Researchers put enormous amounts of time and effort into collaborative tasks, such as writing up ... more Researchers put enormous amounts of time and effort into collaborative tasks, such as writing up research proposals or papers. Typically, for such tasks, collaborators use an ad hoc combination of different tools, from version control software, latex editors, instant messaging and emails, to keep track of the tasks status. Time is inevitably wasted in pooling together the various resources and to keep them synchronised, as well as to monitor the status of the subtasks assigned to the different collaborators. Furthermore, it is at times required to quickly seek expertise advice from colleagues about particular aspects of the ongoing research task. In this paper we present Bizzilla, a collaborative task management environment with expert finding capabilities. Bizzilla is based on a plug-in architecture and provides a suite of tools that allow for collaborative task management, real-time collaborative editing, automatic resource synchronisation, instant-messaging and expert-finding based on the idea of collaborative opportunism.
The onset of the Semantic Web has brought many innovations for enabling assisted interactions on ... more The onset of the Semantic Web has brought many innovations for enabling assisted interactions on the World Wide Web through document annotation. Many efforts have emerged throughout the past years, including RDF, OWL,OWL-S and WSMO, all seeking to improve the current web from a static one into a more dynamic one. Semantic Web Services are an effective way to facilitate
Web services are becoming the most predominant paradigm for distributed computing and electronic ... more Web services are becoming the most predominant paradigm for distributed computing and electronic business. They are self-contained Internet accessible applications that are capable not only of performing business activities on their own, but they also possess the ability to engage with other Web services in order to build new value-added services. Both academic and industrial bodies have been investigating issues regarding service descriptions, discovery and invocation, but automated service composition was somewhat neglected. The latter involves automated methods for constructing a sequence of Web services to achieve a desired goal. In this work we present initial research that focuses on the issue of automated service composition in conjunction with the Semantic Web. In this report we propose a composition engine that will automatically handle the integration of Web services through the use of a Web service description language such as DAML-S, the planning of workflow definitions, scheduling of tasks, status monitoring of the execution process, handling of faults and communication with other entities such as user agents, service registries and other composition engines.
Academic and industrial bodies are considering the issue of Web Services as being the next step f... more Academic and industrial bodies are considering the issue of Web Services as being the next step forward. A number of efforts have been made and are evolving to define specifications and architectures for the spreading of this new breed of web applications. One such work revolves around the Semantic Web. Lead researches are trying to combine the semantic advantages that a Semantic Web can provide to Web Services. The research started with the now standardized RDF (Resource Description Framework) and continued with the creation of DAML+OIL (DARPA Agent Markup Language and Ontology Inference Layer) and its branches, particularly DAML-S (where S stands for Services) [1]. The Semantic Web’s point of view, being considered in this paper presents a rich environment where the advantages of incorporating semantics in searching for Web Services can be fully expressed. This paper aims to describe an environment called DASD (DAML Agents for Service Discovery) where Web Service requesters and providers can discover each other with the intermediary action of a Matchmaking service.
We present the motivation and design of CCBROnto, an OWL Ontology for Conversational Case-Base Re... more We present the motivation and design of CCBROnto, an OWL Ontology for Conversational Case-Base Reasoning (CCBR). We use this ontology to define cases that can eventually be stored, retrieved and reused by a mixed-initiative approach based on CCBR. We apply this technique for retrieving Web Service Composition templates.
In today's world of extreme competition, information exchange and efficient communication is the ... more In today's world of extreme competition, information exchange and efficient communication is the need of the day. This need for information exchange brings in another need, that which makes information selectively visible, and its visibility to be changed on the fly. Web Services are a new breed of web application and play a central role in the WWW, providing the above-mentioned requirements. The composition of these services enables application integration within and across organizational boundaries. The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is intended to enable portable business process definitions for WSDL based services. In this paper we describe the work done on a BPEL execution engine and editor developed for the .NET framework. We also describe how a graphical representation based on UML activity diagrams was used to visualise service compositions and how this can be adopted as the underlying model for Semantic Web service descriptions such as OWL-S.
The proliferation of Web Services is fostering the need for applications to provide more personal... more The proliferation of Web Services is fostering the need for applications to provide more personalisation during the service discovery and composition phases. An application has to cater for different types of users and seamlessly provide suitably understandable and refined replies. In this paper, we describe the motivating details behind PreDiCtS 1 , a framework for personalised service discovery and composition. The underlying concept behind PreDiCtS is that, similar service composition problems could be tackled in a similar manner by reusing past composition best practices. These have to be useful and at the same time flexible enough to allow for adaptations to new problems. For this reason we are opting to use template-based composition information. PreDiCtS's retrieval and refinement technique is based on conversational case-based reasoning (CCBR) and makes use of a core OWL ontology called CCBROnto for case representations.
