WebOnt Use-Case Area: Web Services

• The ontology representation language (ORL?) must be simple and concise enough to represent device properties in a small memory space. Devices range in complexity - economies of scale suggests the smaller the space required the better. If the device ontology is unacceptably large, a unique reference to the ontology must be available.
• The device ontology must be linkable with other devices' ontology forming a distributed ontology with a logical beginning and end / deterministic traversal method.
• Discrete partitions of an ontology must be recognizable in terms of the physical boundaries and in terms of logical (composite device) boundaries.
• The device is aware of its own ontological properties.
• If a composite device has properties in excess of the sum of the properties of subordinate devices, these properties can be physically located on multiple nodes. Device properties may be owned/controlled by multiple entities. The owner/controller may modify property values.
• Both property type and value can be changed. Type changes can be discovered by other services/devices and type semantics can be resolved - hopefully quickly!

• Properties in an ontology must be associate-able with a service/function, that supplies the property value.
• Properties must support access preconditions - namely, the monitoring network should be prevented from writing, while allowing write by the control network.
• Property values have meta attributes describing data freshness, polling/event interval or freshness goal, type, acceptable value range(s), exception conditions.
• Administrative update are access controlled and versioned allowing only authorized updates and rollback should an update not work as intended

• Resources in the control network are described by an ontology.
• Resource can be managed by different / multiple entities.
• Management responsibility may be delegated.
• Managed resources have meta attributes describing management functions - namely actions, time intervals, audit log, owner/controller/delegate and synchronization events.
  

LastMileServices is a startup aiming to describe static and dynamic aspects of telecommunication devices, with the goal of simplifying service construction and configuration of large networks.

The ontology language is used to define device ontologies (e.g., router and switches) and to definea service description ontology, which defines primitives to declare task decomposition, control flow (using the vocabulary of a UML statechart), and data flow of services.
Other primitives enable to create new services by combining and configuring existing services.
This results in a compositional ontology-based process and service description language capable to combine existing services (given by, e.g., distributed Web Services or Java Objects) with the goal to create new services.A service description can be compiled to Java code and be executed.

• We expect the modelers to be people not familiar with Knowlege Representation. Thus the language needs to be intuitive understandable and easy to visualize
• Third Party vendors are expected to write support software. Thus developers without a background in Knowledge Representation must be able to use API.
• We want to be able to verify, that a modeled device complies with the constraints defined in the ontology.
  

Formal methods is not so much meant to focus on formal methods of expression as in -
context-free or context-dependent requirements expressed by narrative rules; or doing our own variant of Backus-Naur Form. What I mean is a connected; iterative standards development process that connects the standard under definition; the model; and a conformance testing system as they evolve TOGETHER. If all three of these elements evolve together in a clearly defined, intentional process, DOD can save money, and many other wondrous events can also occur.

We purchase as much software as a Fortune 50 company. When we encounter a product that is 99% interoperable, the other 1% costs us millions of dollars to transport across platforms; or engineer expensive, weird work arounds that then require expensive life-cycle maintenance.

When encountering this 1% non-interoperability, it can often be traced back to both the lack of formal methods of expression within the standard; but most often to the absence of an intentional overall standards development process, exploiting intentional software engineering, using iteration between the three major elements to produce quality; modeled; tested and evolved products. So... we suffer with these products having no way to test conformance; not understanding exactly what we have purchased, costing millions of dollars.

- intelligent interoperable e-commerce. Use ontologies for all levels of support including simple things like integrity checks, more complicated support such as ontology merging and mapping to “standard” upper level ontologies such as UNSPSC, etc. Simple early versions of this include electronic yellow pages such as Directory Westfield. More complicated versions of this include real configuration and solutions across complicated domains. Early examples of ontology-enhanced configuration includes work on PROSE/QUESTAR [5].

- Web services. One of the focuses of KSL, Stanford's research over the last 1.5 years has been the confluence of the Semantic Web and Web Services -- self-contained Web-accessible programs, and devices, together with distributed computing architectures. As with DAML+OIL (in the guise of DAML-S), we would like to use WOL to create ontologies of Web Service properties and capabilities. Such annotations would be used to automate Web service discovery, Web service invocation and Web service composition and interoperation.

automated adaptation of content (media) presentation to users and the context.

