This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the First International Workshop on Semantic Web Services and Web Process Composition, SWSWPC 2004, held in San Diego, CA, USA in July 2004. The 9 revised full papers presented together with an introduction by the volume editors, a panel summary and the extended abstract of an invited talk were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. Web services and Web processes promise to ease several current Web infrastructure challenges, such as the integration of data, applications and processes. Web services are truly platform independent and allow the development of distributed loosely coupled applications, a key characteristic for the success of dynamic processes.

Thisbookconstitutestherefereedproceedingsofthe1stInternationalWorkshop on Semantic Web Services and Web Process Composition, SWSWPC 2004, held at the Westin Horton Plaza Hotel, San Diego, California, USA, July 6, 2004, in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2004). Theworkshopintendedtobringresearchers,scientistsfrombothindustryand academics,andrepresentativesfromdi?erentcommunitiestogethertostudy,- derstand, and explore the phases that compose the lifecycle of Semantic Web processes. The workshop presented what can be achieved by the symbiotic s- thesis of two of the hottest R&D and technology application areas, Web services and the Semantic Web, as recognized at the 12th International World Wide Web conference (WWW 2003) and in the industry press. The emphasis of the workshop was mainly on Web services, Web processes and semantics which are important movements emerging in the World Wide Web. Web services and Web processes promise to ease several current infr- tructure challenges, such as data, application, and process integration. Web s- vices are truly platform-independent and allow the development of distributed, loosely coupled applications, a key characteristic for the success of dynamic Web processes.

"Detailing the functions, issues and trends of service composition, this book offers the most relevant research and models pertaining to the design and maturity of semantic use"--Provided by publisher.

Semantics, Web services, and Web processes promise better re-use, universal interoperability and integration. Semantics has been recognized as the primary tool to address the challenges of a broad spectrum of heterogeneity and for improving automation through machine understandable descriptions. Semantic Web Services, Processes and Applications brings contributions from researchers who study, explore and understand the semantic enabling of all phases of semantic Web processes. This encompasses design, annotation, discovery, choreography and composition. Also this book presents fundamental capabilities and techniques associated with ontological modeling or services, annotation, matching and mapping, and reasoning. This is complemented by discussion of applications in e-Government and bioinformatics. Special bulk rates are available for course adoption through Publishing Editor.

After years of mostly theoretical research, Semantic Web Technologies are now reaching out into application areas like bioinformatics, eCommerce, eGovernment, or Social Webs. Applications like genomic ontologies, semantic web services, automated catalogue alignment, ontology matching, or blogs and social networks are constantly increasing, often driven or at least backed up by companies like Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. The need to leverage the potential of combining information in a meaningful way in order to be able to benefit from the Web will create further demand for and interest in Semantic Web research. This movement, based on the growing maturity of related research results, necessitates a reliable reference source from which beginners to the field can draw a first basic knowledge of the main underlying technologies as well as state-of-the-art application areas. This handbook, put together by three leading authorities in the field, and supported by an advisory board of highly reputed researchers, fulfils exactly this need. It is the first dedicated reference work in this field, collecting contributions about both the technical foundations of the Semantic Web as well as their main usage in other scientific fields like life sciences, engineering, business, or education.

This book embarks on a mission to dissect, unravel and demystify the concepts of Web services, including their implementation and composition techniques. It provides a comprehensive perspective on the fundamentals of implementation standards and strategies for Web services (in the first half of the book), while also presenting composition techniques for leveraging existing services to create larger ones (in the second half). Pursuing a unique approach, it begins with a sound overview of concepts, followed by a targeted technical discussion that is in turn linked to practical exercises for hands-on learning. For each chapter, practical exercises are available on Github. Mainly intended as a comprehensive textbook on the implementation and composition of Web services, it also offers a useful reference guide for academics and practitioners. Lecturers will find this book useful for a variety of courses, from undergraduate courses on the foundational technology of Web services through graduate courses on complex Web service composition. Students and researchers entering the field will benefit from the combination of a broad technical overview with practical self-guided exercises. Lastly, professionals will gain a well-informed grasp of how to synthesize the concepts of conventional and “newer” breeds of Web services, which they can use to revise foundational concepts or for practical implementation tasks.

A paradigm shift is taking place in computer science: one generation ago, we learned to abstract from hardware to software, now we are abstracting from software to serviceware implemented through service-oriented computing. Yet ensuring interoperability in open, heterogeneous, and dynamically changing environments, such as the Internet, remains a major challenge for actual machine-to-machine integration. Usually significant problems in aligning data, processes, and protocols appear as soon as a specific piece of functionality is used within a different application context. The Semantic Web Services (SWS) approach is about describing services with metadata on the basis of domain ontologies as a means to enable their automatic location, execution, combination, and use. Fensel and his coauthors provide a comprehensive overview of SWS in line with actual industrial practice. They introduce the main sociotechnological components that ground the SWS vision (like Web Science, Service Science, and service-oriented architectures) and several approaches that realize it, e.g. the Web Service Modeling Framework, OWL-S, and RESTful services. The real-world relevance is emphasized through a series of case studies from large-scale R&D projects and a business-oriented proposition from the SWS technology provider Seekda. Each chapter of the book is structured according to a predefined template, covering both theoretical and practical aspects, and including walk-through examples and hands-on exercises. Additional learning material is available on the book website www.swsbook.org. With its additional features, the book is ideally suited as the basis for courses or self-study in this field, and it may also serve as a reference for researchers looking for a state-of-the-art overview of formalisms, methods, tools, and applications related to SWS.

In this book, Dieter Fensel and his qualified team lay the foundation for understanding the Semantic Web Services infrastructure, aimed at eliminating human intervention and thus allowing for seamless integration of information systems. They focus on the currently most advanced SWS infrastructure, namely SESA and related work such as the Web Services Execution Environment (WSMX) activities and the Semantic Execution Environment (OASIS SEE TC) standardization effort.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms, Middleware 2004, held in Toronto, Canada in October 2004. The 25 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 194 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on peer-to-peer computing; routing protocols and overlay; middleware for replication and overlay; middleware for replication and transactions; publish/subscribe systems; Web services: composition, integration, and interoperatibilty; middleware for mobility; application servers, enterprise computing, and software engineering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2006, held in Athens, GA, USA in November 2006. It features more than 52 papers that address all current issues in the field of the semantic Web, ranging from theoretical aspects to various applied topics. An additional 14 papers detail applications in government, public health, public service, academic, and industry.