CFP: 6th International Workshop EON-SWSC at ESWC 2008

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*                                                                     *
*                             Call for papers                         *
*                                                                     *
*            Sixth International Workshop on Evaluation of            *
*              Ontology-based tools and the Semantic Web              *
*                   Service Challenge (EON-SWSC2008)                  *
*       at the 5th European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2008)        *
*                Sheraton La Caleta, Tenerife, Spain                  *
*                       June 1st-2nd, 2008                            * 
*                                                                     *
*          http://sws-challenge.org/wiki/index.php/EON-SWSC2008       *
*                                                                     *
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GENERAL OVERVIEW

In the successful series of EON and SWS Challenge workshops we intend to 
leverage these two initiatives together and to invite researchers and 
practitioners from the research areas of Ontologies, Semantic Web and 
Semantic Web Services for the Sixth International Workshop on Evaluation 
of Ontology-based tools and the Semantic Web Service Challenge 
(EON-SWSC2008). Similarly to EON previous workshops, the Semantic Web 
Services Challenge aim at evaluating semantic technologies, in this case 
those used to mediate, discover and compose Web Services and alike to 
EON, the SWSC provides an infrastructure for the development of reusable 
technologies. We would like to make a step forward in the evaluation of 
the Semantic Web technology by making Semantic Web practitioners face 
real problems aimed at real use cases, and the best way to achieve this 
is by proposing a technology challenge such as is posed by the SWSC.

Former EON workshops aimed at evaluating ontology-based tools (2002, 
2003, and 2004), at evaluating ontologies themselves (2006), and at 
evaluating both (2007). Whereas this has provided a meeting point and a 
forum for researchers, as ontologies and Semantic Web technologies have 
gone beyond the research limits it is required that these evaluations 
are available to a broader range of users and developers, both in the 
research and in the industrial worlds. Thus the main goal of this 
workshop is to lay the foundations for sharing and reusing methods and 
tools for Semantic Web technology evaluation (ontology development 
tools, ontology merging and alignment tools, ontology-based annotators, 
Semantic Web Service technology, etc.).

The large visibility of the Semantic Web already attracts industrial 
partners and Semantic Web technology companies are now present in the 
industrial world. But the evaluation of the Semantic Web technology and 
of the applications that use it is difficult and expensive. 
Practitioners want to evaluate their tools and to have benchmark suites 
available for doing that in order to minimize the evaluation cost. Also, 
there are some benchmark suites that are widely being used by the 
community. The problems are that users and developers don't know where 
to find these benchmark suites, what these benchmark suites are intended 
for, or how to correctly use them.

A well-understood notion of Semantic Web technology evaluation will 
foster a consistent level of quality and thus acceptance by industry and 
the web community. But to achieve this it is necessary to enable reusing 
results and lessons learnt from others.

Semantic Web Services have received a significant amount of attention 
and research spending since their beginnings roughly six years ago and 
the number of frameworks and algorithms targeted to (semi-) automate 
central web service tasks like discovery, matchmaking or composition is 
continuously growing. However, there is no scientific method of 
comparing the actual functionalities claimed and to comparatively 
evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches in an 
objective way. Furthermore, there is no standard test bed to assess the 
robustness and applicability of proposed technologies to real world 
problem scenarios. Progress in scientific development and in industrial 
adoption is thereby critically hindered.

The Semantic Web Service Challenge is the major initiative dedicated to 
work on this problem. The Challenge consists of a set of problem 
scenarios to be solved by the participants. The scenarios are organized 
in sets of increasingly difficult levels, each designed to focus on a 
particular problem aspect. Solutions to the problem scenarios are 
presented, discussed and peer reviewed at the SWS-Challenge workshops 
and the functional coverage of the solution with regard to the problem 
levels is certified at the SWS-Challenge website.

The SWS-Challenge is an ongoing and continuous experiment in developing 
a methodology for evaluating the functionality of SWS technologies. 
Thus, apart from discussing and evaluating solutions to the Challenge 
scenarios, the SWS-Challenge workshops provide the forum to advance the 
Challenge itself. In this aspect the Challenge seeks proposals of new 
scenarios to be incorporated into the official SWS-Challenge test bed 
and fosters discussion on the Challenge’s evaluation methodology as 
such. Insights gained during the workshops will provide the necessary 
input to the W3C SWS Testbed Incubator Group which aims at standardizing 
an evaluation methodology for Semantic Web Services technology.

