Enhancing Geo-Service Chaining through Deep Service Descriptions

• Published in: Transactions in GIS Vol. 11; no. 6; pp. 849 - 871
• Main Authors: Lemmens, Rob, De By, Rolf, Gould, Michael, Wytzisk, Andreas, Granell, Carlos, Van Oosterom, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-12-2007
• Subjects: Geographic information systems; Ontology; Programming languages; Semantics; Studies; Web Ontology Language-OWL
• ISSN: 1361-1682; 1467-9671
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9671.2007.01079.x

We demonstrate the integrated use of semantic and syntactic service descriptions, called deep service descriptions, for service chaining by combining two prototypes: one that deals with geoservice discovery composition (called ‘GeoMatchMaker’), with one that supports concrete composition and execution of geoservices services (called ‘Integrated Component Designer’). Most other service chaining approaches confine themselves to handling either syntactic or semantic service descriptions. The proprietary formats of these descriptions hamper an effective integration of discovery, composition and execution of multiple services. In essence, service chaining should help a user by providing an appropriate combination of executable services to solve a specified problem or query. Current XML‐based service description languages, such as the Web Ontology Language‐Services (OWL‐S) and the Web Service Description Language‐Semantics (WSDL‐S), allow us to build a geoservice‐reuse architecture based on common ontologies and shared service descriptions. Our approach uses annotation as a bridge between the syntax and semantics of services. This paper reports on its context and implementation issues. The target groups of this research are geo‐information engineers who are confronted with information integration issues and service interoperability issues, and secondly, information engineers who in general are confronted with distributed information and with end users that need to access distributed services as one virtual application.