We assume sensors to exist that conclude which objects (which people, for example) are in a certain room/space (a 'simple' way could involve tagging the objects). The objects are described in an ontology. Also metadata for content is described in an ontology. It is relevant to include information involving people's likes and dislikes, concerning media content, for example.
Sensor detection and such descriptions form the basis for drawing conclusions about the context (living room, office, mobile situation) and to adapt the presentation of content to this context. This may also include the specification of actions, for example used to personalize certain equipment, possibly in a context-dependent way. A natural connection can be made to the subject of collaborative
filtering. Ultimately, it is desirable to allow individual modes of expression of user profiles, while being able to make comparisons between different user profiles.

Expert Finding

A community of practice is a group of people which are self-selecting by virtue of their involvement in some common activity, such as habitual co-publication or attendance at similar events. We have been developing heuristic techniques for identifying such groups using the structures in an ontology. The expert finding task is related to COPs because experts are often key participants in the COP related to their
field of expertise. While it is not necessarily the case that there is mutual awareness between all members of a COP, we believe that the social network which underlies a COP can be used to 'justify' introductions to experts within that COP. In both cases, the knowledge which we use to identify COPs and experts is defined in terms of an ontology.

Footnotes:
[1] http://www.aktors.org
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/

Support for agents and agent technologies

Both FIPA and Agentcities are aiming towards the pratical application of agents and agent technologies, so they are looking at choosing an ontology representation language (ORL) from a pragmatic standardisation perspective:

1. To assist in the ontology modelling exercise. Both FIPA and Agentcities
are closely related to standardisation and one of the key points that
coollaborative ontology modelling promotes is a standarisation of
vocabularies across an application domain or domains.

2. To assist in ontology representation exchange. Initially, we expect that
FIPA and Agentcities will develop ontologies in a human-centric,
collaborative manner since most application domains that they are trying to
define are reasonably small and finite (i.e., bottom up rather than
top-down). However, in the future, it will be important that an ORL can also
express large ontologies and can reference terms in other ontologies,
possibly in other ORLs.

3. To assist in ontology translation. As the nodes in the network of
FIPA-compliant agent platforms increases, so the heterogeneity in the
network increases. FIPA is based on a model of uinting heterogeneity through
interoperability, and a key feature of a suitable ORL should be
like-compatibility with other ORLs. If the functionality is too diverse,
then translation between ORLs will be more difficult.

One of the goals of FIPA will be to probably pick up where the WebONT group
leaves off. That is, FIPA will leave the standardisation of the design
aspects of a suitable ORL to groups like WebONT, but will look at the more
pragmatic aspects of ontologies, such as ontology description definitions,
ontology discovery, ontology translation, etc.

• Complexity; how easy is the ORL to learn, use and implement.
• Size; how big is the ORL and can its functionality be divided into useage
  layers.
• Suitability; what specific problems does the ORL address and what
  problems is it best/worst suited to handle.
• Adoption; what is the target audience of the ORL and who is likely to
  adopt its useage

Automation of tasks related to business travel

I hope that WebOnt will be used to provide information that's currently available on the WWW (and not currently available on the WWW) in such a way that I can write and/or use programs to automate tasks such as those related to business travel. I'll use that domain as a focus for this
use case.

I generally plan my travel before calling my human corporate travel agent. For flights, I use a copy of the United Airlines Electronic Timetable, which gets monthly (weekly since 9/11) updates in a some sort of compressed binary format (I've made several unsuccessful attempts to extract the underlying data). I like the fact that I can work with this offline (e.g. on an airplane). I'd much prefer to get it in WebOnt format so that I can apply my own preferences, link to other information about airports, etc.

I have a hotel chain that I prefer. For destinations that I frequent often, I know their hotels in the area but often forget some of the details (e.g. which ones serve good hamburgers, and which room locations to avoid). For others, I look up information on their web sites. I'd like to get this information in WebOnt format, and to add my own properties for items of personal interest.

