DERI INNSBRUCK Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck · 2012. 2. 20. · contribution of this...

DERI INNSBRUCK Leopold-FranzensUniversität Innsbruck

DERI – Digital Enterprise Research Institute

A Research Plan for DERI Innsbruck: Moving from software to serviceware

and from syntax to semantics

Jos de Bruijn, Alice Carpentier, Ying Ding, Dieter Fensel, Martin Hepp, Stijn Heymans, Holger Lausen, Birgit Leiter, Christian Mayer, Melanie Plattner, Thomas Strang, Michal Zaremba

September 20, 2006

DERI Galway National University of Ireland Galway Ireland www.deri.ie DERI Innsbruck University of Innsbruck Technikerstrasse 21a Innsbruck Austria www.deri.at DERI Korea 267 Deokil Bldg (Saltlux), Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-848 Korea www.deri-korea.org DERI Stanford Stanford University Serra Mall Stanford USA www.deri.us

Abstract. A large research body needs a structure to facilitate the potential strength implicitly present in its size. This report is about releasing the full potential that DERI Innsbruck has in this respect. We derive objectives from the overall vision of DERI and align them with researchers and research projects through the means of research cluster.

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1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 6 2. SURVEY.................................................................................................................................................... 8

2.1. OBJECTIVES........................................................................................................................................ 8 2.2. CLUSTERS ..........................................................................................................................................14 2.3. PROJECTS ..........................................................................................................................................15 2.4. RESEARCH BODY...............................................................................................................................17

2.4.1. Student researchers...................................................................................................................17 2.4.2. Junior researchers ....................................................................................................................17 2.4.3. Senior researchers.....................................................................................................................24

3. REASONABLE SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES CLUSTER (RSWS) ...............................................25 3.1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION....................................................................................................................25 3.2. OBJECTIVES.......................................................................................................................................27

3.2.1. Discovery ...................................................................................................................................27 3.2.2. Choreography............................................................................................................................29 3.2.3 Formal Languages .....................................................................................................................32 3.2.4 Reasoning ...................................................................................................................................38

3.3. PROJECTS ..........................................................................................................................................42 3.3.1. Infrawebs ...................................................................................................................................42 3.3.2. Knowledge Web .........................................................................................................................44 3.3.3. RW² ............................................................................................................................................45 3.3.4. Salero.........................................................................................................................................47 3.3.5. Sekt ............................................................................................................................................48 3.3.6. SemNetMan ...............................................................................................................................49 3.3.7. SenSE ........................................................................................................................................50

3.4. STAFF.................................................................................................................................................51 3.4.1. Student Researchers..................................................................................................................52 3.4.2. Junior Researchers ...................................................................................................................52

3.4.2.1. Darko Anicic ..................................................................................................................................... 53 3.4.2.2. Jos de Bruijn..................................................................................................................................... 56 3.4.2.3. Dimitrij Denissenko.......................................................................................................................... 63 3.4.2.4. Cristina Feier .................................................................................................................................... 64 3.4.2.5. Uwe Keller ........................................................................................................................................ 68 3.4.2.6. Holger Lausen................................................................................................................................... 73 3.4.2.7. Ruzica Piskac .................................................................................................................................... 78 3.4.2.8. Richard Pöttler ................................................................................................................................. 80 3.4.2.9. James Scicluna.................................................................................................................................. 81 3.4.2.10. Alexander Wahler .......................................................................................................................... 85

3.4.3. Senior Researchers....................................................................................................................87 3.4.3.1. Stijn Heymans................................................................................................................................... 87

4. SEMANTICS IN BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS CLUSTER (SEBIS) .............................92 4.1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION....................................................................................................................92 4.2. OBJECTIVES.......................................................................................................................................94

4.2.1. Ontologies..................................................................................................................................94 4.3. PROJECTS ..........................................................................................................................................99

4.3.1. DIP.............................................................................................................................................99 4.3.2. EASAIER ................................................................................................................................101 4.3.3. EastWeb...................................................................................................................................102 4.3.4. EnIRaf .....................................................................................................................................103 4.3.5. etPlanner .................................................................................................................................104 4.3.6. MUSING .................................................................................................................................105 4.3.7. myOntology..............................................................................................................................106 4.3.8. OnTourism ..............................................................................................................................108

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4.3.9. SUPERMartin .............................................................................................................................110 4.4. STAFF...............................................................................................................................................112

4.4.1. Student Researchers................................................................................................................112 4.4.2. Junior Researchers .................................................................................................................112

4.4.2.1. Tobias Bürger ................................................................................................................................. 113 4.4.2.2. Jan Henke ....................................................................................................................................... 116 4.4.2.4. Dumitru Roman ............................................................................................................................. 117 4.4.2.5. Francois Scharffe............................................................................................................................ 122 4.4.2.6. Katharina Siorpaes ........................................................................................................................ 125 4.4.2.7. Michael Stollberg ........................................................................................................................... 126

4.4.3. Senior Researchers..................................................................................................................131 4.4.3.1. Ying Ding ........................................................................................................................................ 131 4.4.3.2. Martin Hepp ................................................................................................................................... 137

5. SEMANTIC EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT CLUSTER (SEE) ....................................................144 5.1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION..................................................................................................................144 5.2. OBJECTIVES.....................................................................................................................................147

5.2.1. Applications .............................................................................................................................147 5.2.2. Developer tools ........................................................................................................................149 5.2.3. Mediation.................................................................................................................................153 5.2.4. Execution management ..........................................................................................................156

5.3. PROJECTS ........................................................................................................................................159 5.3.1. Adaptive Service Grid..............................................................................................................159 5.3.3. SEEMP ....................................................................................................................................160 5.3.4. SemanticGov............................................................................................................................161 5.3.5 SemBiz ......................................................................................................................................162 5.3.6. SUPERMichal .............................................................................................................................163 5.3.7. TSC ..........................................................................................................................................165

5.4. STAFF...............................................................................................................................................167 5.4.1. Student Researchers................................................................................................................167 5.4.2. Junior Researchers .................................................................................................................167

5.4.2.1. Emilia Cimpian............................................................................................................................... 168 5.4.2.2. Graham Hench ............................................................................................................................... 171 5.4.2.3. Zhou Jingtao ................................................................................................................................... 173 5.4.2.4. Mick Kerrigan ................................................................................................................................ 180 5.4.2.5. Adrian Mocan................................................................................................................................. 185 5.4.2.6. Omair Shafiq .................................................................................................................................. 190 5.4.2.7. Adina Sirbu..................................................................................................................................... 196 5.4.2.8. Zhixian Yan .................................................................................................................................... 198

5.4.3. Senior Researchers..................................................................................................................199 5.4.3.1. Michal Zaremba ............................................................................................................................. 199

6. UBIQUITOUS SERVICES CLUSTER (UBISERV)..........................................................................206 6.1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION..................................................................................................................206 6.2. OBJECTIVES.....................................................................................................................................207

6.2.1. Adaptation ...............................................................................................................................207 6.2.2. Grounding ...............................................................................................................................209 6.2.3. Storage & Communication .....................................................................................................210

6.3. PROJECTS ........................................................................................................................................215 6.3.1. GRISINO.................................................................................................................................215 6.3.2. SWING ....................................................................................................................................217 6.3.3. TripCom...................................................................................................................................218

6.4. STAFF...............................................................................................................................................220 6.4.1. Student Researchers................................................................................................................220 6.4.2. Junior Researchers .................................................................................................................220

6.4.2.1. Jacek Kopecky ................................................................................................................................ 220 6.4.2.2. Reto Krummenacher...................................................................................................................... 223 6.4.2.3. Ioan Toma ....................................................................................................................................... 228

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6.4.3. Senior Researcher ...................................................................................................................236 6.4.3.1. Michael Jäger ................................................................................................................................. 236 6.4.3.2. Axel Polleres ................................................................................................................................... 236 6.4.3.3. Thomas Strang ............................................................................................................................... 238

7. BEYOND RESEARCH: TEACHING, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, AND GENERAL MANGEMENT..........................................................................................................................................246

7.1 TEACHING ........................................................................................................................................246 7.2 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................................251

7.2.1. General Description ................................................................................................................251 7.2.2. Projects ....................................................................................................................................252

7.2.2.1. DERIBusinessDevelopment ....................................................................................................................... 253 7.3. CENTRAL MANAGEMENT UNIT ......................................................................................................255

7.3.1. DERIExchange .............................................................................................................................255 7.3.2. DERISustainability .........................................................................................................................255 7.3.3. Knowledge Web Network ........................................................................................................256

REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................................................257 APPENDIX................................................................................................................................................262

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1. Introduction In general, a research institutes based on external funding has three major challenges to meet:

• It needs to provide excellent research results to justify its existence. • It needs to provide excellent education for its researchers to mature its outcomes. • It needs to provide excellent performance in research projects to ensure its

funding.

Unfortunately, these three dimensions may define conflicting requirements. In consequence it is essential to align them properly. We have chosen a top-down approach where an overall vision and mission is used to align these dimensions properly. In [1], the vision of serviceware as the next natural step beyond hardware and software is introduced: “After four decades of rapid advances in computing, we are embarking on the greatest leap forward in computing that includes revolutionary changes at all levels of computing from the hardware through the middleware and infrastructure to applications and more importantly in intelligence. This paper outlines a comprehensive framework that ingtegrates two complimentary and revolutionary technical advances, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Semantic Web, into a single computing architecture, that we call Semantically Enabled Service-Oriented Architecture (SESA). While SOA is widely acknowledged for its potential to revolutionize the world of computing, that success depends on resolving two fundamental challenges that SOA does not address, integration, and search or mediation. In a services-oriented world, billions of services must be discovered and selected based on requirements, then orchestrated and adapted or integrated. SOA depends on but does not address either search or integration. The contribution of this paper is to provide the semantics-based solution to search and integration that will enable the SOA revolution. The paper provides a vision of the future enabled by our framework that places computing and programming at the services layer and places the real goal of computing, problem solving, in the hands of end users.” Based on this SESA vision, a top down approach for organizing the research body in Innsbruck is developed. This implies the following:

• Objectives are derived from the mission to realize the SESA vision. • Projects must contribute to one or several of the components of SESA, probably

on a 80% rule, i.e., 20% can be about different or related topics. This reflects the need for opportunisms since we are cooperating in this process with funding agencies and external partners that both have their own agendas.

• Researcher and their research topics follow from sub aspects of some of the objectives. Again, this should hold for at least 80% of these topics.

Finally, DERI Innsbruck has clusters as a means to decompose research, the large number of researchers, and project responsibility. Each cluster is responsible for a number of objectives, a number of researchers, and a number of projects.

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In the following section, namely Section 2, we provide a general summary on goal, project, and research staff distribution over clusters. The subsequent sections, Section 3 to Section 6, introduce the four research clusters of DERI. Each of these sections is divided into the following subsections, general description, objectives, projects and staff. Section 7 adds further activities of DERI beyond its focus on research. These activities are related to teaching, business development, and general management.

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2. Survey We will survey objectives, clusters, projects and research staff 2.1. Objectives A objective usually combines a research area, i.e., a major research challenges in SW(S) and SESA together with an implementation effort related to it.1 A objective typically has a corresponding architectural component, and vice versa. A tight coupling between objectives and architectural components is desirable. The WSMX platform [2] provides a SESA environment which facilitates prototype development. The major outcome of each of the objectives consists of peer-reviewed conference and journal publications. The prototypes associated with the papers are the major outcome of the architectural components which are associated with the research components. We distinguish 4 different types of elements of an overall SESA where each element type is composed by some sub functionalities:

• The problem-solving layer which consists of (1) Ontologies, (2) Applications (e.g., e-tourism, e-government) and (3) Developer tools (GUI tools such as ontology/web service description engineering tools; generic developer tools such as language APIs, parsers/serializers, converters, etc.).

• The broker layer which consists of (4) Discovery, (5) Adaptation (including selection and negotiation), (6) Composition (web service composition techniques such as planning), (7) Choreography, (8) Mediation ((a) Ontology mediation: techniques for combining Ontologies and for overcoming differences between Ontologies; (b) Process mediation: overcoming differences in message ordering, etc.), (9) Grounding, (10) Fault Handling (Transactionality, Compensation, etc.), and (11) Monitoring.

• The base layer that is providing the exchange formalism used by the architecture, i.e., (12) Formal languages (static ontology and behavioral, i.e., capability/choreography/orchestration languages, connection between higher-level descriptions, e.g., WSML), (13) Reasoning (techniques for reasoning over formal descriptions; LP, DL, FOL, behavioral languages, etc.) and (14) Storage and Communication.

• Finally, vertical services such as (15) Execution management and (16) Security (authentication/authorization, encryption, trust/certification).

1 Existing working group such as WSML will become a working group of a certain objective.

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The following image presents the current status of WSMX architecture.

Figure 2.1.1 SESA Architecture

Hereby, the overall roadmap is as following:

• Currently, DERI Innsbruck focuses on the following essential components to boot-strap the overall approach: (1) Ontologies, (2) Applications, (3) Developer tools, (4) Discovery, (5) Adaptation, (6) Composition, (7) Choreography, (8) Mediation, (9) Grounding, (12) Formal languages, (13) Reasoning, (14) Storage and Communication, (15) Execution management.

• There are no concrete plans yet for (10) Fault Handling, (11) Monitoring, and (16) Security. Some of this work may be provided by external DERI cooperation partners.

The following table summarizes these objectives and their leaders. Objectives No Objective Cluster Leader

1 Ontologies In this research topic, we want to advance the state of the art in the creation and the use of ontologies for the automation of business processes. Ontologies in our understanding are community contracts about a representation of a domain of discourse. Representation in here includes (1) formal parts that can be used for machine reasoning, and (2) informal parts like natural language descriptions and multimedia elements that help humans establish, maintain, and renew consensus about the meaning of concepts. Our research output will

SEBIS Martin Hepp

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be mainly (1) actual ontologies and ontology frameworks for typical application domains, (2) methodologies for the semi-automatic creation of ontologies from informal specifications and standards, (3) process models and infrastructure for collaborative ontology engineering, (4) showcase of ontology usage in typical enterprise scenarios, and (5) economic models for ontology creation and usage.

2 Applications Mission of the application research topic is to develop a common understanding of the various technologies intended to facilitate the use of other services of SESA. This working group will develop (1) use case scenarios that help validate the real-world fitness of SESA components and (2) domain-specific implementations which will be used for testing of SESA services.

SEE, (SEBIS)2

Michal Zaremba

3 Developer tools The mission of the developer tools working group is to produce high quality tools related to Semantic Web Services that can be used by users of all competency levels. To this end we provide a large number of tools that can be used by users with different skill sets. Members of the working group are working on tools for managing WSMO ontologies, web services, goals and mediators, for creating mappings between WSMO ontologies for runtime mediation, for executing WSDL web services and managing WSMO execution environments.

SEE Mick Kerrigan

4 Discovery The goal of the discovery working group is to define a methodology that allows to model services at a suitable level of granularity. Furthermore we will provide different discovery implementations that are compatible with WSMO, WSML and specifically WSMX. The discovery group will use the languages developed in the formal languages group and make use of the reasoner support provided by the reasoner group.

RSWS, (SEE)2

Holger Lausen, Mick Kerrigan

5 Adaptation After discovering a set of potentially useful services, the Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) needs to check whether the services can actually fulfill the user's

UbiServ Ioan Toma

2 Goals are distributed over clusters. Some goals may require the cooperation of several clusters. In this case there is a lead cluster and an assisting cluster (indicated by brackets).

