Re: Semantics in the Web of Things

On a related point, I have been looking into the idea of including 
semantics as part of the interface descriptions for services, both what 
interfaces they expose, and what interfaces they depend upon. There is 
an analogy with Linux packages, where configuration tools can ensure 
that the dependencies are met when installing or upgrading a package.

With an open market of services, there will be a need to be able to 
discover services and to bind them as part of a web of services. W3C has 
Web IDL for JavaScript APIs, and something like it with semantic 
annotations would seem suitable along with annotations for integrity 
constraints. In the spirit of modern Web practice, this should be a 
lightweight format that is easy to author and to process.

A market of services would also create opportunities for services that 
deal with variations in vocabularies, which are pretty much inevitable, 
given the varying needs for different use cases. The semantic 
annotations would allow for tools that search for and construct plans 
for assembling services to fulfil particular needs. Services could be 
located at the network edge, e.g. installed on home gateways, or on 
cloud provisioned compute and storage platforms for greater 
scalability.  Semantics and open standards are needed to ensure that you 
can combine services that are running on platforms hosted by different 
vendors.

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett

Received on Friday, 21 February 2014 10:16:29 UTC