Re: Question on OWL-S 1.1

Margaret Lyell wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> This question concerns the Process and Profile elements of the overall
> service description, and how elements of Process are intended to relate to
> elements of Profile.
> 
> With regard to the service profile functionality description -- 
>   There are no classes for modeling IOPEs -- so an instance of Profile.owl
> must use the schema provided by Process.owl

That's right.  (But, technically, as I think you realize already, with 1.1 we have 
IOPRs rather than IOPEs.)

> 
> Of course, when describing a instance of Process.owl, there is support for
> Output, Result, etc. 
> 
> Typically, are the descriptions of IOPE elements in Process.owl for a
> particular service echoed in the Profile.owl ? (Do they match?)

They are not required to match.  This is intentional; the intuition being that a 
profile is normally used as an advertisement, and it can be useful to allow an 
advertisement to be approximate (or perhaps even sloppy or inaccurate).

For most purposes, I think, the IOPRs declared for a Profile will be a subset of 
those declared for the Process -- the idea being that while you want the Profile to 
be an accurate reflection of the process, nevertheless many of the more detailed 
IOPRs of the process may not be important for advertising purposes.  In such cases, 
the IOPR instances need not be duplicated, of course - the Profile can refer to the 
same IOPR instances that have been declared in the process model.

> 
> Or is the description given in (an instance of) Profile.owl -- which must
> use elements of the process schema -- generally regarded as being 'higher
> level' ?  If so, then the IOPE elements in the Process and a Profile for a
> given service are not meant to be closely related.

Right - that is, OWL-S allows that they may not be closely related.  But as I say 
above, I think the subset relationship will suffice for the great majority of useful 
cases.

> 
> What was the intent?
> 
> I am currently using OWL-S1.1 in a non-standard (ie, not a Web service)
> application (with Protégé editor), and I would greatly appreciate some input
> on the overall issue.

I'd be very interested to hear more about your application.

Regards,
David

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2005 05:49:55 UTC