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Friday, October 19, 2007

Knowledge Services on the Semantic Web

In this article we present a Semantic Web-enabled architecture for
trading knowledge assets. The most suitable environment for
technologically supporting Web-enabled knowledge provision services
is the use of Semantic Web services. In this area, we should note the
recent work of the Semantic Annotations for WSDL (SAWSDL) Working
Group of the W3C, whose objective is to develop a mechanism to enable
semantic annotation of Web services descriptions. In our work we
developed multifaceted ontological structures in order to define the
necessary modeling primitives that are important for describing
knowledge provision services that go beyond common Web services like
a flight booking or book selling. The knowledge service utilizes the
content and context ontology for a twofold purpose: to discover
knowledge objects within a collection and to be discovered as a service,
namely to determine its identity. We have specified an enhanced
universal discovery, description, and integration (UDDI) platform
known as k-UDDI, which enables the discovery, negotiation, and
invocation of knowledge services with the incorporation incorporation
of reference ontologies that semantically enrich the Web services
infrastructure. The k-UDDI holds all reference ontologies that allow
a common understanding of services and facilitate semantically enhanced
service discovery, IPR and business specific issues and finally
negotiation processes generating sound contracts. Knowledge service
discovery is provided by the discovery service of the registry, which
is exposed via a Web service interface. As knowledge services will be
traded, mechanisms are needed to support negotiation and contracting
tasks. We make use of our negotiation ontology and develop a flexible
negotiation mechanism that enables bargaining between the service
provider and requester concerning the terms and conditions of use of a
knowledge service. [Also published in CACM 50/10 (October 2007), 53-58.]

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