In this paper we focus on the integration of Components with the idea of a Semantic Web through t... more In this paper we focus on the integration of Components with the idea of a Semantic Web through the use of software agents. This work involves the creation of a prototype software agent which is composed of some basic components, but which can augment its capabilities by invoking other software components that are present as Web Services outputs over the Web and integrating them into its workflow process . The agent's workflow process model and governing rules [3] are described in the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML+OIL) [2]. A mapping from DAML+OIL to the underlying programming language objects is done by the use of the Java Reflection API.
Two of the most hyped technologies of recent times, are "Web Services" and "Semantic Web". This i... more Two of the most hyped technologies of recent times, are "Web Services" and "Semantic Web". This is evident in the fact that the Web service technology stack is overloaded with acronyms of these developments. Markup languages for specifications of Web services are set to play an important role, especially, in enabling dynamic service discovery and composition by human users and software agents. There is a plethora of languages, proposed by academic and industrial research groups, for Service description, discovery, composition, execution and interpretation with XML as their backbone. Some of these languages have well defined underlying semantics, others are based on workflow patterns, while a few have emerged as combinations of other independent languages. With so many languages and each one of them proposed to be a standard, it becomes imperative to critically analysis the merits and demerits of these languages. In this paper we present a case study, to emphasis the salient features of some of these languages and compare them with respect to attributes like expressiveness, support for the semantics, supporting tools available, the core composition mechanism, support for fault tolerance and exception handling. Our choice was motivated by the industrial support behind them and/or sound academic research.
This deliverable reports about the state of advancement of the testbeds, that have been devel- op... more This deliverable reports about the state of advancement of the testbeds, that have been devel- oped within the working group A3. In particular, we will describe the most recent improvements of the Personal Reader framework (joint eort of Hannover and Turin) and of the PreDiCtS framework (Malta). A connection between the two frameworks is their relation to the emerging technology
Researchers put enormous amounts of time and effort into collaborative tasks, such as writing up ... more Researchers put enormous amounts of time and effort into collaborative tasks, such as writing up research proposals or papers. Typically, for such tasks, collaborators use an ad hoc combination of different tools, from version control software, latex editors, instant messaging and emails, to keep track of the tasks status. Time is inevitably wasted in pooling together the various resources and to keep them synchronised, as well as to monitor the status of the subtasks assigned to the different collaborators. Furthermore, it is at times required to quickly seek expertise advice from colleagues about particular aspects of the ongoing research task. In this paper we present Bizzilla, a collaborative task management environment with expert finding capabilities. Bizzilla is based on a plug-in architecture and provides a suite of tools that allow for collaborative task management, real-time collaborative editing, automatic resource synchronisation, instant-messaging and expert-finding based on the idea of collaborative opportunism.
The onset of the Semantic Web has brought many innovations for enabling assisted interactions on ... more The onset of the Semantic Web has brought many innovations for enabling assisted interactions on the World Wide Web through document annotation. Many efforts have emerged throughout the past years, including RDF, OWL,OWL-S and WSMO, all seeking to improve the current web from a static one into a more dynamic one. Semantic Web Services are an effective way to facilitate
Web services are becoming the most predominant paradigm for distributed computing and electronic ... more Web services are becoming the most predominant paradigm for distributed computing and electronic business. They are self-contained Internet accessible applications that are capable not only of performing business activities on their own, but they also possess the ability to engage with other Web services in order to build new value-added services. Both academic and industrial bodies have been investigating issues regarding service descriptions, discovery and invocation, but automated service composition was somewhat neglected. The latter involves automated methods for constructing a sequence of Web services to achieve a desired goal. In this work we present initial research that focuses on the issue of automated service composition in conjunction with the Semantic Web. In this report we propose a composition engine that will automatically handle the integration of Web services through the use of a Web service description language such as DAML-S, the planning of workflow definitions, scheduling of tasks, status monitoring of the execution process, handling of faults and communication with other entities such as user agents, service registries and other composition engines.
