Creating Ontological Support for Service Compsitions
Abstract
This masters thesis addresses the concept of service composition - the process of combining services in order to solve complex problems. Service composition enables greater reuse of code and functionality. In order to compose services automatically, machines must be enabled to understand the capabilities and characteristics of services. The thesis focuses on how ontologies can be used in order to describe these capabilities and characteristics. A service composition system have been modeled and implemented using Java, Web Services and various Semantic Web technologies including ontologies. Web Services and Semantic Web technologies are described in detail in order to understand how the composition system operates. The use of ontologies and Semantic Web technologies are evaluated, and future work and improvements are suggested.