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concrete goal and under what conditions. Those that cannot fulfill the goal are removed from the list of discovered services. This step is required as it is not feasible for a service to provide an exhaustive semantic description. Giving the Amazon bookstore service as an example, it is not feasible for Amazon to update the semantic description of their Web service every time a new book is available or the status of an existing book is changed, therefore we must check that Amazon actually currently has a copy of the book requested by the user, and at an acceptable price. The process of checking whether and under what conditions a service can fulfill a concrete Goal is part of what we call negotiation in SEE, and it also encompasses so-called filtering.

6 Composition Develop methods to do web service composition (WSC), starting from web service descriptions at various levels of abstraction, specifically, the functional level and process level components of WSMO. Implement such methods as tools in the relevant contexts, in particular WSMX. Find potential applications of WSC technology, model them using WSMO/WSML, and run case studies with the developed tools, ultimately resulting in technology export.

Jörg Hoffmann

7 Choreography The Choreography part of SEE is meant to provide a process language which should allow for formal specifications of interactions and processes between the service modeling and clients, define reasoning tasks that should be performed using this language, and implement an engine to support the execution of interactions, as well as to support reasoning in this language.

RSWS, (SEBIS, SEE)2

James Scicluna

8 Mediation Mediation in SESA aims at providing flexible mediation service at both data and process level. The min focus on Data Mediation provides automatic transformation of data used in conversation between various parties based on ontology mappings. Additionally, techniques for ontology mappings optimization and global schema generation are investigated, together with their potential in query rewriting. As a support for all these mediation scenarios a uniform mapping language is developed, with strong links and support towards automatic mappings generation. The Process Mediator component has the task of solving the communication (behavioral) mismatches that may occur during the communication

SEE Adrian Mocan

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between a requestor and a provider of a service. As in WSMO, the requestor is a WSMO Goal, while the provider is a Semantic Web Service, the Process Mediator’s task is be to accommodate the mismatches between the goal’s requested Choreography and the SWS’s choreography.

9 Grounding Apart from discovering Web services and composing them, the Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) also needs to communicate with the Web services — send the necessary request messages and receive the responses. Because internal communication within the SEE uses semantic data and practically all currently deployed Web services use their specific XML formats, the External Communication component needs to translate between the involved data forms. This translation is also known as data grounding. Above that, this component also needs to support concrete network protocols (HTTP, SOAP, other bindings) to be able to exchange messages with the Web service. As grounding has to be based on the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), the work on this component also contains W3C efforts towards Semantic Web Services. In particular, this means the WSDL RDF mapping from Web Service Description WG, and the Semantic Annotations for WSDL in the SA-WSDL WG.

UbiServ Jacek Kopecky

12 Formal languages Descriptions in a Semantically-Enabled Service Oriented Architecture (SESA) need different formal languages for the specification of different aspects of knowledge and services. The descriptions in a SESA can be decomposed into four dimensions:

• Static knowledge (Ontologies) • Functional description (capabilities) • Behavioural description (choreography and

orchestration) • Non-functional Properties

It is our mission to develop and combine languages for these dimensions of description in a SESA. In the process we will relate these modelings to current and upcoming Semantic Web and Web Service modelings.

RSWS Jos de Bruijn

13 Reasoning We will develop an efficient and extensible reasoning engine for expressive rule-based languages (WSML Core/Flight/Rule), as well as description logic based languages (WSML-DL). The reasoner will be based on

RSWS Darko Anicic and Stijn Heymans

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state-of-the-art reasoning algorithms (for query answering, logical entailment, etc.). The Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) needs the reasoning component for service discovery as well as both process and data mediation. Mission critical features of the Reasoning component are: hybrid reasoning based on DLs and logic programming, reasoning with very large instance bases, reasoning with heterogeneous and conflicting information, and reasoning in distributed environments. Also one of our major objectives is the implementation of Rule Interchange Format (RIF). RIF aims to specify a common format for rules in order to allow rule interchange between diverse rule systems. This format (or language) will function as an interlingua into which rule languages can be mapped, allowing rules written in different languages to be executed in the same reasoner engine. The RIF layer our reasoner engine will be capable of handling rules from diverse rule systems and will make WSML rule sets interchangeable with rule sets written in other languages that are also supported by RIF.

14 Storage & Communication The storage components, plural on purpose, shall provide repositories to store “objects” needed to ensure successful processing of user request to SESA. There might be a need for different storages tailored to the particular needs: web service descriptions, goals, mediation rules, workflows, and execution semantics. It is already known that the Execution Management component requires repositories for ontologies and data instances (service descriptions in particular). The idea is to use a Triple Space infrastructure to do so. The objective of the Storage Component team is thus to determine which means of storage are required and in what way these requirements can be fulfilled in the simplest way to still provide optimal service to the application layer components and the vertical services.

UbiServ Reto Krummenacher

15 Execution Management The execution management component is responsible for the management of WSMX as a platform and for the coordination of the individual components. As the kernel of the system it enables and realizes the overall operational semantics of WSMX that let the system achieve the promised functional semantics of its client-side interface. It takes the functionality offered by the individual components of the framework and

SEE Thomas Haselwanter

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orchestrates these atomic pieces into a coherent whole in an orderly and consistent fashion. These properties are guaranteed by the execution semantics, which are executed over the set of services that are available to the execution management component

Goals distribution Cluster Goals Lead Assis. RSWS Discovery, Choreography, Formal Language,

Reasoning, 4

SEBIS Ontologies, (Applications), (Choreography) 1 2 SEE Applications, Developer Tools, (Discovery),

Mediation, (Choreography), Execution Management, (Storage & Communication)

4 3

UbiServ Adaptation, Grounding, Storage & Communication 3 A detailed description for each particular component is provided as part of the cluster descriptions. 2.2. Clusters DERI Innsbruck decomposes its research body via four clusters arranged around senior researchers. Reasonable Semantic Web Services (RSWS) Dr. Stijn Heymans (Deputy: Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen) Besides the largest source of information ever, the Web is moving towards becoming a source for reusable software components and applications by globally accessible services published on the Web. Both static data and services available on the Web still lack of machine-understandable semantics to be usable in an automated way. It is the mission of the RSWS cluster to define reasonable methods and languages to effectively describe and reason about the Data on the Web and Web Services to make the vision of the Semantic Web come true. Semantics in Business Information Systems (SEBIS) Dr. Ying Ding and Dr. Martin Hepp In our research group, we work at transferring Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services technology to research problems in Business Information Systems, in order to bridge the gap between the fundamental work yielded by the Formal Ontology and Semantic Web communities on one hand, and the application-oriented challenges of BIS/MIS as a discipline. This includes the following two dimensions: (1) Maturing Semantic Web foundations, so that they become compatible with the real world complexity and scale.

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(2) Applying Semantic Web technology to core challenges of Information Systems in order to realize and evaluate the business benefit, and to identify the open research challenges. We currently focus on various application domains. Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) Dr. Michal Zaremba (Deputy: Mick Kerrigan) It is mission of the Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) cluster to create an execution environment for the dynamic discovery, selection, mediation, invocation and inter-operation of Semantic Web Services. Enterprises’ information systems were subject of great changes during the last years. In order to adjust to more and more dynamic business demands, a new concept/paradigm has come to replace the traditional applications: the service. By this (and by some other auxiliary changes) the information system as a whole becomes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Such an approach offers a set of advantages that comes with SOA but it doesn’t solve all the interoperability problems that existed for classical applications too. Inside of a particular SOA, independent services offering the same functionality should be seamlessly interchangeable with each other. Different such services can have different vendors, and as a consequence, different peculiarities. Our platform is going to be a sample implementation of the Web Services Modelling Ontology (WSMO) which describes all aspects of Semantic Web Services. Ubiquitous Services (UbiServ) Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Strang Ubiquitous Computing is the most recent evolution step in an evolution chain characterizing different eras of internetworked computer systems. Building on the properties of Mobile Computing and Distributed Computing systems, Ubiquitous Computing systems are further characterized by at least three salient properties: context-awareness, ad-hoc networking as well as smart sensors and devices. From a service perspective, enhancements in the three respective research areas should enable a transition from the mobile services paradigm which is “any service for any person at any time and anywhere (at any cost)” to the more desirable ubiquitous services paradigm which is “the right service for the right person at the right time and at the right place (and with the right price)”. In our cluster we elaborate on the challenges of services in the emerging field of Ubiquitous Computing. This includes research on service description, discovery, distribution, deployment, composition and execution in Ubiquitous Computing environments. An important aspect is the area of ontology-based context modeling and retrieval as a key enabler of context-aware service discovery and execution technology in Ubiquitous Computing environments. 2.3. Projects This section surveys the current projects DERI Innsbruck is working on. It should ideally be the case that project deliverables written by researchers correspond to papers submitted to, and ideally accepted at, relevant workshops/conferences/journals. These papers should be written in line with the research components, as well as the researcher’s line of research, such that the material can later be used as part of a thesis/habilitation. In

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addition, all efforts in projects should clearly be aligned with the overall SESA architecture and some of its components. We will group the discussion of the projects in accordance to the cluster they belong to. Projects are always aligned with a cluster. If this is not possible, they are split in several virtual projects (like SUPER) where each belongs to a definite cluster. The distribution of projects to cluster is as following. Projects distribution Cluster Projects Number MM p.m. RSWS • Infrawebs

• Knowledge Web (0.5) • RW² • Salero • SEKT • SemNetMan • SenSE

6.5 10.5

SEBIS • DERIeTourism (0.25) • dip • EASAIER • EastWeb • enIRaF • etPlanner • Musing • OnTourism • myOntology • SUPERMartin (0.5)

8.75 13

SEE • ASG • SEEMP • SemanticGov • SemBiz • SUPERMichal (0.5) • TSC

5.5 12.5

UbiServ • GRISINO • SWING • TripCom

3 6

Non research units

• DERIBusinessDevelopment (0.25) • DERIExchange (0.25) • DERISustanability (0.25) • Knowledge Web Network (0.5)

1.25 1,5

Total 25 43,5

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2.4. Research Body Research outcome of students, junior researchers, and senior researchers consists of papers, published at relevant workshops/conferences/journals, with a specific topic, which falls in one of the research components. Prototypes which are used to validate the various claims made in the submitted papers should be developed as part of the corresponding architectural component, using the WSMX platform. A thesis or habilitation is typically a collection of peer-reviewed papers and is thus associated with a collection of prototypes. If the thesis proposes one coherent approach to some problem, one coherent prototype is typically required. In the following, we discuss students, junior researchers, and senior researchers. 2.4.1. Student researchers Students are assigned to a cluster and are usually supervised by a junior or senior researcher. Student researchers Nr Name Cluster Supervisor 1 Daniel Bachlechner SEBIS Martin Hepp 2 Thomas Haselwanter SEE Michal Zaremba 3 Andreas Klotz SEBIS Martin Hepp 4 Bernhard Leschinger SEBIS Martin Hepp 5 Michael Luger SEBIS Ying Ding 6 Mark Mattern SEE Holger Lausen 7 Kathrin Prantner SEBIS Martin Hepp 8 Joachim Adi Schütz RSWS Darko Anicic 9 Nathalie Steinmetz RSWS Holger Lausen 10 Martin Tanler RSWS Holger Lausen 2.4.2. Junior researchers High-quality PhD research is widely recognized as one of the key success factors in every academic institution. While doing a PhD necessarily implies a high amount of individual research work, the role of supervision is essential for the systematic operation of the process and its successful finalization. In this section we elaborate a potential supervision schema for DERI Innsbruck. The schema is divided into several components: the main phases of the PhD and their characteristics, the advisors and the methods employed for regularly monitoring the progresses made in the process.

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PhD Process: The process can be roughly divided into three phases:

Phase I: Find and formulate the research problem The PhD student is introduced to the different directions of research approached within the institute. Once the broad domain of research of the prospected thesis has been roughly defined, the student should intensively survey the current state of the art in this field with the purpose of getting familiar with the research done so far, identifying unsolved problems and motivating the necessity for further exploring these areas. The result of this endeavor should be a preliminary formulation of the research problem and the associated research questions he intends to address in his thesis. Ideally the research focus should satisfy the following features: • It should be narrow instead of broad-based. • It should lead to the formulation of first research hypothesis which form

the basis for the prospected solution. • It should be interesting for the target community. Outcomes: First research report - Problem statement The student should submit a document summarizing the research done so far and the core research questions of the thesis and outlining the prospected research approach and the methods employed to design and evaluate the solution. Dissemination Further on, the PhD student should contribute to project deliverables and first research publications. Preliminary thesis-relevant ideas should be published on a workshop in order to receive feedback on the feasibility of the general approach.

Phase II: Elaborate and evaluate the solution In this phase the student should provide answers to the major research questions of the thesis. He should find solutions to the formulated research questions, implement these ideas, evaluate them and analyze the results. Outcomes: Second research report - Outline of the thesis The PhD student should provide an outline of the thesis, which includes a definition of the problem statement, a description of the research approach and of the methods applied to conduct this research and a report and analysis of the evaluation results. Dissemination During this period the student will actively contribute to project deliverables and will publish the first papers around the topic of the thesis. The student should aim for at least two conference publications on high-quality scientific events. The student is also encouraged to submit a PhD proposal to a doctoral consortium in order to receive feedback from experts in the community and to collaborate with major players in his field of research, and in order to get in contact with potential external reviewers for his thesis.

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Phase III: Write up the thesis

This phase is primarily dedicated to the finalization of the PhD research in form of a dissertation. Outcomes: Third research report - Dissertation Dissemination The PhD student should aim for at least two publications, which lie at the core of the thesis topic, at major scientific conferences and two journal articles. Further on the student should aim at a broader dissemination of his results in the community, e.g., by contributing to the organization of scientific events in his field of research.

Ideally the process should be finalized within a period of 3 to 4 years. The table below defines the 3 main phases of the process in terms of their duration.

Table 1: Duration of the PhD Process phase Duration Find and formulate research problem 12 months Elaborate and evaluate solution 12 months Write up thesis 12 months

Supervision: Every PhD student has one main supervisor at DERI Innsbruck who is either a PostDoc or professor. Ideally, this would be the cluster leader of the student. PhD students are furthermore encouraged to seek additional external supervision from experts in the field. Monitoring progress: In order to monitor the progress and to enable effective guidance and supervision of PhD students, there should be regular meetings between the PhD students and the supervisors. It is up to the supervisor and the student to agree on the frequency of these meetings. Besides the regular meetings between students and supervisors, there will be a biannual research seminar mandatory for all PhD students. Further on, PhD students are encouraged to give trial presentations for the papers which are presented at workshops and conferences. Research reports: According to the schema introduced above students should document their PhD work in two research reports concluded by the dissertation thesis. In the following we provide some general guidelines for organizing the content of these reports.

1. Problem statement: this part should clearly provide answers to the following questions:

a. What are the core dimensions of the field of research in which the thesis is situated?

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b. Which problems are still unsolved to date? Why do these areas need further exploration?

c. How could this gap be filled? Is the problem solvable at all? d. Are these problems addressed in many previous approaches? Is it feasible

to think that my thesis would greatly contribute to solving these problems? Is there room for improvement?

e. What are the critical success factors? How can these risks be minimized? What are the worst case strategies; the worst expectable outcome?

f. Are these problems addressed (possibly under a different name) in other communities and what are the results achieved in this context?

g. Is it a hot topic or is it becoming already obsolete? h. What is the impact of a potential solution on the community? i. Which are the application scenarios in which this problem is relevant?

2. Main questions of the thesis: this part should clearly formulate the research

questions the PhD aims to provide answers to, while positioning the work in a broader context and delimiting it from similar or related approaches.