I normally try to get a hotel room that has high-speed wired or wireless Internet access. Hotel web sites are very inconsistent in reporting this service. For an unfamiliar property, I generally look at the directories maintained by the major ISPs serving hotels (CAIS, STSN, Wayport, and MobileStar), none of which currently provide the information in an agent-friendly format (most use maps, page hierarchies, and/or PDF). I'd prefer to get it in WebOnt and merge it myself with my itinerary and other geographic
information.

When I make a reservation, my corporate travel agent emails my itinerary in a format that I consider a canonical example of the "un-Semantic Web": a PDF image of a traditional FAXed itinerary. This prints well, but is virtually impossible for a program to process. I'd prefer to get this content using WebOnt, and to have it automatically routed to a personal travel agent program. I'd like to automatically share some of my itinerary information (e.g. travel dates and arrival times) with my co-workers, but keep some of it (e.g. credit card numbers) private.

After my airline ticket is booked, I generally have to call the airline directly to get an upgrade and/or better seat assignment. I prefer non-bulkhead (so I can keep my laptop
under the seat in front of me) window seats. United is unable to track this preference, so I often have to make several calls. An agent would be better (and more reliable!) at this task.

I now subscribe to United's Flight Paging Service, which automatically sends an email message to my pager 2 hours before my flight or whenever a delay or cancellation occurs. I'd prefer for my agent to get this information in WebOnt format so that it could automatically begin identifying alternative flights and routings when a problem arises.

I also subscribe to a free service from fly.faa.gov, which sends me email messages on ground stops and delays at specified airports. Unfortunately, it's not linked to my itineraries, so I get lots of such messages while I'm not travelling. If the information was in WebOnt format, my agent could easily cross-reference it with my itineraries and identify relevant problems.

While I travel, I'd like to have fast access to my itinerary using a utility like PalmDAML [1] on my PDA.

When I have a substantial wait at an airport, I like to look for high-speed Internet access. I've generally had better luck searching concourses than web pages to find such services; I'd like to get such information (translated to) my preferred WebOnt ontology. I sometimes go to the American Airlines Admirals Clubs to use their high-speed MobileStar wireless Internet access points. This is usually in a different terminal, so I'd like to also get WebOnt information on gate locations and walking times.

When I go to an unfamiliar city, I often try to rent a Hertz car with a NeverLost GPS. Rather than painstakingly toggling in the street names and numbers for my hotel and other destinations, I'd like to just beam the information in WebOnt format from my PDA using IR or Bluetooth.

I'd also like to get additional information that's not generally now on the web: service hours for restaurants (and room service) along my travel route. For flights that get in late, for example, my agent could tell me if I need to grab a bite before leaving the airport.

When I return from a trip, I have to fill-out an Excel spreadsheet for my expense report. Most of this information could come directly from my itinerary, hotel bills, and credit card receipts if they were provided in WebOnt format.

I already have a DAML application [2] for reconciling my expense reports with my credit card statements and checking account.

A few observations:

1) most of this information (flight schedules, travel itineraries, hotel addresses, expense reports, etc.) is not ontologically sophisticated

2) much of the information is already available in human-readable form

3) automation currently exists only in specific stovepipes such as United's new Flight Paging Service

4) even a highly-motivated geek finds it impractical to merge the existing information

5) with widespread use of WebOnt, we should be able to do most of these things pretty easily

Mike

[1] http://www.daml.org/PalmDAML/

[2] http://www.daml.org/2001/06/expenses/

The organisation of an evening of events for a user, based upon location
context information, service availability and user preferences. This will
require:
- determining and locating the required services from a directory service,
- negotiating with each service for availability, etc.,
- planning a set of events, and,
- booking the necessary events.

As part of the service determination/matching process, ratings and review
services may also be consulted to find closer matches to user preferences
(for example, consulting reviews and rating of films and restaurants to find
the 'best').

The work will produce various ontologies, mainly for talking about cinemas,
restaurants, transportation. Some sample ontologies can be found at:

http://liawww.epfl.ch/~acities/Lausanne/Services/descriptions.html
http://leap.crm-paris.com/agentcities/Services/descriptions.html

Other ontologies are required for service location and negotiation and can
be found in at: