or
commercially sensitive. There are a number of different technologies on
the table (W3C submissions) that place emphasis on different use-cases.
WSDL-S <http://www.w3.org/Submission/WSDL-S/> explores service
invocation and, to a lesser extent, discovery (using the service
category in a UDDI context). By contrast, OWL-S
<http://www.w3.org/Submission/2004/07/> is primarily concerned with
process composition and the structure of advertisements (in the service
profile). WSMO <http://www.w3.org/Submission/2005/06/> emerges from a
more B2B oriented perspective so is more concerned with expression of
the service (in terms of the value delivered) rather than the
web-service, and addresses mediation to oil the wheels of service
interoperability. SWSF <http://www.w3.org/Submission/2005/07/> is more
theoretical, looking at the semantics underlying the ontology (PSL) so
the use-case here is validation. SWSL, the language it is based on,
enables the expression of service selection policies.

Given this rich context to draw on, it surprises me that the
'characterization' charter seems to limit itself almost exclusively to
"solutions like WSDL-S", which I read as invocation and a bit of
discovery. This really isn't going to attract many relevant scenarios.
Given that the mission is to analyse "real-scale applications", why
eliminate composition, mediation, validation from the outset? For
example, there's great opportunity here to work with the SWS 'mediation'
Challenge <http://deri.stanford.edu/challenge/2006/> organised by DERI
Stanford.

Positive suggestions:

1) I believe the sentence below (Mission, 3rd paragraph) should be
removed because it addresses technologies, not scenarios or use-cases.
It just seems unnecessary:

"However, WSDL-S was considered a small but important step towards
Semantic Web Services."

2) Again, the 1st sentence of the 3rd paragraph (below), falls back into
talking about technology rather than the use-cases addressed by the
technology. Secondly, it should be more inclusive so that it encompasses
solutions addressed by WSDL-S, OWL-S, WSMO,  and SWSF. 

"The mission of the Semantics for Web Services Characterization Group is
to continue in the footprints of solutions like WSDL-S and study the
field of applications and identify key points that are not immediately
solved using Web services technologies."

could be changed to something like:

"The mission of the Semantics for Web Services Characterization Group is
to study the field of applications addressed by technologies such as
WSDL-S, OWL-S, WSMO and SWSF and to identify key points that are not
immediately solved using Web services technologies."

Lest anyone try to read between the lines that I'm anti-WSDL-S, I'm
definitely not. The ideas it embodies are key to working with the WS
community. However, I do believe that the 'characterization' charter
should take a far more balanced approach if we're serious about
collecting a wide variety of applications from a diverse community.

Steve Battle (Hewlett-Packard)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-sws-ig-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-sws-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Carine Bournez
> Sent: 15 November 2005 14:15
> To: public-sws-ig@w3.org
> Cc: www-ws@w3.org
> Subject: [fwd] Draft charters for work on Semantics for WS
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is a copy of an announcement sent last week to the W3C 
> membership (on the member-ws@w3.org mailing list).
> All comments welcome! (for non members, on the 
> public-sws-ig@w3.org mailing list). Thank you.
> 
> 
> > 
> > Following the announcement in [1], two charters have been drafted, 
> > corresponding to the two points previously described.
> > 
> > The first one is a Semantics for Web Services 
> Characterization Group.
> > 
> > 	http://www.w3.org/2005/10/sws-charac-charter.html
> > 
> > It specifically includes 4 issues to discuss.
> > 
> > The second one is Semantic Annotations for WSDL Working Group.
> > 
> > 	http://www.w3.org/2005/10/sa-ws-charter.html
> > 
> > 
> > Discussion on both these charters should happen on this 
> mailing list 
> > (member-ws@w3.org).
> > Thank you!
> > 
> > 
> > [1] 
> > 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2005JulSep/0024.htm
> > l
> > 
> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> 
> --
> Carine Bournez -+- W3C Sophia-Antipolis 
> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 17 November 2005 17:18:20 UTC