3. General approach: this part should give an overview of the work done (or

planned to be done) in the thesis. It should define the research methods supporting the PhD research, sketch the path towards the achievement of the objectives and specify the expected results. With respect to the last point the paper could refer to the design research methodology by Hevner and March, who differentiate between four types of research outcomes:

a. Constructs: provide the language, the terminology in which a

problem/solution space is defined and explained. b. Models: cover the most important facts and concepts within a domain of

interest or class of situations. They use constructs as a description language for the problem/solution space.

c. Methods: describe processes and guide their users in how to identify solutions to a given research question. They can range from rigorous mathematical algorithms to descriptions how to perform a process, best practices, guidelines etc. From a terminological perspective, methods—as understood by Hevner and March —can be considered synonymous to “methodology”, “technique” or “algorithm” in computer science.

d. Implementations: implement constructs, models and methods, thus demonstrating their feasibility.

Examples of research outcomes could be:

a. Open up a new area of research b. Provide a unifying framework c. Resolve a long-standing question d. Thoroughly explore an area e. Contradict existing knowledge

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f. Experimentally validate a theory g. Derive superior algorithms h. Develop new methodology i. Produce a negative result

4. Proposed solution: this part describes the approach to the research problem previously stated, outlining the results achieved so far and the things which still need to be realized.

5. Evaluation: in this section the paper should provide details on the evaluation

methods, report on the evaluation results and discuss the implications of these results within and beyond the scope of this work. In order to determine which evaluation methods are appropriate to validate a research approach the paper could again resort to the previously mentioned research framework. For each of the four types of research outcomes Table 2 below summarizes the recommended content and structure, as well as proved and tested evaluation methods and quality criteria. The structure of each research artefact includes the information sources which are required to give full particulars on the actual solution, and thus enable a feasible evaluation procedure.

6. Future work: issues which remain to be approached in the context of the thesis

or beyond.

Table 2: Evaluation Approaches Constructs

Structure Evaluation method Evaluation criteria -Meta-model of the vocabulary

-Ontological analysis -Construct deficit -Construct overload -Construct redundancy -Construct excess

Models Structure Evaluation method Evaluation criteria -Domain -Terminology -Scope and purpose -Syntax and semantics -Intended applications and use cases -Reference to constructs and methods

-Syntactic validation -Semantic consistency -Integrity checking -Sampling using selective matching of data to actual external phenomena or trusted surrogate -Integration tests -Risk and cost analysis -User surveys

-Correctness -Completeness -Clarity and simplicity -Usage flexibility -Extendability -Applicability -Implementability

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Methods Structure Evaluation method Evaluation criteria -Process-based meta-model -Intended applications and use cases -Conditions of applicability -Products and results of the method application -Reference to constructs and Models

-Laboratory research -Field inquiries -Surveys -Case studies -Action research -Practice descriptions -Interpretative research

-Appropriateness -Completeness -Consistency -Implementability

Instantiations Structure Evaluation method Evaluation criteria -Implementation -Reference to design model -Reference to requirements specification -Reference to documentation -Reference to quality assurance documents -Reference to user guides

-Code inspection -Testing -Code analysis -Verification

-Functionality -Usability -Performance -Reliability

Depending on whether the report is the outcome of the first or the second phase of the PhD it necessarily concentrates on different aspects of the schema above. The first research report has a clear focus on the definition of the problem statement. This implies that it should elaborate on bullets 1 and 2, while clarifying the research methodology as part of bullet 3 and sketching some preliminary ideas the prospected thesis will build upon. Further on, it is important that the student timely specifies the expected outcome of his PhD work (e.g. in terms of the framework presented in this section or a similar framework) and how the resulting artifact could be evaluated. The first research report should be between 6 and 15 pages (standard typed, single column, single spaced). The second research report elaborates on the 4th and 5th bullets while refining and revising the previous ones. At this point it is essential that the student designs a suitable evaluation framework for the validation of his PhD research, critically analyzes the achieved results and compares them to related approaches. It is recommended that this report has an amount of 20-30 pages (standard typed, single column, single spaced).

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Junior Researchers No Name Objective Cluster

1 Darko Anicic Reasoning RSWS 2 Jos de Bruijn Formal language RSWS 3 Tobias Bürger SEBIS 4 Emilia Cimpian Mediation SEE 5 Dimitrij Denissenko RSWS 6 Cristina Feier Reasoning RSWS 7 Graham Hench Reasoning SEE 8 Jan Henke SEBIS 9 Zhou Jingtao SEE

10 Uwe Keller Reasoning RSWS 11 Mick Kerrigan Developer Tools SEE 12 Jacek Kopecky Grounding UbiServ 13 Reto Krummennacher Storage & Communication UbiServ 14 Holger Lausen Discovery RSWS 15 Adrian Mocan Mediation SEE 16 Ruzica Piskac Reasoning RSWS 17 Richard Pöttler Reasoning RSWS 18 Dumitru Roman Choreography SEBIS 19 Francois Scharffe Mediation SEBIS 20 James Scicluna Choreography RSWS 21 Omair Shafiq Storage & Communication SEE 22 Katharina Siorpaes Ontologies SEBIS 23 Adina Sirbu Discovery SEE 24 Michael Stollberg SEBIS 25 Ioan Toma Adaptation UbiServ 26 Alexander Wahler RSWS 27 Zhixian Yan SEE

4.3. Senior researchers Senior Researchers lead objectives and their attached working groups, provide senior leadership in projects, provide supervision to junior researchers, and are included in the leadership team of a cluster. Senior Researchers No Name Topic Cluster

1 Dr. Ying Ding Application SEBIS 2 Dr. Martin Hepp Ontologies SEBIS 3 Dr. Stijn Heymans Reasoning RSWS 4 Dr. Jörg Hoffmann Composition 5 Dr. Michael Jäger UbiServ 6 Dr. Axel Polleres Storage UbiServ 7 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Strang UbiServ 8 Dr. Michal Zaremba Application SEE

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3. Reasonable Semantic Web Services Cluster (RSWS) In the following we describe the RSWS cluster in general terms, in terms of the objectives it takes care, in terms of the project it takes care, and in terms of its members. 3.1. General Description Name Reasonable Semantic Web Services Acronym RSWS Web site http://rsws.deri.org/ Leader Stijn Heymans (Deputy: Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen) Team Senior Researchers:

Stijn Heymans Junior Researchers: Darko Anicic

Jos de Bruijn Dimitrij Denissenko

Cristina Feier Uwe Keller

Holger Lausen Ruzica Piskac

Richard Pöttler James Scicluna Alexander Wahler Students: Joachim Adi Schütz Nathalie Steinmetz Martin Tanler

Objectives Discovery (4), Choreography (7), Formal Languages (12), Reasoning (13) Projects Infrawebs, Knowledge Web, RW2, Salero, SEKT, SemNetMan, SenSE Mission Besides the largest source of information ever, the Web is moving towards

becoming a source for reusable software components and applications by globally accessible services published on the Web. Both static data and services available on the Web still lack of machine-understandable semantics to be usable in an automated way. It is the mission of the RSWS cluster to define reasonable methods and languages to effectively describe and reason about the Data on the Web and Web Services to make the vision of the Semantic Web come true.

Major tasks and deliverables

As research in the RSWS cluster is aligned with the objective components (Formal Languages, Discovery, Choreography, Reasoning) the major tasks and deliverables of the cluster coincide with the objective components. We will summarize those here:

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The Formal Languages component will develop formal languages for the descriptions in a Semantically-Enabled Service Oriented Architecture (SESOA). The descriptions in a SESOA can be decomposed into four dimensions: static knowledge (ontologies), functional descriptions (capabilities), behavioral description (choreography/orchestration), non-functional properties. Tasks include the integration of FOL-based and nonmonotonic LP-based languages, the explicitization of context for use with scoped negation, and the development of rules for the, Semantic Web (RIF). Furthermore, requirements on the functional descriptions of services and as well as a semantics for web service functionality need to be devised. Requirements need to be gathered on the description of choreography and an orchestration and semantics needs to be devised. Finally, purpose and usage of non-functional requirements will be investigated. The Discovery component will develop different discovery implementations that are compatible with WSMO, WSML and specifically WSMX. The scope of the working group is to develop solutions based on existing descriptions (WSDL, UDDI, text) as well as on more advanced descriptions based on semantic annotations using WSML. Some tasks in this component are the development of a discovery engine based on keywords and existing annotations (WSDL), extend beyond for example WSDL description to related documentation, interpretation of, the semantic descriptions. The Choreography component is meant to provide a process language which should allow for formal specifications of interactions and processes between the service providers and clients, define reasoning tasks that should be performed using this language, and implement an engine to support the execution of interactions, as well as to support reasoning in this language. The Reasoning component will initially develop, from scratch, an efficient and extensible reasoning engine for expressive rule-based languages, e.g. WSML Core/Flight/Rule, as well as description logic based languages, e.g., WSML-DL. The reasoner will be based on state-of-the-art reasoning algorithms (for query answering, logical entailment). Later on this component will develop the formal reasoning tasks and implement algorithms for those tasks, for languages developed in the Formal Languages component.

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3.2. Objectives

• Discovery (4), • Choreography (7), • Formal Languages (12), and • Reasoning (13)

3.2.1. Discovery Nr 4 Title Discovery Mission statement

Develop different discovery implementations that are compatible with WSMO, WSML and specifically WSMX. The scope of the working group is to develop solutions based on existing descriptions (WSDL, UDDI, text) as well as on more advanced descriptions based on semantic annotations using WSML.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Discovery Leader Holger Lausen, Co-chair Mick Kerrigan Cluster RSWS, (SEE) Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers:

Kashif Iqbal Mick Kerrigan Jacek Kopecký Holger Lausen Brahmananda Sapkota Adina Sirbu Michael Stollberg Ioan Toma

Students:

- Contributing projects

RW2, ASG, DIP

Current Status

The group has finished the setup of the basic infrastructure, which is a discovery framework within the WSMX framework. This framework is able to manage different discovery components capable of processing different kinds of requests. At present two engines are completely integrated in this framework: keyword based discovery and lightweight discovery. Additionally together with the WSMT group a GUI for editing goals and Web services is in progress. Key word based discovery The keyword based discovery is able to compare WSML descriptions on

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different levels, such as match somewhere in the description or on specific fields. Furthermore members of the group have developed an advanced prototype of a keyword based discovery which is not yet integrated in WSMX. This keyword search operates on the WSDL of publicly available services and leverages advanced concepts such as stemming. Lightweight discovery The lightweight discovery component currently uses logical expressions and background knowledge formulated using WSML Flight and WSML Rule. The component can use either KAON or MINS as underlying reasoner to detect intersection and plug-in matches for a limited set of conjunctive queries. The extension of this component to WSML DL is currently in progress. ASG Discovery The ASG discovery component was finished. It is based on an approach that leverages transaction logic. The ASG component has not been integrated into WSMX but finalized according to the requirements of the ASG project. Use cases The group currently uses input from 2 DIP use cases and the SWS Challenge discovery scenario. The Use cases are currently partially solved; one of the main problems is the lacking support for data types in the lightweight discovery component.

Future Steps The SWS Challenge and DIP Use cases need to be completely modeled. The lightweight discovery will be extended to also support DL reasoning. Further Uses Cases need to be gathered to get requirements more heavy weight discovery. The integration of a suitable GUI for designing Web services and goals need to be finished.

Publications Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen and Michael Stollberg. On the Semantics of Functional Descriptions of Web Services In Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006). Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Ioan Toma: What is wrong with Web services Discovery. In W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005. Position Paper. Uwe Keller, Ruben Lara, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel: Automatic Location of Services, In Proceedings of the 2nd European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS2005), Heraklion, Crete, 29th May – 1st June, 2005.

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Daniel Olmedilla, Rubén Lara, Axel Polleres, and Holger Lausen: Trust negotiation for semantic web services. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 3387, pages 81-95, 2005. Michael Kifer, Rubén Lara, Axel Polleres, Chang Zhao, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, and Dieter Fensel. A logical framework for web service discovery. In ISWC 2004 Workshop on Semantic Web Services: Preparing to Meet the World of Business Applications, volume 119, Hiroshima, Japan, 2004. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Brahmananda Sapkota, Laurentiu Vasiliu, Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Chris Bussler: Peer-to-Peer Technology Usage in Web Service Discovery and Matchmaking. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, New York City, USA, November 2005. Short paper. Ioan Toma, Kashif Iqbal, Matthew Moran, Dumitru Roman, Thomas Strang and Dieter Fensel: An Evaluation of Discovery approaches in Grid and Web services Environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Grid Services Engineering and Management, Erfurt, Germany, September 2005. Michael Stollberg, Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma, Uwe Keller, Reinhold Herzog, Peter Zugmann, and Dieter Fensel: Semantic Web Fred – Automated Goal Resolution on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, January 2005.

Software releases

key word based discovery, prototype available at: http://192.168.65.151/discovery/

3.2.2. Choreography Nr 7 Title Choreography Mission statement

The Choreography part of SEE is meant to provide a process language which should allow for formal specifications of interactions and processes between the service providers and clients, define reasoning tasks that should be performed using this language, and implement an engine to support the execution of interactions, as well as to support reasoning in this language. On a short term, the Choreography Component in the SEE architecture has three main responsibilities: 1. Evaluating the transition rules defined in the Choreography

Interface descriptions in WSMO Web Service descriptions

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2. Determines the legal instances for the last choreography step 3. Appropriately managing invocation requests to and from the

Communication Manager During the first step, the interface descriptions are either fetched from the Resource Manager Service or appropriately parsed from the description (this depending on whether the requester sends her/his own descriptions). Once the choreographies of both parties are initialized, the start of the conversation is triggered by the instance data sent by the requester. This leads to the second step where the conversation is handled. During the interaction between the two choreographies, the data being exchanged is appropriately checked for conformance with respect to the choreography description and is always sent through the Process Mediation which determines which kind of data should be sent (if any) to the other party. Furthermore, during the evaluation of the rules, the choreography engine sets up the data required for invocation from the choreography description. The Choreography Engine does not perform the invocation itself but it rather forwards the invocation data to the Communication Manager which then processes this information appropriately and performs the invocation. The interaction between the two parties stops when either a choreography fails or all the required input data from the requester is consumed.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Choreography Leader James Scicluna Cluster RSWS, (UBISERV) Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Dumitru Roman James Scicluna Students: Thomas Haselwanter

Contributing projects

• DIP • Infrawebs • Super (eventually)

Current Status

This section outlines the work related to this component that has been already carried out. We will first describe the status of the model, the language related tasks and then carry on with the design and implementation of the component itself. Model The model for WSMO Choreographies is currently stable. It is inspired by the ASM methodology and inherits the core principles such as the state, transition rules and flexibility to model any kind of behavior.

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Language The syntax of the choreography language has been defined as a result of the model. It is similar to the ASM language with some obvious constructs that have been introduced in order for it to fit with the WSML language. The semantics are defined using a set-based approach and describe the operational behavior of choreographies on the same lines as for ASMs. WSMO4J Choreography API The work of the Choreography API has been divided in different parts, namely, the API (i.e. the interfaces), the implementation, the parser and the serializer. The API defines the interfaces and methods (with no implementation) for the objects within the language constructs. The implementation part implements the interfaces so that a user can easily create and manage the language constructs. The parser loads up an object model representation in the memory from a choreography description in a WSML file. The serializer, performs the reverse operation, that is, it saves the memory representation of the language to the equivalent syntax representation in a WSML file. All of these modules have been completed. Choreography Engine The main steps involved in the implementation of the choreography engine are the design – with particular emphasis on the interaction with other WSMX components – and the actual programming. Both of these aspects are in a stable condition but eventually they evolve as WSMX gets better and as requirements change.