Academic and industrial bodies are considering the issue of Web Services as being the next step f... more Academic and industrial bodies are considering the issue of Web Services as being the next step forward. A number of efforts have been made and are evolving to define specifications and architectures for the spreading of this new breed of web applications. One such work revolves around the Semantic Web. Lead researches are trying to combine the semantic advantages that a Semantic Web can provide to Web Services. The research started with the now standardized RDF (Resource Description Framework) and continued with the creation of DAML+OIL (DARPA Agent Markup Language and Ontology Inference Layer) and its branches, particularly DAML-S (where S stands for Services) [1]. The Semantic Web’s point of view, being considered in this paper presents a rich environment where the advantages of incorporating semantics in searching for Web Services can be fully expressed. This paper aims to describe an environment called DASD (DAML Agents for Service Discovery) where Web Service requesters and providers can discover each other with the intermediary action of a Matchmaking service.
We present the motivation and design of CCBROnto, an OWL Ontology for Conversational Case-Base Re... more We present the motivation and design of CCBROnto, an OWL Ontology for Conversational Case-Base Reasoning (CCBR). We use this ontology to define cases that can eventually be stored, retrieved and reused by a mixed-initiative approach based on CCBR. We apply this technique for retrieving Web Service Composition templates.
In today's world of extreme competition, information exchange and efficient communication is the ... more In today's world of extreme competition, information exchange and efficient communication is the need of the day. This need for information exchange brings in another need, that which makes information selectively visible, and its visibility to be changed on the fly. Web Services are a new breed of web application and play a central role in the WWW, providing the above-mentioned requirements. The composition of these services enables application integration within and across organizational boundaries. The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is intended to enable portable business process definitions for WSDL based services. In this paper we describe the work done on a BPEL execution engine and editor developed for the .NET framework. We also describe how a graphical representation based on UML activity diagrams was used to visualise service compositions and how this can be adopted as the underlying model for Semantic Web service descriptions such as OWL-S.
The proliferation of Web Services is fostering the need for applications to provide more personal... more The proliferation of Web Services is fostering the need for applications to provide more personalisation during the service discovery and composition phases. An application has to cater for different types of users and seamlessly provide suitably understandable and refined replies. In this paper, we describe the motivating details behind PreDiCtS 1 , a framework for personalised service discovery and composition. The underlying concept behind PreDiCtS is that, similar service composition problems could be tackled in a similar manner by reusing past composition best practices. These have to be useful and at the same time flexible enough to allow for adaptations to new problems. For this reason we are opting to use template-based composition information. PreDiCtS's retrieval and refinement technique is based on conversational case-based reasoning (CCBR) and makes use of a core OWL ontology called CCBROnto for case representations.
In this paper we focus on the integration of Components with the idea of a Semantic Web through t... more In this paper we focus on the integration of Components with the idea of a Semantic Web through the use of software agents. This work involves the creation of a prototype software agent which is composed of some basic components, but which can augment its capabilities by invoking other software components that are present as Web Services outputs over the Web and integrating them into its workflow process . The agent's workflow process model and governing rules [3] are described in the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML+OIL) [2]. A mapping from DAML+OIL to the underlying programming language objects is done by the use of the Java Reflection API.
Two of the most hyped technologies of recent times, are "Web Services" and "Semantic Web". This i... more Two of the most hyped technologies of recent times, are "Web Services" and "Semantic Web". This is evident in the fact that the Web service technology stack is overloaded with acronyms of these developments. Markup languages for specifications of Web services are set to play an important role, especially, in enabling dynamic service discovery and composition by human users and software agents. There is a plethora of languages, proposed by academic and industrial research groups, for Service description, discovery, composition, execution and interpretation with XML as their backbone. Some of these languages have well defined underlying semantics, others are based on workflow patterns, while a few have emerged as combinations of other independent languages. With so many languages and each one of them proposed to be a standard, it becomes imperative to critically analysis the merits and demerits of these languages. In this paper we present a case study, to emphasis the salient features of some of these languages and compare them with respect to attributes like expressiveness, support for the semantics, supporting tools available, the core composition mechanism, support for fault tolerance and exception handling. Our choice was motivated by the industrial support behind them and/or sound academic research.
This deliverable reports about the state of advancement of the testbeds, that have been devel- op... more This deliverable reports about the state of advancement of the testbeds, that have been devel- oped within the working group A3. In particular, we will describe the most recent improvements of the Personal Reader framework (joint eort of Hannover and Turin) and of the PreDiCtS framework (Malta). A connection between the two frameworks is their relation to the emerging technology
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Papers by Charlie Abela