EON-SWSC2008 will be a two-day workshop: The first day will be dedicated 
to ontology and semantic Web evaluation in general (in the spirit of 
EON) whereas the second day will focus on SWS technology evaluation (in 
the spirit of the SWS-Challenge). Based on the different solutions to a 
common application, the workshops will provide a forum for participants 
to develop a thorough understanding of each other’s technologies that 
greatly exceeds the level of insight that can be reached through the 
study of academic papers alone.

TOPICS

The main track of the workshop is focused on the evaluation of Semantic 
Web tools and applications, including but not limited to:

* Semantic Web technology evaluation methods
* Methods to describe evaluation aspects and parameters
* Identification of Resource consumption characteristics
* Models for describing and measuring in evaluation
* Techniques and formulas for evaluation
* Infrastructures and tools for evaluation
* Certification and interoperability of tools
* Performance and scalability evaluations and benchmarks
* Integration of evaluation tools into frameworks
* Web scale distribution of Semantic Web

For the SWS-Challenge the workshop seeks novel papers:
* describing implemented solutions to the SWS-Challenge problem 
scenarios (SWS-Solution Papers, see below),
* describing other benchmarks targeted at the evaluation of SWS technology,
* dealing with SWS technology evaluation in theory, and
* describing application of SWS technology in industry or on real world 
use cases.

Papers describing solutions to SWS Challenge problems must demonstrate 
completion of at least one problem level in order to qualify for the 
workshop. In order to be successfully certified, a solution has to send 
the correct sequence of SOAP-messages to the SWS Challenge test bed. The 
solution code must be demonstrated at the workshop and will be evaluated 
by a group of workshop organizers and participants.

KEY DATES

Full Research Paper submission: March 23, 2008
Short SWSC-Solution Papers: March 23, 2008
Acceptance Notification:    April 11, 2008
Research Paper Camera Ready:    April 30, 2008
Full SWSC-Solution Papers: May 18, 2008

Workshop dates:             June 1-2, 2008

For SWSC-Solution papers we require a short paper (<= 4 pages) 
describing the planned solution by March 23th and a full paper 
describing the *implemented solution* by May 18th. SWSC-Solution full 
papers will be included in the proceedings, if the claims made in the 
paper are verified at the workshop.

SUBMISSION

Submissions are to be formatted according to the guidelines of the 
ESWC2008 conference. The page limit for full papers is 10 pages, for 
SWS-Challenge solution papers two additional pages are accepted.
Submission details will be published at the workshop website.

All contributions will be peer reviewed by a program committee that will 
incorporate well recognized experts.

WORKSHOP ORGANISING COMMITTEE

* Raúl García-Castro, Ontology Engineering Group at Universidad 
Politécnica de Madrid (ES)
* Asunción Gómez-Pérez, Ontology Engineering Group, at Universidad 
Politécnica de Madrid (ES)
* Charles Petrie, Logic Group at Stanford University (USA)
* Emanuele Della Valle, CEFRIEL (IT)
* Ulrich Küster, Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
* Omair Shafiq, Semantic Technology Institute Innsbruck (AT)
* Michal Zaremba, Semantic Technology Institute Innsbruck (AT)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

* John Domingue, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University (UK)
* Tiziana Margaria, Computer Science Dept., U. Potsdam (DE)
* Axel Polleres, DERI, NUIG (IE)
* Richard Waldinger, SRI (USA)
* Peter Emmel, SAP (DE)
* Tomas Vitvar, DERI, NUIG (IE)
* Christoph Bussler, Merced Systems, Inc. (USA)
* Jos de Bruij, KRDB, U. Bozen-Bolzano (IT)
* Alexander Wahler STI Internat. (AT)
* Thorsten Liebig, Ulm University (DE)
* Baoshi Yan, Bosch (USA)
* Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (ES)
* David Martin, SRI (USA)
* more to be announced

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information refer to the workshop website at

http://sws-challenge.org/wiki/index.php/EON-SWSC2008

Received on Monday, 28 January 2008 17:06:22 UTC