Future Steps The future steps consist of three core tasks that will run in parallel, and will follow an iterative approach: Task 1: define reasoning tasks for interactions/process descriptions Since Semantic Web Services are about providing a higher degree of automation when dealing with services, the tasks that need automation in this context need to be identified and clearly defined before conceptual models and languages are provided to support automation of such tasks. Since choreography is related to interactions and processes, this task will identify and define what reasoning tasks are needed when dealing with interactions and processes as far as services are concerned. Particular focus will be on already well known tasks (like property verifications of different specifications, scheduling under constraints, consistency checking, bi-simulation, etc) from the area of process modeling. Task 2: define higher level languages to directly support the tasks

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identified in task 1 The current language for representing WSMO Choreography is based on ASMs – a very general model for describing computations. Because of its generality, the model was not designed with the focus to support automation of specific tasks related to interactions and processes. Thus, the current model (and language) will need to be constrained in some ways in order to allow for efficient reasoning and direct support for the identified tasks. This will result in the definition of higher language(s) designed to directly support different reasoning tasks in a more efficient way. Task 3: implement an execution tool for interactions/processes The choreography engine will have to incorporate and implement integrated support for both executions of processes, as well as for reasoning about the processes. Thus, the choreography implementation will consist of a tool that will actually run the processes, and a tool that will actually provide support for verification of different reasoning tasks. Timeline: There will be several iterations and the above tasks will run in parallel within these iterations. A first iteration is expected to take place mid of 2006.

Publications José-Manuel López-Cobo, Alejandro López-Pérez and James Scicluna: A Semantic Choreography-driven Frequent Flyer Program in Proceedings of the Future Research Challenges of Software and Services Workshop, Vienna (Austria), April, 2006 James Scicluna and Axel Polleres: Semantic Web Service Execution for WSMO Based Choreographies in Proceedings of the Semantic Web Applications Workshop, EuroMedia ’2005, Toulouse (France), April, 2005

Software releases

Syntax Specification Choreography API for WSMO4J Choreography Engine (ongoing)

3.2.3 Formal Languages Nr 12 Title Formal Languages Mission statement

Descriptions in a Semantically-Enabled Service Oriented Architecture (SESOA) need different formal languages for the specification of different aspects of knowledge and services. The descriptions in a SESOA can be decomposed into four dimensions:

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Static knowledge (ontologies)

Ontologies are the core of the Semantic Web and of any Semantic Service Oriented Architecture. They can be used to formally describe any kind of knowledge on the Semantic Web and they form the vocabulary for the other dimensions for description in a SESOA. ii. Functional description (capabilities) With capabilities, services are viewed as functions which provide a certain output, given a particular input. This simplified view of services is useful for such tasks as discovery and composition. iii. Behavioral description (choreography/orchestration) Choreographies describe the interface of a service in terms of possible interactions with a service. Orchestrations describe compositions of services. Choreographies and Orchestrations can both be viewed as decompositions of capabilities. iv. Non-functional Properties Besides a functional description, services also have a non-functional description, with things as author, natural language description, QoS, pricing, service-level agreements, etc. It is our mission to develop and combine languages for these dimensions of description in a SESOA. In the process we will relate these languages to current and upcoming Semantic Web and Web Service languages.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Languages Leader Jos de Bruijn Cluster RSWS Team Senior Researchers:

Stijn Heymans Axel Polleres (Oberserver) Junior Researchers: Jos de Bruijn Cristina Feier Uwe Keller (Observer) Jacek Kopecky (Observer) Reto Krummenacher (Observer)

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Holger Lausen Livia Predoiu (Observer) James Scicluna Ioan Toma Students: - () = to be confirmed (might move to observer)


DIP, Knowledge Web

Current Status

The most important achievement so far is the specification of the Web Service Modeling Language v0.21, which is a language for the specification of different aspects of a SESOA. There are, however, some aspects lacking in the specification. The aspects which are lacking are mentioned in the following subsections. Documents related to WSML can be found online at: http://www.wsmo.org/wsml/wsml-syntax [edit] i. Static knowledge (ontologies) The ontology component of WSML consists of five variants: - WSML-Core – intersection of DL and LP - WSML-Flight – based on the Datalog subset of F-Logic with negation

under the perfect model semantics - WSML-Rule – based on the Horn subset of F-Logic with negation

under the well-founded semantics - WSML-DL – based on the expressive Description Logic SHIQ - WSML-Full – a full first-order language with nonmonotonic

extensions, which is a superset of WSML-DL and WSML-Rule Two main aspects are lacking in the ontology component of WSML: - Semantics of WSML-Full. There is a preliminary proposal to use first-

order autoepistemic logic as the language underlying WSML-Full, but this requires more investigation: http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d28/d28.3/v0.1/

- Layering of WSML variants. A formal theorem stating the proper

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layering of WSML languages is lacking. Especially the layering between variants with ontology modeling based on predicates (WSML-Core, WSML-DL) and variants with ontology modeling based on frames (WSML-Flight, WSML-Rule, WSML-Full) has not been proven.

Other work which has been done by the participants of this research component: - Development of a rule language for the semantic web: initial work has

been done on scoped default negation, and members of this research component participate in the W3C RIF working group.

Conceptual logic programs can be used to reason over expressive description logics, as well as certain combinations of description logic ontologies and rules

ii. Functional description (capabilities) There is an initial proposal for functional description of services, based on abstract state spaces: http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d28/d28.1/v0.1/. This model can be used in combination with different logical languages. Requirements are generally lacking. iii. Behavioural description (choreography/orchestration) There exist several formal languages which are suitable for behavioural description. Examples are transaction logic, situation calculus, and action languages. There is an initial comparison of these languages: http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d28/d28.2/v0.1/. Furthermore, there is a initial proposed specification language for choreographies: http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d14/v0.3/ iv. Non-functional Properties

Future Steps i. Static knowledge (ontologies) Research on the representation of static knowledge will proceed along the following lines: - Integrating knowledge based on classical first-order logic and nonmonotonic logic programming. Important issues are the

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representational adequacy of the integration, as well as decidable subsets and a proof theory, so that reasoning becomes possible. - Scoped default negation. When doing context-dependent reasoning, such as in nonmonotonic logic programming, the context is usually implicit. We aim to make to context explicit. - Rules for the Semantic Web – RIF working group

Connection between Semantic Web languages RDF, OWL ii. Functional description (capabilities) Requirements need to be gathered on the functional specification of services and a semantics needs to be devised which can be combined with the language for the description of ontologies, in order to enable the use of ontologies for the description of web service functionality. An important use case for the functional description of services is discovery. Therefore, it is expected that many requirements on the functional description of services will come from the discovery objective. iii. Behavioural description (choreography/orchestration) There exist several formal languages which are suitable for behavioural description. Examples are transaction logic, situation calculus, and action languages. Requirements need to be gathered on the description of a choreography and an orchestration and semantics needs to be devised. A key challenge is the combination of this language with ontology languages in order to enable the reuse of ontology vocabulary in the choreography and orchestration descriptions. Finally, this language needs to be connected to the language for capability description in order to prove certain correspondences between the functional and behavioural description of services. iv. Non-functional Properties Non-functional properties can at least be divided into two categories: (1) meta-data, e.g., author, description, etc., of the WSML statements in a description and (2) actual non-functional properties, i.e., actual properties of services (e.g. pricing, QoS, transactions). NFPs require a deeper investigation into their purpose and their usage.

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Publications Conferences

Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen and Michael Stollberg. On the Semantics of Functional Descriptions of Web Services In Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006). Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Axel Polleres, Cristina Feier, and Andreas Harth. Rules with contextually scoped negation. In Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006), volume 4011 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Springer. Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel. The web service modeling language: An overview. In Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006), Budva, Mon- tenegro, June 2006. Springer-Verlag. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Dirk Vermeir: Nonmonotonic Ontological and Rule-Based Reasoning with Extended Conceptual Logic Programs. ESWC 2005: 392-407 Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Dirk Vermeir: Guarded Open Answer Set Programming. LPNMR 2005: 92-104 Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, Ruben Lara, and Dieter Fensel. OWL DL vs. OWL Flight: Conceptual modeling and reasoning on the semantic web. In Proceedings of the 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2005), Chiba, Japan, 2005. ACM. Michael Kifer, Jos de Bruijn, Harold Boley, and Dieter Fensel. A realistic architecture for the semantic web. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML-2005), Ireland, Galway, November 2005. Workshops Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Dirk Vermeir: Guarded Open Answer Set Programming with Generalized Literals. FoIKS 2006: 179-200 Jos de Bruijn, Enrico Franconi, and Sergio Tessaris. Logical reconstruction of RDF and ontology languages. In Third Workshop on Principles and Practice of Semantic Web Reasoning, Dagstuhl, Ger- many, September 2005.

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Jos de Bruijn, Enrico Franconi, and Sergio Tessaris. Logical reconstruction of normative RDF. In OWL: Experiences and Directions Workshop (OWLED-2005), Galway, Ireland, November 2005. Standards Submissions Jürgen Angele, Harold Boley, Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Pascal Hitzler, Michael Kifer, Reto Krummenacher, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Rudi Studer. Web rule language (WRL). W3C Member Submission 09 September 2005, 2005. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Michael Kifer Holger Lausen, Reto Krummenacher, Axel Polleres, and Livia Predoiu. Web service modeling language (WSML). W3C Member Submission 3 June 2005, 2005.

Software releases

WSML v0.21 validator A syntactical validator for WSML v0.21, which validates a WSML specification against the WSML grammar and can validate and determine the WSML variant, can be found at: http://tools.deri.org/wsml/validator/. WSMO4J WSMO4J is an API and reference implementation for WSML v0.21. http://wsmo4j.sourceforge.net/

3.2.4 Reasoning Nr 13 Title Reasoning Mission statement

We will develop an efficient and extensible reasoning engine for expressive rule-based languages (WSML Core/Flight/Rule), as well as description logic based languages (WSML-DL). The reasoner will be based on state-of-the-art reasoning algorithms (for query answering, logical entailment, etc.). The Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) needs the reasoning component for service discovery as well as both process and data mediation. Mission critical features of the Reasoning component are: hybrid reasoning based on DLs and logic programming, reasoning with very large instance bases, reasoning with heterogeneous and conflicting information, and reasoning in distributed environments. Also one of our major objectives is the implementation of Rule Interchange Format (RIF). RIF aims to specify a common format for

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rules in order to allow rule interchange between diverse rule systems. This format (or language) will function as an interlingua into which rule languages can be mapped, allowing rules written in different languages to be executed in the same reasoner engine. The RIF layer our reasoner engine will be capable of handling rules from diverse rule systems and will make WSML rule sets interchangeable with rule sets written in other languages that are also supported by RIF.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Reasoning Leader Darko Anicic & Stijn Heymans Cluster RSWS Team Senior Researchers:

Stijn Heymans Junior Researchers:

Darko Anicic Jos de Bruijn Cristina Feier Graham Hench Uwe Keller Ruzica Piskac Richard Pöttler

Students: Joachim Adi Schütz

Nathalie Steinmetz Contributing projects

DIP (http://dip.semanticweb.org/), SenSE (http://www.semantic-engineering.info/), SUPER (http://super.semanticweb.org/), RW2 (rw2.deri.at).

Current Status

The group is developing an inference engine called IRIS (short for Integrated Rule Inference System). IRIS aims to be a framework consisting of a collection of components which cover various aspects of reasoning with formally represented knowledge. Thus we have first developed the main architecture of IRIS (see IRIS System Architecture). At present, it is a layered approach consisting of a top API layer encapsulating the core reasoner, a layer that will implement different evaluation algorithms, a layer that will allow encapsulated access to the lower storage layer and provided common procedures to the algorithms (the middle API layer), and the storage layer itself which will integrate different storage approaches as well. The middle layer API has been fully defined, and the top layer API is partially defined. For the evaluation algorithm layer, we have identified the following evaluation strategies with corresponding initial algorithms that will be implemented: • Bottom-Up: Semi-Naive evaluation enhanced by Magic Set

algorithm;

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• Top-Down: QsQ evaluation; • Mixture of Bottom-Up and Top-Down technique: Dynamic

Filtering; Also, for the storage we have identified an initial approach, where we will use red-black trees for a basis of the relation implementation. Currently, IRIS is an engine for Datalog programs with negation and built-ins, although in the future the reasoner will be extended beyond pure Datalog capabilities.

The group also provides the MINS Datalog engine. MINS is an inference engine, which together with the WSML2Reasoner component, support query answering for WSML-Core and WSML-Flight under the well-founded semantics with stratified negation, function symbols and it is extendable by built-ins. Its reasoning mechanism is based on deductive database algorithms like semi-naive algorithms, dynamic filtering, and well-founded evaluation with alternating fixed point computation. Moreover, it is a main memory system in the sense that it does not use a database for storing its data. The implementation is based on the programming language Java. The WSML2Reasoner framework can translate ontology description in WSML to predicates and rules. Additionally, it provides a Facade for easy integration for different reasoners. WSML2Reasoner and MINS thus can be used as a framework for reasoning capability of WSML-based languages.

However, MINS is based on the SiLRI inference engine which is licensed under the GPL. Since the GPL is not inline with DERI’s approach to software licensing, we are currently developing IRIS as a re-implementation of MINS. IRIS is built under the LGPL license.

Note that the already existing WSML2Reasoner framework for translating ontology descriptions to Datalog will be used in as an interface to IRIS as well.

Future Steps Iteration 1 (finish: October 31st, 2006) Iteration 1 In Iteration 1, the goal is to develop a first version of IRIS. This first version will be a Datalog engine with functionality that corresponds to the functionality provided by the WSML-Core and WSML-Flight languages. In particular, after this first iteration, IRIS will support:

• Full Datalog • Built-in predicates • Support for stratified default negation

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Task Responsible Persons Due Date Function symbols Stijn, Richard December 31st, 2006 Database integration Uwe, Adi December 31st, 2006 Dynamic Filtering Uwe, Darko December 31st, 2006

The first iteration will implement three evaluation techniques for query answering: Semi-Naive evaluation enhanced by Magic Set algorithm, QsQ evaluation and Dynamic Filtering. Additionally, on the storage layer we will implement the middle API layer, based on red-black trees. Those three tasks are basically independent and will thus be implemented in parallel. Task Responsible Persons Due Date Built-ins Richard September 30th , 2006Semi-naive with negation

Cristina, Uwe, Richard, Adi

October 31st, 2006

Relational operations Darko October 31st, 2006 Tuple operations Darko October 31st, 2006 QsQ without negation

Cristina, Darko October 31st, 2006

Iteration 2 In Iteration 2, we will add support for function symbols and mechanisms identifying unsafe rules, thus enabling reasoning with WSML-Rule. Furthermore, we will improve the prototype implementation from Iteration 1 by implementing additional evaluation algorithm (dynamic filtering) and storage layer facilities (database integration). Finally, we will write a paper describing the prototype resulting from Iteration 2.

Iteration 3 In Iteration 3, we will thoroughly test the complete prototype. Furthermore, we will enhance the evaluation techniques such that IRIS is capable of handling programs with unstratified negation. Apart from that we will build a layer that will support the RIF specification. This means that we will be able to reason with rule sets that are compatible with RIF. We will support the translation from RIF to WSML and vice versa, making WSML amenable for reasoning with other inference engines that support the RIF specification. We will also look into other reasoning tasks, like for example logical entailment and we will adapt the reasoner for this. Finally, we will also compile the results form Iteration 3 in a paper.

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Publications Since the Reasoner component has just started to work on a new reasoner, there are no accepted publications yet. As described in the Future Steps section we will write papers after Iterations 2 and 3.

Software releases

The current implementation of MINS is available at http://dev1.deri.at/mins/ and WSML2Reasoner information can be found at http://dev1.deri.at/wsml2reasoner/. Further releases are scheduled as in the above Roadmap section.

3.3. Projects Here we have the following projects:

• Infrawebs • Knowledge Web • RW² • Salero • SEKT • SemNetMan • SenSE

3.3.1. Infrawebs

Name Intelligent Framework for Generating open Development Platforms for

Web-Service Enabled Applications Using Semantic Web Technologies, Distributed Decisions Support Units and Multi-Agent-Systems

Acronym Infrawebs Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster RSWS Leader James Scicluna Objective Developer tools, Discovery, Composition, Choreography, Monitoring,

Storage, Execution Management, Security

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Website http://www.infrawebs-eu.org/ Team Senior Reseacrhers:

- Junior Researchers: James Scicluna Students: Thomas Haselwanter

Mission The mission is to develop an application-oriented software toolset for creating, maintaining and executing open and extensible development platforms for Semantic Web services.

Person*months budget

Total 38 Per month 1

Duration 30 months 08/04 – 12/06 Major tasks • Semantic Web Service Execution (related to choreography,

orchestration and grounding aspects) • Quality of Service Monitoring (tightly coupled with the

Executor • Contributing in the Use Case Implementation • Contributing in the Integration of Components • Contributing in the Project’s Advisory Board • Contributing in Dissemination

Deliverables • Realization of SWS-E, Error Handling and QoS Monitor (lead) • Final SWS-E and Running P2P-Agent and Demonstrator Prep

(lead) • Dissemination & Innovation Report & Exploitation Concept &

Preliminary TIP (contribute) • Revised Requirement Profile & Know.-Objects & GD II & Test

Bed 2 & Evaluation 1 & Milestone Awareness (contribute) • Infrawebs Architecture and Evolution Plan (contribute)

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3.3.2. Knowledge Web

Name Knowledge Web: Realizing the Semantic Web Acronym Knowledge Web Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster RSWS Leader Stijn Heymans Objective Ontologies, Discovery, Composition, Mediation, Formal languages Website http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

Ying Ding Stijn Heymans Junior Researchers: Jos de Bruijn Holger Lausen Adrian Mocan Francois Scharffe Students: -

Mission The mission is to realize the Semantic Web; to support the transition process of Ontology technology from Academia to Industry; to promote and generate educational activities on the Semantic Web and to coordinate the research on Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services.

person*months budget

Total: 133,5 per month: 3

Duration 48 months 01/04 – 12/07 Major tasks • WP1.4 Promotion of ontology technologies

• WP1.5 Cross-network cooperation • WP2.2 Heterogeneity • WP2.4 Semantic Web Services • WP2.5 Semantic Web language extension

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Deliverables • 1.4.1v5 Technology roadmap (contribute; 1 p*m Ying Ding) • 1.5.5 Report on organized event progress (lead; 1,5 p*m Ying

Ding) • 1.5.6 Report on cooperation between Kweb and REWERSE

regarding industrial events (lead; 1,5 p*m Ying Ding) • 2.2.9 Description of alignment implementation and

benchmarking results (contribute; 3 p*m Francois) • 2.4.8.2 Semantic tuplespace Computing (lead; 6 p*m) • 2.4.13.1 Data Mediation in Semantic Web Services (lead; 6 p*m

Adrian) • KW – D2.4.14.1 Semantic Web Services Challenge • 2.5.7 Integration of additional semantic layers (contribute; 8

p*m Jos) • D2.4.14.1 Semantic Web Services Challenge (contribute; 6 p*m

Holger and SEE Cluster) Total: 33 p*m

3.3.3. RW²

Name Reasoning with Web Services Acronym RW² Funding line FIT-IT Cluster RSWS Leader Holger Lausen Objective Discovery, Reasoning Website http://rw2.deri.at/ Team Senior Researchers:

(Ying Ding) Junior Reserachers: Cristina Feier Uwe Keller Holger Lausen

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Students: Nathalie Steinmetz Martin Tanler

Mission The mission is to develop WSML reasoning support and apply it to Web services with the aim of offering a higher support for the automation of a number of tasks specifically Web service discovery.

Person*months budget


Duration 30 months 01/05 – 06/07 Major tasks • Reasoning support for all WSML variants

• Discovery Engine • Tool support: integrate editing, reasoning and discovery • Semantic Web Services Challenge

Deliverables • D1.2 Report on reasoning techniques and prototype

implementation for the WSML-Core and WSMO-DL languages (Uwe, Cristina)

• D1.3 Report on reasoning techniques and prototype implementation for the WSML-RL and WSML-FOL languages (Uwe, Cristina)

• D1.4 Evaluation of the reasoning procedures and techniques (Uwe, Cristina)

• D2.2 Discovery Framework Specification (Holger, Uwe) • D2.3 Prototype Implementation of the Discovery Component

(Holger, Martin) • D3.2 First prototype of the base framework for the WSMO-

Studio including the WSMO-API (Martin, Nathalie, Holger) • D4.2 Revision of D4.1 (State-of-the-art in Semantic Web

Service Description and Usage) (Holger, Uwe) • D5.2Report on and Evaluation of the dissemination strategy

(Holger, Uwe) • D6.2Report on standardization activities and achieved results

(Holger, Uwe) • D7.3c Periodic Progress Reports (Holger, Ying, Leo) • D7.4d Periodic Progress Reports (Holger, Ying, Leo) • D7.2 Final Project Report (Holger, Ying, Leo)

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3.3.4. Salero

Name Semantic Audiovisual Entertainment Reusable Objects Acronym Salero Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster RSWS Leader Alexander Wahler Objective Ontologies, Formal Languages, Developer tools Website http://www.salero.info/ Team Senior Reserachers:

Alexander Wahler Junior Researchers: Tobias Bürger Dimitrij Denissenko Students: -

Mission SALERO’s goal is to define and develop “intelligent content” objects with context-aware behaviours for self-adaptive use and delivery across different platforms, building on and extending research in media technologies, web semantics, and context based image retrieval, to reverse the trend toward ever-increasing cost of creating media. SALERO aims to advance the state of the art in digital media to the point where it becomes possible to create audiovisual content for cross-platform delivery using intelligent content tools, with greater quality at lower cost, to provide audiences with more engaging entertainment and information at home or on the move.

Budget (in terms of m*m)

Total: 48 per month: 1

Duration 48 months 01/06 – 12/09 Major tasks • WP3 Media Semantics and Ontologies

• WP10 Exploitation, Standardisation, Dissemination • WP12 Demonstration and Testbeds • WP11 Training for Researchers and Professionals

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Deliverables • D3.1.1 Representation techniques for multimedia objects, Report T6 -> Denissenko, Bürger

• D3.1.2 Ontology Language for multimedia objects and API, Report T12 (lead) -> Denissenko, Bürger

• D3.1.3 Ontologies for multimedia objects and workbench, initial version, T18 (lead) -> Denissenko, Bürger

3.3.5. Sekt

Name Semantically enabled Knowledge technologies Acronym SEKT Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster RSWS/WSML Leader Jos de Bruijn Objective Mediation Website http://www.sekt-project.com/ Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Jos de Bruijn Cristina Feier Richard Pöttler Francois Scharffe Students: -

Mission Knowledge Management person*months budget


Duration 36 01/04 – 12/06 Major tasks Ontology Mediation

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Deliverables • D4.4.2: Report on Ontology mediation management V) R/PU/Month 36 (lead) – Francois, Livia, Cristina

• D4.6.2: Report on Ontology mediation for case studies V2. R/PU/Month 36 (lead) – Cristina, Francois

• D4.5.2: Report on Ontology mediation tools V2. R/PU/Month 30 (contribute) – Francois

• D4.5.4: Prototype of the Ontology mediation software V2. P/PU/Month 36 (contribute) – Francois, Richard

3.3.6. SemNetMan

Name Semantisch basiertes Netzwerkmanagement Acronym SemNetMan Funding line protecNETplus Cluster RSWS/WSML Leader Stijn Heymans Objective Ontologies Website http://www.punkt.at/index.php?main=2&sub=1&id=71 Team Senior Researchers:

Stijn Heymans Junior Researchers: - Students: Michael Luger

Mission The mission is to enable better network management between entities (information and persons) mainly by means of

• an ontological description of the network and • the computation of the proximity between the

entities • visualization of search results

Implementation of software that can be used as plugin/web service and can be reused with different already existing network management tools.

Budget (in Total 7 per month 0.5

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terms of m*m) Duration 18 months 20/05/05 – 20/11/06

Major tasks • A2 method: computation of proximity between entities

(information & persons) within a network (done by all members)

• A3 platform: Implementation of the algorithms of A2 as a plugin and testing with the network platform of the SWS. (DERI, i.e. Michael and me will take over the development of ontological descriptions)

• A4 Survey of Semantic Web SW: Aim: adjust the implementation to standards/interfaces/formats/ …already existing identify useful software and integrate it into the software developed. (done by all project members)

• A5 Symposium: present results of project and network with potential partners in the industry (DERI)

• A6 Case Studies: Evaluation of the plugin with 2 case studies (not started yet, has to be clarified who will work on this, but DERI will contribute)

• A7 Generic evaluation: Generic evaluation of all 3 case studies (not started yet, has to be clarified who will work on this, but DERI will contribute)

• A8 Dissemination (ongoing, every member contributes) Deliverables DERI contributes to all WP mentioned above. There are no explicit

deliverables; work being done in the WPs can be viewed as “deliverable”.

3.3.7. SenSE

Name Semantic Engineering Support Environment Acronym SenSE Funding line FFG, FIT-IT Cluster RSWS Leader Uwe Keller

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Objective Ontologies, Applications, Reasoning, Storage Website http://www.semantic-engineering.info/ Team Senior Researchers:

Stijn Heymans Junior Researchers: Uwe Keller Graham Hench Students: -

Mission Development on an Engineering Support Environment which improves communication in complex product development processes (Semantic enrichment of engineering documents, Automated learning of engineering rationales through observation of user interactions, Proactive support for users involved in complex engineering tasks)


Total: 40 per month: 1,5

Duration 24 months 01/06 – 12/07 Major tasks • WP 2 Ontology & Reasoner Design

• WP 3 Multi-agent System Design • WP 4 Semantic Facades • WP 5 System Integration • WP 6 Verification & Testing • WP 7 Dissemination

Deliverables • D0.1 v1 Project Report (contribute) Uwe • D0.1 v2 Project Report (contribute) Uwe • D2.1 Upper-level Ontology (lead) Stijn, Uwe • D2.2 Design of Reasoning System (lead) Stijn, Uwe • D2.3 Reasoning Infrastructure (lead) Stijn, Uwe • D3.1 Agent System Design (contribute) Graham • D3.2 SenSE Multi-agent Infrastructure (lead) Graham • D4.1 Semantic Façade Design (lead) Uwe • D4.2 Semantic Façade Framework (contribute) Uwe • D5.1 Software Prototype: SenSE Environment (contribute) Uwe,

Stijn, Graham • D6.1 Test and Verification Report (lead) Uwe, Stijn, Graham • D7.1 List of Publications (contribute) Uwe

3.4. Staff Here we discuss student, junior, and senior researchers of the RSWS cluster.

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3.4.1. Student Researchers Student Researchers Nr Name Supervisor 8 Joachim Adi Schütz Darko Anicic 9 Nathalie Steinmetz Holger Lausen 10 Martin Tanler Holger Lausen 3.4.2. Junior Researchers Junior Researchers No Name Objective

1 Darko Anicic Reasoning 2 Jos de Bruijn Formal language 5 Dimitrij Denissenko 6 Cristina Feier Reasoning

10 Uwe Keller Reasoning 14 Holger Lausen Discovery 16 Ruzica Piskac Reasoning 17 Richard Pöttler Reasoning 20 James Scicluna Choreography 26 Alexander Wahler

3.4.2.1. Darko Anicic

Name Darko Anicic Entry date July 2005 Cluster Reasonable Semantic Web Services – RSWS Objective Reasoning Projects Project name: MINS

tasks: implementation of MINS and work on new reasoner engine (research and implementation) deliverables: - For this year I am committed also to work on following projects: SEnSE tasks: reasoner development Triple Space tasks: YARS binding implementation SESA (if approved) tasks: reasoner development

Research topic The Semantic Web Technology and Semantically Enabled Service-Oriented Architectures need the reasoning component for deferent tasks such as service discovery, process and data mediation and integration etc. To enable processing of these tasks in an automated manner, machines need to have access to structured knowledge. Knowledge described formally using logical languages can be interpreted and reasoned about by machines. Research work at DERI concerning reasoning about formal knowledge is conducted by the Reasoning component as a part of the Semantic Execution Environment. My responsibility is to lead this component mainly through the implementation of a fully-functional reasoner engine that will support WSML and RIF specification. Apart from the implementation I am focused on conducting research regarding novel deductive database algorithms and optimization techniques. Mission critical features of the Reasoning component are: hybrid reasoning based on DLs and logic programming, reasoning with very large instance bases, reasoning with heterogeneous and conflicting information, and reasoning in distributed environments. Also one of our major objectives is the implementation of Rule Interchange Format (RIF). RIF aims to specify a common format for

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rules in order to allow rule interchange between diverse rule systems. This format (or language) will function as an interlingua into which rule languages can be mapped, allowing rules written in different languages to be executed in the same reasoner engine. Apart from this functionality provided by RIF Core, we will develop a set of extensions to fulfill the import/export functionality. Set of extensions will serve as a “To-RIF Translator” and a “From-RIF Translator”. In this way we will be able to translate an appropriate input rule specification into a RIF-specification and apply an appropriate From-Rif Translator for translation from the RIF-specification into a rule-specification in the desired target rule-language. Implementing the RIF layer our reasoner engine will be capable of handling rules from diverse rule systems and will make WSML rule sets interchangeable with rule sets written in other languages that are supported by RIF.

Progress towards PhD

If I start PhD studies my thesis will be focused on: - New reasoning evaluation algorithms and optimization techniques - Further research work on WSML Full decidability - Reasoning in a distributed environment - Reasoning with incomplete information - New architecture for reasoning in the Semantic Web and Semantically Enabled Service-Oriented environment

Implementations My major responsibility at DERI is to work on prototype implementation and organization of software development activities in the Reasoner component. My focus is on implementation of an inference engine. Thus my work, so far, was conducted through projects: MINS and WSML2Reasoner. The current implementation of MINS is available at http://dev1.deri.at/mins/ and WSML2Reasoner information can be found at http://dev1.deri.at/wsml2reasoner/. However, recently together with the Reasoner component team, I have started to build a new reasoner from scratch. This new reasoner will be an efficient and extensible inference engine for expressive rule-based languages, e.g. WSML Core/Flight/Rule, as well as description logic based languages, e.g., WSML-DL. The reasoner will be capable of handling very large instance bases as well as to conduct reasoning with heterogeneous and conflicting information, and reasoning in distributed environments. Also one of my major objectives is the implementation of Rule Interchange Format (RIF) specification. RIF aims to define a common format for rules in order to allow rule interchange between diverse rule systems. More information on the current effort regarding the new reasoner implementation can be found at: http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Reasoning and in the Extended Roadmap for Reasoner Component.

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In short my responsibility is to work on delivering a completely new reasoner engine. This engine will implement novel efficient deductive database algorithms and optimization techniques. Apart from that, the new reasoner will be extensible to meet different needs of many ongoing projects at DERI which require the reasoner functionality and will be deployable in various options (e.g. as a stand alone application, library for further integration, server applications etc.).

Publications Currently I do not have accepted publications. However I will contribute in two publications. These publications will present the work conducted by the Reasoner component team explaining our approaches and innovations in this field of the Semantic Web research. The publications are planned after the phase 2 (December 1st, 2006) and the phase 3 (2007.) of the project. For more details about the activities timetable, see the Extended Roadmap for Reasoner Component.

3.4.2.2. Jos de Bruijn

Name Jos the Bruijn Entry date March 2003 Cluster RSWS Objective Formal Languages Projects DIP, T1.7, D1.7: next version of WSML with proper specification of

WSML-Full semantics; due December 2006 KWeb, WP2.5 (don't know task/del. name): using first-order autoepistemic logic for unifying nonmonotonic logic programming and classical first-order logic with equality W3C RIF WG: principal representative for DERI Innsbruck

Research topic Investigations around properties of current web languages around Description Logics and nonmonotonic logic programming; integration of classical first-order based languages and nonmonotonic logic programming using first-order nonmonotonic logics; application of classical logic and logic programming to the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services.


Preliminary outline of the PhD: 1. Introduction 2. Preliminaries 3. Analysis of current ontology languages, mainly OWL content

based on [1] 4. Analysis of issues which arise when combining rules and

ontologies content in preparation; expect a paper submission within a few months

5. Using First-Order Autoepistemic logic for integrating rules and

ontologies content in preparation; expect a paper submission within a few months; further refinement to be expected during the course of this year (hopefully resulting eventually in a journal submission and publication, possibly together with the content of the next chapter)

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6. Decidable subsets / Proof theory this chapter should either

discuss interesting decidable subsets of the work in chapter 5 (e.g. through relationships with fixed-point logic) or a (probably incomplete) proof theory for the first-order autoepistemic logic or an interesting subset; the main point is that this chapter shows a good application of the work of chapter 5- hopefully work in this chapter will be done in the summer and beginning of the fall

7. Relation between frame-based and predicate-based ontology

modeling WSML-Core currently interprets concepts as unary predicates, whereas WSML-Flight interprets them as terms. There is currently no justification of this layering although it is expected that it will pose no problems.

In this chapter I try to show how frame-based ontology modeling (as in F-Logic) and predicate-based ontology modeling (as in Description Logics) relate to each other and under which conditions they may be considered equivalent and to what extent.Work is still in very early stages. Expect to have results in the form of a paper submission somewhere in the summer.

8. WSML application of logics to the Semantic Web (Services)

according to the idea of the common subset, DL and rules extensions, and a common superset some of the content for this chapter has been presented earlier [2, 3, 4]

9. Conclusions Apart from the mentioned work, I have been doing a bit of work on RDF [5] and plan to continue this. This might in the end be integrated in the WSML chapter to some extent to show how WSML is layered on top of RDF. [1] Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, Ruben Lara, and Dieter Fensel.

OWL DL vs. OWL Flight: Conceptual modeling and reasoning on the semantic web. In Proceedings of the 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2005), Chiba, Japan, 2005. ACM.

[2] Holger Lausen, Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel.

WSML - a language framework for semantic web services. In Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington DC, USA, April 2005. Position paper.

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[3] Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel. The WSML rule languages for the semantic web. In Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington DC, USA, April 2005. Position paper.

[4] Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel.

The web service modeling language: An overview. In Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006), Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Springer-Verlag.

[5] Jos de Bruijn, Enrico Franconi, and Sergio Tessaris. Logical

reconstruction of normative RDF. In OWL: Experiences and Directions Workshop (OWLED-2005), Galway, Ireland, November 2005.

Implementations Publications Journal Articles

1. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Rubén Lara, and Uwe

Keller. Using the web service modelling ontology to enable Semantic eBusiness. Communications of the ACM, special issue on the semantic e-business vision, 48(12):43–47, December 2005. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1101779.1101807.

2. Jos de Bruijn, Rubén Lara, Sinuhé Arroyo, Juan Miguel Gomez,

Sung-Kook Han, and Dieter Fensel. A unified semantic web services architecture based on WSMF and UPML. International Journal on Web Engineering Technology, 2(2–3):148–180, 2005.

3. Dumitru Roman, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Rubén Lara Jos de

Bruijn, Michael Stollberg, Axel Polleres, Cristina Feier, Christoph Bussler, and Dieter Fensel. Web service modeling ontology. Applied Ontology, 1(1):77–106, 2005.

Books 4. Vladimir Alexiev, Michael Breu, Jos de Bruijn, Rubén Lara,

Holger Lausen, and Dieter Fensel. Information Integration with Ontologies. Wiley, West Sussex, UK, 2005.

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Papers in Collections 5. Jos de Bruijn, Marc Ehrig, Cristina Feier, Francisco Martín-

Recuerda, François Scharffe, and Moritz Weiten. Ontology mediation, merging and aligning. In Semantic Web Technologies. Wiley, UK, 2006. To appear.

6. Jos de Bruijn and Dieter Fensel. Ontology definitions. In

Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Marcel Dekker, inc., 2005. http://www.dekker.com/sdek/issues~content=t713172967.

Papers in Proceedings 7. Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel.

The web service modeling language: An overview. In Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006), Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Springer-Verlag.

8. Jos de Bruijn, Enrico Franconi, and Sergio Tessaris. Logical

reconstruction of RDF and ontology languages. In Third Workshop on Principles and Practice of Semantic Web Reasoning, Dagstuhl, Germany, September 2005.

9. Jos de Bruijn, Enrico Franconi, and Sergio Tessaris. Logical

reconstruction of normative RDF. In OWL: Experiences and Directions Workshop (OWLED-2005), Galway, Ireland, November 2005.

10. Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, Rubén Lara, and Dieter Fensel.

OWL DL vs. OWL Flight: Conceptual modeling and reasoning on the semantic web. In Proceedings of the 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2005), Chiba, Japan, 2005. ACM.

11. Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel.

The WSML rule languages for the semantic web. In Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington DC, USA, April 2005. Position paper.

12. Michael Kifer, Jos de Bruijn, Harold Boley, and Dieter Fensel. A

realistic architecture for the semantic web. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML-2005), Ireland, Galway, November 2005.

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13. Holger Lausen, Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel. WSML - a language framework for semantic web services. In Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington DC, USA, April 2005. Position paper.

14. François Scharffe and Jos de Bruijn. A language to specify

mappings between ontologies. In Proceedings of the Internet Based Systems IEEE Conference (SITIS05), Yandoué, Cameroon, November 2005.

15. Jos de Bruijn. Semantic integration of disparate data sources in

the cog project. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS2004), Porto, Portugal, 2004.

16. Jos de Bruijn and Holger Lausen. Active ontologies for data

source queries. In Proceedings of the first European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS2004), number 3053 in LNCS, Heidelberg, 2004. Springer-Verlag.

17. Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Sinuhé Arroyo, Jos de Bruijn, and

Dieter Fensel. Semantic web services: description requirements and current technologies. In International Workshop on Electronic Commerce, Agents, and Semantic Web Services, Pittsburg, PA, USA, September 2003.

Selected Technical Reports 18. Jos de Bruijn, Cristina Feier, Uwe Keller, Rubén Lara, Axel

Polleres, and Livia Predoiu. WSML reasoner survey. Final Draft D16.2v0.2, WSML, 2005.

19. Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Reto Krummenacher, Axel

Polleres, Livia Predoiu, Michael Kifer, and Dieter Fensel. The web service modeling language WSML. WSML Final Draft D16.1v0.21, WSML, 2005.

20. Jos de Bruijn, Francisco Martín-Recuerda, Axel Polleres, Livia

Predoiu, and Marc Ehrig. Ontology mediation management v1. Deliverable D4.4.1, SEKT, 2004.

21. Jos de Bruijn, Douglas Foxvog, and Kerstin Zimmerman.

Ontology mediation patterns library v1. Deliverable D4.3.1, SEKT, 2004.

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22. Jos de Bruijn, Francisco Martín-Recuerda, Dimitar Manov, and

Marc Ehrig. State-of-the-art survey on ontology merging and aligning v1. Deliverable D4.2.1, SEKT, 2004.

23. Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, Rubén Lara, and Dieter Fensel.

OWL-. Final draft d20.1v0.2, WSML, 2004. 24. Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, Rubén Lara, and Dieter Fensel.

OWL flight. Working draft d20.3v0.1, WSML, 2004. 25. Jos de Bruijn and Axel Polleres. Towards and ontology mapping

specification language for the semantic web. Technical Report DERI-2004-06-30, DERI, 2004.

26. Rubén Lara, Axel Polleres, Holger Lausen, Dumitru Roman, Jos

de Bruijn, and Dieter Fensel. A conceptual comparison between WSMO and OWL-S. Final draft D4.1v0.1, WSMO, 2004.

27. Jos de Bruijn. Using ontologies - enabling knowledge sharing

and reuse on the semantic web. Technical Report DERI-2003-10-29, DERI, 2003.

Other Publications 28. Jürgen Angele, Harold Boley, Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel,

Pascal Hitzler, Michael Kifer, Reto Krummenacher, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Rudi Studer. Web rule language (WRL). W3C Member Submission 09 September 2005, 2005.

29. Harold Boley, Jos de Bruijn, and Reto Krummenacher. WRL

XML schemas. W3C Member Submission 09 September 2005, 2005.

30. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Pascal Hitzler, Michael Kifer, and

Axel Polleres. Relationship of WRL to relevant other technologies. W3C Member Submission 09 September 2005, 2005.

31. Jos de Bruijn, Christoph Bussler, John Domingue, Dieter Fensel,

Martin Hepp, Uwe Keller, Michael Kifer, Birgitta König-Ries, Jacek Kopecky, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Eyal Oren, Axel Polleres, Dumitru Roman, James Scicluna, and Michael Stollberg. Web service modeling ontology (WSMO). W3C Member Submission 3 June 2005, 2005.

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32. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Michael Kifer Holger

Lausen, Reto Krummenacher, Axel Polleres, and Livia Predoiu. Web service modeling language (WSML). W3C Member Submission 3 June 2005, 2005.

33. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Michael Kifer, Jacek Kopecky,

Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, Dumitru Roman, James Scicluna, and Ioan Toma. Relationship of WSMO to other relevant technologies. W3C Member Submission 3 June 2005, 2005.

Master’s Thesis 34. Jos de Bruijn. Semantic information integration within and across

organizational boundaries. Master’s thesis, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, November 2003.

3.4.2.3. Dimitrij Denissenko

Name Dimitrij Denissenko Entry date February 2006 Cluster SEBIS Objective Multimedia Ontologies Projects My main project is SALERO which develops “intelligent

content” objects with context-aware behaviors for self-adaptive use and delivery across different platforms, building on and extending research in media technologies, web semantics, and context based image retrieval, to reverse the trend toward ever-increasing cost of creating media. My main contribution is in developing of representation techniques for multimedia objects, ontology language for multimedia objects and API and appropriate development tools.

Research topic The focus of my research is in lifting of MPEG-7 metadata to the ontological level and to develop mappings with standard ontological languages as OWL and WSML.


The concrete topic needs still to be defined.

Implementations Workbench for multimedia ontologies Publications

3.4.2.4. Cristina Feier

Name Cristina Feier Entry date September 2004

Cluster Reasonable Semantic Web Services – RSWS Objective Reasoning Projects RW2:

tasks: - investigating/comparing Datalog (with negation)/LP evaluation

techniques - semantics for scoped negation as failure - reasoning in a distributed setting - infrastructure (context

representation) and reasoning peculliarities - defining a local model semantics for interconnected LP programs and devising an appropriate evaluation technique

deliverables: D1.2 Report on reasoning techniques and prototype implementation for the WSML-Core and WSMO-DL languages D1.3 Report on reasoning techniques and prototype implementation for the WSML-RL and WSML-FOL languages SEKT tasks: - local model semantics for reasoning with WSML and particular

grounding(s) (most probably, WSML Flight) of the mapping language;

- reasoning with WSML programs interconnected by such mappings - further analysing the status of the SEKT case studies and provide

guidance in how mediation can be used for the scenarios identified by this case studies and possibly suggest new scenarios which involve mediation.

deliverables: D4.4.2 Report on Ontology mediation management V2 D4.6.2 Report on ontology mediation for case studies V2

Research topic My research interests can be placed in the general category of reasoning for the Semantic Web. The peculiarity of this task is the

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presence of ontologies located at different places on the Web, interconnected by so-called mappings. I decided to focus on the setting where ontologies and mappings are expressed using formalisms from the LP family. Several issues related with distributed reasoning that i am currently investigating are: 1) semantics and evaluation: most of the approaches in the literature

assume the existence of a global model into which all the local models are mapped for defining the semantics of reasoning with a network of ontologies; also, in these cases, there is a global domain of interpretation into which all the local domains are embedded. This kind of semantics is called “global model semantics”. It gives rise to global inconsistency, in the sense that if one of the knowledge bases/peers is inconsistent, the inconsistency is propagated to the whole system. On the web, where one cannot talk about the whole system, this amounts to propagating the inconsistency to the strongly connected component of the graph of ontologies from which makes part the ontology to which a query is addressed. An approach that seems to be more realistic is the local semantics approach, which considers that for each context/ontology/peer there exists a local set of models and a local domain of interpretation. Some domain relations are defined for establishing the correspondences between elements from different domains. In this case, the inconsistency of one context does not propagate to the whole context space. The most prominent approaches based on this kind of semantics are DFOL [Serafini+etAll-05] and C-OWL [Bouquet+etAll-04]. Considering that a local model semantics is desirable for reasoning with LP-based interconnected ontologies, an important issue is how to define the evaluation technique. This one of the direction for my research.

2) the treatment of negation as failure: as discussed at

http://www.w3.org/2004/12/rules-ws/report/#negation-as-failure, negation as failure is a feature that is desired for representing knowledge on the Web, but due to the OWA, which is characteristic to this environment, cannot be applied without certain restrictions. The suggested restriction is to define the scope of the search for failure, the new type of negation being called scoped negation as failure. However, due to the multiple ways of defining the scope of the search for failure, different semantics can be defined for programs that embed this type of negation. At the initiative of Axel, and together with Andreas, we did some work and plan to further continue in this direction.

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3) the possibility of employing heuristics for distinguishing between

relevant and not-so-relevant information for a query: the idea is to reduce the search space for answers to a query.


So far, I have investigated the state-of-the-art in more areas which are related to distributed reasoning. For example, I had a look at approaches related to ontology mapping like MAFRA [Maedche+MotikETAL-02], OntoMap [Kiryakov+SimovETAL-01a, Kiryakov+SimovETAL-01b], RDFT [Omelayenko-02], etc. (actually all the surveyed approaches are based on particular kind of mappings, but other approaches are regarded from another point of view/classified in a different category because they have other most prominent characteristics), context-based approaches (Flora [Yang+Kifer+Zhao-03, Kifer-05], Triple [DeckerETAL-05, Sintek+Decker-03]), among these a special place having the approaches that are based/extend the local model semantics (C-OWL [Bouquet+GiunchigliaETAL-04], DFOL[Serafini+StuckenschmidtETAL-05]), query-rewriting approaches [Calvanese+GiacomoETAL-04a], the connection between the data integration approach and automatic Web service composition [Thakkar+Ambite+Knoblock-04], frameworks that take into account the relationships between peers[Bertossi+Bravo-04], etc.. As a result, I had identified the issues mentioned in my research interests as being both relevant for the topic of distributed reasoning and not deeply/widely treated in the existing work. Thus, working on each of these issues and their combination into a general framework, has the potential of getting original research results. Recently I had a look in several Datalog evaluation procedures and I am currently surveying the literature in order to identify classes of programs for which a certain evaluation procedure is preferable over the others. This work is relevant both for my PhD topic and for the reasoner component (concerning its optimality). As concerns the scoped negation as failure, together with Axel and Andreas we wrote a paper in which we defined two possible semantics for logical programs with contexts and (scoped) negation as failure[Polleres+Feier+Hart]. In the near future, I intend to have a look at possible way to define contexts, since the semantics for distributed reasoning are sensitive to this issue (what information gets actually to be accessed given a certain query and a certain syntactical form of rules with contexts). As already mentioned in the research direction, i intend to proceed by defining a local model semantics and an evaluation technique for interconnected logical programs.

Implementations Publications Book Chapters:

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Jos de Bruijn, Marc Ehrig, Cristina Feier, Francisco Martin-Recuerda, Francois Scharffe, Moritz Weiten: Ontology mediation, merging and aligning – SEKT Book Chapter, 2006 (to appear). Stollberg, M., Feier, C.; Roman, D., Fensel: Semantic Web Services - Concepts and Technology. In N. Ide, D. Cristea, D Tufis (eds.): Language Technology, Ontologies, and the Semantic Web. Kluwer Publishers, 2006 (to appear). Journal Articles: Dumitru Roman, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Jos de Bruijn, Rubén Lara, Michael Stollberg, Axel Polleres, Cristina Feier, Christoph Bussler, and Dieter Fensel: Web Service Modeling Ontology. Applied Ontology, IOS Press, 2005 Publications in Conference Proceedings: Axel Polleres, Cristina Feier, Andreas Harth: Logic Programs with Contextually Scoped Negation, ISWC06. Feier, Roman, D.; Polleres, A.; Domingue, J.; Stollberg, M. and Fensel, D.: Towards Intelligent Web Services: Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC) 2005, Hefei, China, August 23-26, 2005.

3.4.2.5. Uwe Keller

Name Uwe Keller Entry date January 2004 Cluster Reasonable Semantic Web Services - RSWS Objective Reasoning Projects Currently and in the near future I am involved in the tasks and

project deliverables listed below past activities are not listed. RW2 I Deliverable D1.2 – Report on reasoning techniques and prototype implementation for the WSML-Core and WSML-DL languages I Deliverable D1.3 – Report on reasoning techniques and prototype implementation for the WSML-Rule and WSML-FOL languages I Deliverable D1.4 – Evaluation of the reasoning procedures and techniques I Deliverable D4.2 – Revision of D4.1 (State-of-the art in semantic Web service description and usage) I Deliverable D5.2 – Report on and evaluation of the dissemination strategy I Deliverable D6.2 – Report on standardization activities and achieved results I Deliverable D7.2 – Final project report SEnSE I Deliverable D0.1 v1 – Project Report (mid-term) I Deliverable D0.1 v2 – Project Report (mid-term) I Deliverable D2.1 – Upper-level Ontology I Deliverable D2.2 – Design of Reasoning System I Deliverable D2.3 – Reasoning Infrastructure I Deliverable D3.1 – Agent System Design I Deliverable D3.2 – SEnSE Multi-agent Infrastructure I Deliverable D4.1 – Semantic Facade Design I Deliverable D4.2 – Semantic Facade Framework I Deliverable D5.1 – Software Prototype: SEnSE Environment I Deliverable D6.1 – Test and Verification Report I Deliverable D7.1 – List of Publications WSMO & WSML I Deliverable D28.1 – Functional Specification of Web Services: Elaborate the current presentation and discussion of the interplay between description language and mathematical model underlying the semantic layer; relation between semantic notions and syntactic criteria to detect them; criteria for extensions of functional

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descriptions; completion of proofs. Furthermore, I am project responsible for the SEnSE project and managing the project for DERI Innsbruck. Given the list above, it is obvious that there are too many deliverables to be handled by a single person.

Research topic Progress towards PhD

Up to now, the progress towards my PhD is only marginal. I investigated some parts of relevant literature concerning reasoning in general (not specifically on Semantic Web reasoning), but failed for a long time to develop a concrete idea of a suitable but not unrealistic direction for a PhD. Instead, I collected various small ideas, but never found the time to really start investigating them seriously. Only very recently, in a discussion with my cluster leader Stijn Heymans (where we talked about my plans for a PhD), I myself recognized that many of the ideas somehow are related and actually should provide enough material for a serious PhD project. This means, so far I have identified a promising area of research for a PhD project. The project sketched in Section 3 is a promising one for the following reasons: • It has a clear research hypothesis / question, which is not too

general and allows to go in sufficient depths as well • Both theoretical and practical aspects are involved • It can be done in finite time • One can start small and extend the project in various directions as

needed • It addresses an approach that has not been considered yet, however

clearly is based and motivated by existing work. The results and work the project uses itself is well-investigated only partially, and thus new results on underlying techniques are possible.

• After the completion of the project, a new small piece in the solution space for a concrete problem of practical interest will be governed and a small gap will be filled. In the best case, the result will even lead to more powerful techniques in the field.

• The solutions can be implemented an thus clearly evaluated with respect to existing tools (based on commonly accepted benchmarks)

• The project is related to our community (Semantic Web), the Description Logic community, and the Automated Reasoning Community (and perhaps for the Modal Logic community too).

• The project is of general interest to a larger community, instead of a DERI-intern research problem, that might have the problem of lacking acceptance and feedback within a research community of suitable size

• The outcomes can be applied in the context of specific work in DERI as well, in particular for WSML-DL reasoning.

The next steps in regard of the PhD project is to seriously get into all the relevant material, and to write a PhD project proposal, which

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thoroughly develops the justification of the project, is backed by concrete pointers to relevant literature and ensures the feasibility of the approach. Finally, it will include a workplan that manifests the roadmap for the project. Based on this proposal, we intend to write a project proposal (e.g. Austrian-funded, foundational research: FWF) and send it to a respective funding agency. In case of acceptance, the work distribution in regard of existing projects has to be reconsidered.

Implementations Currently, I am involved in or responsible for the development of the following pieces of software: WSML2Reasoner: WSML2Reasoner is a flexible framework for

reasoning over WSML-Ontologies. Currently, it supports query answering over WSML-Core, WSMLFlight and WSML-Rule ontologies. The framework serves as a translational middleware as well as a unified interface between clients interested in WSML reasoning and specific reasoning engines. In particular, it does not fix the engine to be used for evaluation of reasoning tasks (e.g. query answering) and allows to integrate new engines in a simple manner.

MINS: Design and Implementation of the DERI Rule Engine.

Essentially, MINS can perform query answering over Horn theories (including default negation and built-in/datatype predicates) and therefore be used (as a reasoner underlying WSML2Reasoner) for query answering over WSML-Core, WSML-Flight and WSMLRule.

Semantic Facades: The SEnSE project aims at the development of a

knowledge-based information system for engineers that pro-actively supports the information needs of people involved in complex engineering processes. Semantic Facades are particular software components that wrap legacy sources within the SEnSE environment and integrate them into the system. They provide a semantic perspective of relevant information stored (or represented) within the source and allow uniform and semantic-based access to these information across multiple heterogeneous resources.

Publications Chris Bussler, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, and Brahmananda Sapkota, editors. 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), Innsbruck, Austria, volume 134 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073. CEUR, June 2005. Jos de Bruijn, Chris Bussler, John Domingue, Dieter Fensel, Martin Hepp, Uwe Keller, Michael Kifer, Birgitta Knig-Ries, Jacek Kopecky, Ruben Lara, Holger Lausen, Eyal Oren, Axel Polleres,

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Dumitru Roman, James Scicluna, and Michael Stollberg. Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). W3C Member Submission, June 2005. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Michael Kifer, Holger Lausen, Reto Krummenacher, Axel Polleres, and Livia Predoiu. Web Service Modeling Language (WSML). W3C Member Submission, June 2005. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, and Rub´en Lara. Using the Web Service Modelling Ontology to enable Semantic eBusiness. Communications of the ACM, Special issue on the Semantic e-Business Vision, 48(12):43–47, December 2005. Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Ioan Toma. WWW or What is Wrong with Web Service Discovery. Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005. Uwe Keller. Some Remarks on the Definability of Transitive Closure in First-order Logic and Datalog. Internal Report, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), University of Innsbruck, June 2004. Uwe Keller. Development of a WSML Reasoning Infrastructure. Internal Report, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), University of Innsbruck, August 2005. Uwe Keller. How common Specification Frameworks for Software Components deal with Inputs in functional Specifications. Internal Report, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), University of Innsbruck, January 2005. Uwe Keller, Rub´en Lara, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel. Automatic Location of Services. In Proceedings of 2nd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Heraklion, Greece, pages 1–16, May 2005. Uwe Keller and Holger Lausen. Semantic Web Service Discovery in WSMO, Chapter in Semantic Web Services: Theory, Tools and Applications. 2006 to appear. Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, and Michael Stollberg. On the Semantics of Functional Descriptions of Web Services. In York Sure and John Domingue, editors, Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Budva, Montenegro, volume

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4011 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), pages 605 – 619. Springer, June 11-14 2006. Uwe Keller, Michael Neswal, and Alois Reitbauer. Semantic Web meets Product Engineering – It does make a lot of SEnSE. Poster proposal about the SEnSE project, unpublished, 2006. Uwe Keller, Michael Stollberg, and Dieter Fensel. WOOGLE meets Semantic Web Fred. In Proceedings of the Workshop on WSMO Implementations (WIW 2004), Frankfurt, Germany, September 2004. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073. Michael Kifer, Rub´en Lara, Axel Polleres, C. Zhao, Uwe Keller, and Holger Lausen. A Logical Framework for Web Service Discovery. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Semantic Web Services: Preparing to Meet the World of Business Applications, International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2004), Hiroshima, Japan, November 2004. Dumitru Roman, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Rub´en Lara Jos de Bruijn, Michael Stollberg, Axel Polleres, Cristina Feier, Christoph Bussler, and Dieter Fensel. Web service modeling ontology. Applied Ontology, 1(1):77–106, 2005. Michael Stollberg, Uwe Keller, and Dieter Fensel. Partner and Service Discovery for Collaboration Establishment on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2005), Orlando, Florida, July 2005. Michael Stollberg, Uwe Keller, Peter Zugmann, and Roman Herzog. Semantic Web Fred – Agent Cooperation on the Semantic Web. In Demonstration at the 3rd International Conference on Semantic Web (ISWC 2004), Hiroshima, Japan, January 2004. Michael Stollberg, Dimitru Roman, Ioan Toma, Uwe Keller, Roman Herzog, Peter Zugmann, and Dieter Fensel. Semantic Web Fred – Automated Goal Resolution on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2005), Hawaii, January 2005. A. Zhdanova and Uwe Keller. Semantic Web Fred – Automated Goal Resolution on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the Second World Enformatika Congress (WEC 2005), Istanbul, Turkey, pages 47–50, February 2005.

3.4.2.6. Holger Lausen

Name Holger Lausen Entry date April 2003 Cluster RSWS Objective Discovery (and infrastructure service like WSMO4J) Projects - Kweb Contributer

- SWS Challenge Organization - Contribution to Discovery Prototype - RW² Project Management (supervision 2 students / coordination Researcher - RW² Deliverables: - d2.2 Discovery Framework Specification - d2.3 Prototype Implementation of the Discovery Component - d3.2 First prototype of the base framework for the WSMO-Studio including the WSMO-API - d3.3 WSMO Studio Prototype - Dissemination/Technology Watch/Progress Reports - W3C - Semantic Annotation for WSDL Working Group - RIF Working Group (getting less involved here)

Research topic Web Service Discovery Numerous proposals exist on adding /semantics/ to Web Service Discovery, but most focus on some specific aspect without revealing their underlying assumptions. Each approach has a specific approach to model service requests and service offers. While often the notion of a match is logically sound described, it is not mapped to actual requirements in the problem domain. I want to show how different granularities of modeling can address a particular problem, i.e. a keyword based search works perfectly fine for a manual search in even a relatively big amount of services as long as their domain is sufficient different. Adding concept based descriptions can increase the precision, given that providers (or some one else) is willing to invest the effort of annotation. This Annotations can ease *manual to semi-automatic* discovery, and it can be shown that ontologies are a more flexible means for this type of classification than standard classification

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schemes like UNSPC. Respectively it can be shown that one can disambiguating concepts mentioned in UNSPC, by adding further annotation using an ontology language. Finally for the vision of automatic discovery, selection and invocation it is clear that more precise annotations are needed. Slowly annotating inputs and outputs (as in many OWL-S based approaches) have the deficiency that they do not describe the relation between inputs and outputs. The aim of the PhD is to outline those "levels" of modeling and how they relate/address to different problems in the area of service discovery. An implementation based on the previous work on WSML will illustrate how a particular approach can be realized.


1) Introduction 2) Snapshot of Web Services

Analyze of a collection of public Web services and currently available search engines (respectively portals)

3) Analyze of Approaches to improve Service Discovery. - The AI/Planning Approach (focus on the input/output

annotation) - Ubiquitous Computing (focus on the discovery protocol

aspect) - Component Retrieval in Software Specification (complete

specification of functionality)

4) Methodology for Modeling Web Services 5) Implementation 5.1) Architecture 5.2) Foundations (WSMO4J / WSML2Reasoner) 6) Evaluation 7) Conclusion

Implementations Lead (Innsbruck): WSMO4J Participating: WSML2Reasoner, MINS (parser extension), Discovery Engine

Publications Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen and Michael Stollberg. On the Semantics

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of Functional Descriptions of Web Services in Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006). Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres and Dieter Fensel. The Web Service Modeling Language: An Overview in Proceedings of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2006), Budva, Montenegro, June 2006. Dumitru Roman, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Jos de Bruijn, Rubén Lara, Michael Stollberg, Axel Polleres, Cristina Feier, Christoph Bussler, and Dieter Fensel: Web Service Modeling Ontology. To appear in Applied Ontology, IOS Press, 2005. Holger Lausen, Ying Ding, Michael Stollberg, Dieter Fensel, Rubén Lara, and Sung-Kook Han: Semantic web portals: state-of-the-art survey. Journal of Knowledge Management, 2005, Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Page: 40 - 49 Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Ioan Toma: What is wrong with Web services Discovery. In W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005. Position Paper. Emanuele Della Valle, Dario Cerizza, Politecnico di Milano Veli, Bicer Yildirak, Kabak Gokce, Banu Laleci, and Holger Lausen. The Need for Semantic Web Service in the eHealth. In W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005. Position Paper. Jos de Bruijn, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel: The WSML rule languages for the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington DC, USA, April 2005. Position Paper. Holger Lausen, Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel: WSML - a Language Framework for Semantic Web Services. W3C Rules Workshop. In Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington DC, USA, April 2005. Position Paper. Uwe Keller, Ruben Lara, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and Dieter Fensel: Automatic Location of Services, In Proceedings of the 2nd European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS2005), Heraklion, Crete, 29th May - 1st June, 2005.

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Vladimir Alexiev, Michael Breu, Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Ruben Lara and Holger Lausen: Information Integration with Ontologies: Ontology based Information Integration in an Industrial Setting, ISBN: 0-470-01048-7, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex, UK, April 2005. Daniel Olmedilla, Rubén Lara, Axel Polleres, and Holger Lausen: Trust negotiation for semantic web services. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 3387, pages 81-95, 2005. Michael Kifer, Rubén Lara, Axel Polleres, Chang Zhao, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, and Dieter Fensel. A logical framework for web service discovery. In ISWC 2004 Workshop on Semantic Web Services: Preparing to Meet the World of Business Applications, volume 119, Hiroshima, Japan, 2004. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Holger Lausen and Michael Felderer. Architecture for an ontology and web service modeling studio. In Proceedings of the Workshop on WSMO Implementations, volume 107. CEURWorkshop Proceedings, 2004. Ying Ding, Dieter Fensel, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Michael Stollberg, and Sung-Kook Han, editors. Proceedings of the ECAI 2004 Workshop on Application of Semantic Web Technologies to Web Communities, Valencia, Spain, August 23-27, 2004, volume 107 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2004. Michael Stollberg, Holger Lausen, Rubén Lara, Ying Ding, Sung-Kook Han, and Dieter Fensel. Towards semantic web portals. In WWW Workshop on Application Design, Development and Implementation Issues in the Semantic Web, 2004. Jos de Bruijn and Holger Lausen. Active ontologies for data source queries. In The Semantic Web: Research and Applications, First European Semantic Web Symposium, ESWS 2004, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, May 10-12, 2004, Proceedings, volume 3053 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 107-120, Heraklion, Crete, 2004. Springer. Rubén Lara, Sung-Kook Han, Holger Lausen, Michael Stollberg, Ying Ding, and Dieter Fensel. An evaluation of semantic web portals. In IADIS Applied Computing International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 2004. Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Sinuhé Arroyo, Jos de Bruijn, and Dieter Fensel. Semantic web services: description requirements and

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current technologies. In International Workshop on Electronic Commerce, Agents, and Semantic Web Services, Pittsburgh, PA, September 30, 2003. Technical Reports Holger Lausen, Michael Stollberg, Rubén Lara, Ying Ding, Sung-Kook Han, and Dieter Fensel. Semantic web portals state of the art survey. Technical Report DERI-TR-2004-04-03, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Innsbruck, Austria, 2004. Michael Stollberg, Holger Lausen, Sinuhe Arroyo, Peter Smolle, Reinhold Herzog, and Dieter Fensel. Fred whitepaper - an agent platform for the semantic web. Technical Report DERI TR-2004-01-09, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Innsbruck, Austria, 2004.

3.4.2.7. Ruzica Piskac

Name Ruzica Piskac Entry Date August 2006

Cluster RSWS Component Reasoning Projects None, but we intend to write FWF proposal Research topic Our main goal is to define a reasoner for the First-order

Autoepistemic Logic (WSML Full) in the framework of WSML languages.


Since I have just started at DERI week ago, I have only done the first steps in the direction of my PhD. We defined briefly the topic and main guidelines during the research. We outlined the following phases in the research:

1) investigating the literature 2) defining the reasoner 3) implementation

Currently I am getting myself familiar with relevant papers and the newest results. We expect that in the near future, after I accustom myself with the terminology and problems, we shall formulate the FWF proposal.

Implementations Publications Journal Articles:

P. Saiz, L. Aphecetche, P. Buncic, R. Piskac, J.-E. Revsbech, V. Sego. 2003. AliEn-ALICE environment on the GRID. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A, Volume 502, Issue 2-3, p. 437-440. Publications in Conference Proceedings: H. de Nivelle, R. Piskac. Verification of an Off-Line Checker for Priority Queues. Proceedings of Third IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, Koblenz, IEEE computer society press, Washington, 2005, 210-219.

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L. Caklovic, R. Piskac, V. Sego. 2001. Improvement of AHP method. Mathematical Communications - Supplement No.1 (2001), 13-21. Master Thesis: R. Piskac. Formal Correctness of Result Checking for Priority Queues. Masters thesis, Universitastät des Saarlandes, 2005. R. Piskac. Parallel Algorithms for Sorting and Merging (in Croatian). Diploma thesis. University of Zagreb, 2000.

3.4.2.8. Richard Pöttler

Name Richard Pöttler Entry date January 2006 Cluster RSWS Objective Reasoning and Mediation Projects Research topic At the moment I'm working as a programmer / researcher for DERI.

In more detail I'm programming for the mappingAPI (Francois) and the reasoner (Darko). In the mappingAPI I implemented the parser for the XML-Language, edited the objectmodel, reimplemented the OWL and WSML export and now I'm implementing the conditions. In the reasoner I got to implement the builtins.

Implementations ● OMWG (Advisors: Jan Henke, Francois Scharffe) ○ Reimplemented the Exports of the mappings (XML Format,

WSML, OWL) ○ Implemented the parser/marshaller for the XML language ○ Implementing conditions ○ Trying to find similarities between ontologies ○ Cleaning up the objectmodel

● WSML Reasoner (Advisors: Darko Anicic, Holger Lausen) ○ Implemented builtins ○ Implemented datatypes

● GoldenBullet (Advisors: Ying Ding, Martin Hepp) ○ Refactored/bugfixed the code ○ Made submited data persistent ○ Implemented a search mask

3.4.2.9. James Scicluna

Name James Scicluna Entry date October 2004 Cluster RSWS Objective Choreography Projects Infrawebs:

Tasks: - Behavioral Language - QoS Metric and Monitor - Error Handling - P2P Architecture Specification - Final SWS-E and QoS-Monitor - Use Case Preparation for Demonstrator - Contribution in the WSMO Use Case Description - Contribution in the Dissemination Efforts Deliverables: - D7.3.2 Realization of SWS-E, Error Handling and QoS Monitor - D7.4.3 Final SWS-E and Running P2P-Agent and Demonstrator

Preparation Research topic Use Cases (both B2C and B2B) for choreography interfaces.

Identification of choreography patterns from a combination of workflow patterns [9] and service interaction patterns. Evaluation of the suitability of framework such as Petri Nets [6], Abstract State Machines [4], Transaction Logic [3] and Process Algebra [1] for the formalization of the choreography patterns. Adequate combination of tow or more of these methodologies such that the: 1. the (newly defined) semantics for the combined framework

provides the needed expressiveness for the modeling of choreography patterns

2. formal automated reasoning procedure should exist for the combined framework

Evaluation with respect to other formal languages such as YAWL [8]. Application of this language in the Semantic Web [7] and an execution engine on top.


Draft outline of the PhD Thesis. 1. Introduction

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2. Motivation - why choreography interface patterns? - why combining different formalisms to adequately formulate

these patterns? - In what way will the above two points ease compatibility

checking and other reasoning tasks? - What kind of advantages can this bring to the semantic web? 3. Use cases - Description of B2B and B2C scenarios clearly showing

interactions between the parties - Identify which service interaction [2] and workflow patterns [9]

can be combined into choreography patterns 4. Formal Methods - Writing down the choreography patterns using the methodologies

such as Petri Nets [6], Transaction Logic [3], Abstract State Machines [4] and Process Algebra [1].

- Evaluation of the formal methods based in (1) the effort required to model the choreography patterns and (2) expressivity of the methodology (taking into account the requirements for allowing to reason on compatibility checking [5])

- Combination of methodologies: identification of requirements in choreography and how those requirements are expected to present in different representation formalisms, which enforces a combination: we will define the formal combined language, provide semantics for this language that captures the intended requirements for choreography.

5. Application in the Semantic Web - Reasoning: to enable the effective deployment of Semantic Web

Services we will investigate formal decidable reasoning (in the sense that we will first check whether decidable reasoning is possible with the combined framework, and if not, we will identify expressive fragments of the combined framework that do provide with decidable reasoning). This decidable reasoning depends on the required reasoning for Semantic Web Services, bur envisage at least compatibility check and maybe others. We will formally define how those reasoning tasks (like compatibility checking) can be reduced to decidable reasoning in the combined framework.

- Relation to WSMO Choreography [7]: investigate the mapping of the above combined framework into a standard logic programming language like WSML-Rule. Moreover investigate whether choreography reasoning calls for specific reasoning tasks

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(like compatibility checking) which are currently not provided by the WSML Reasoning component. This would require the investigation of new algorithms and the subsequent implementation of these algorithms in the WSML Reasoner.

6. Evaluation 7. Conclusion [1] J.C.M. Baeten. Procesalgebra: en formalisme voor parallelle,

communicerende processen. Deventer: Kluwer, 1988. [2] Alistair Barros, Marlon Dumas, and Arthur ter Hofstede. Service

interaction patterns: Towards a reference framework for service-based business process interconnection. Technical report, Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, March 2005.

[3] Anthony J. Bonner and Michael Kifer. Transaction logic

programming. Pages 257-279, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1993. MIT Press.

[4] Egon Börger and Robert Stärk. Abstract State Machines: A

Method for High-Level System Design and Analysis. Springer, 2003.

[5] Axel Martens. Verteilte Geschäftsprozesse – Modellierung und

Verifikation mit Hilfe von Web Services. PhD thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, 2003.

[6]Carl Adam Petri. Kommunikation mit Automaten. PhD thesis,

Institut für Instrumentelle Mathematik, Bonn, 1962. [7] James Scicluna, Axel Polleres, and Dumitru Roman. Ontology-

bases choreography and orchestration of wsmo services. Technical Report D14, DERI Innsbruck, October 2005.

[8] W.M.P. van der Aalst and A.H.M. ter Hofstede. Yawl: Yet

another workflow language. Information Systems, 30(4):245-275, 2005.

[9] W.M.P. van der Aalst, A.H.M. ter Hofstede. B. Kiepuszewski,

and A.P. Barros. Workflow patterns. Distributed and Parallel Databases, 14(3):5-51, July 2003.

Implementations - Design and Specification of the Choreography Syntax - Design and Implementation of the Choreography API for

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WSMO4J - Input in the Design and Implementation of the Choreography

Engine for WSMX - Design and Implementation of the Quality of Service Metrics for

the Infrawebs project - Design and Implementation of the Quality of Service Monitor for

the Infrawebs project (ongoing) Publications José-Manuel López-Cobo, Alejandro López-Pérez and James

Scicluna: A Semantic Choreography-driven Frequent Flyer Program in Proceedings of the Future Research Challenges of Software and Services Workshop, Vienna (Austria), April, 2006 James Scicluna and Axel Polleres: Semantic Web Service Execution for WSMO Based Choreographies in Proceedings of the Semantic Web Applications Workshop, EuroMedia 2005, Toulouse (France), April, 2005

3.4.2.10. Alexander Wahler

Name Alexander Wahler Entry date December 2003 Cluster SEBIS Objective Semantic Web Services Projects I coordinate the DERI team in SALERO. Major tasks are the

development of representation techniques for multimedia objects, development of an ontology language for multimedia objects and API Ontologies for multimedia objects and a workbench (tools). I was one of the main editors of the SUPER proposal and contributed to the definition of the new research field of “semantic business process management”. I participated also from the very beginning the NFN proposal SESA.

Research topic My main focus of the research is applying semantic web services to real world applications and to evaluate the integration of SWS in existing software architectures.


Due to heavy commercial activities there is no progress to report. Potential topic for the PhD thesis is the evolvement of ecosystems based on the service oriented computing paradigm

Implementations So far there are no implementations Publications 1. Martin Hepp, Frank Leymann, John Domingue, Alexander

Wahler,and Dieter Fensel Semantic Business Process Management: A Vision Towards Using Semantic Web Services for Business Process ManagementProceedings of the IEEE ICEBE 2005, October 18-20, Beijing, China, pp. 535-540.

2. Siegfried Reich, Georg Güntner, Tassilo Pellegrini, Alexander Wahler (Hrsg.) Semantic Content Engineering Proceedings der Semantics 2005, Trauner Verlag, Linz

3. Alexander Wahler, Bernhard Schreder, Aleksandar Balaban, Juan Miguel Gomez, Klaus Niederacher: MIKSI - A Semantic and Service Oriented Integration Platform. ESWS 2004: 459-472

4. Eyal Oren, Alexander Wahler, Bernhard Schreder, Aleksandar Balaban, Michal Zaremba, Maciej Zaremba Demonstrating WSMX: Least Cost Supply Management,

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1st WSMO Implementation Workshop, Frankfurt, Germany

5. Klaus Niederacher, Alexander Wahler: Concept for content administration of database powered multimedia web-sites. ACM Multimedia (2) 1999: 57-58

3.4.3. Senior Researchers Senior Researchers No Name Topic

3 Dr. Stijn Heymans Reasoning 3.4.3.1. Stijn Heymans

Name Stijn Heymans Entry date March 2006 Cluster RSWS Objective Reasoning and Formal Languages Projects I will be involved in the SENSE project and wrote the long version

of project part 6 of the SESA nfn proposal (SOA-S, semantics in SOAs). Regarding deliverables, I did some minor reviewing for D14.

Research topic My main focus of research is the extension of logic programming paradigms in order to make them more suitable for conceptual reasoning. E.g., the investigation of logic programs under an open domain semantics as is standard in Description Logics. In particular, I am interested in the integration of Description Logics (or Ontological reasoning) and Logic Programming (or Rule-based reasoning). On my to do list in that respect are: - A simulation of Rosati’s r-hybrid knowledge base which combines

Description logics and Datalog in our framework of Logic Programs under the open answer set semantics, as well as show that the latter have advantages over the former for Semantic Web reasoning. (in 2 months, scheduled for ALPSWS 06 or similar workshop/conference)

1. In the further future we intend to devise effective algorithms

for reasoning with logic programs under the open answer set semantics. To make an analogy, in DLs one has both decidability proofs (e.g., by automata translation) and effective algorithms (so-called tableaux algorithms) enabling

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reasoning with DLs. The presence of the well-investigated theoretical foundations of DLs and the existence of those algorithms is (part of) the explanation of the success of DLs in the SW community (that and being on the right place and the right time basically with a good dose of luck). The intent of this line of research is to do a similar thing for logic programs under the open answer set semantics, i.e., the theoretical decidability results are largely done, so it is time to look into effective algorithms. Since LP has nice features DLs lack (such as nonmonotonicity) this would yield a quite attractive framework for doing knowledge representation and reasoning. In a latter stage, we will implement those algorithms. (2 years work to cover a broad range of fragments of logic programs under the open answer set semantics and have decent implementations)

Besides these personal topics, I intend to be involved in the research of my cluster colleagues (in different degrees of involvement) with topics as: distributed reasoning in the (WSML) LP context, formalizations of choreography/orchestration, formalizations related to service discovery, decidability of first-order logic extensions to auto-epistemic logic (in the WSML-Full context), efficient (WSML-)DL reasoning through alternative FOL-based methods.

Progress towards Habil

Since I have my PhD since February there is no progress to report regarding the Habilitation yet. For the future, the �anageable� of algorithms for reasoning with logic programs under the open answer set semantics, as described in my research topic above, is planned to constitute a part of the Habilitation.

Implementations So far there are no implementations. As described above, after the algorithms for the above semantics have been devised, they will be implemented and integrated in the current WSML reasoner.

Publications Conceptual Logic Programs. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (Special Issue on Answer Set Programming), pp. x-x, Springer Netherlands, 2006. Accepted for publication. Open Answer Set Programming for the Semantic Web. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Journal of Applied Logic, pp. x-x, Elsevier, 2006. Accepted for publication. Cooperating Answer Set Programming. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 22th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2006), pp. x-x, Springer LNCS x, 2006. Accepted for publication. Approximating Extended Answer Sets. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh,

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Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2006), pp. x-x, , 2006. Accepted for publication. Reasoning with the Description Logic DLRO-less than using Bound Guarded Programs. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Dieter Fensel and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of Reasoning on the Web workshop (RoW 2006), pp. x-x, , 2006. Accepted for publication. Hierarchical Decision Making in Multi-Agent Systems using Answer Set Programming. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Marina De Vos, Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of Seventh Workshop on Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems (CLIMA-VII), pp. x-x, Springer LNAI , 2006. Accepted for publication. Unsatisfiability Reasoning in ORM Conceptual Schemes. Mustafa Jarrar and Stijn Heymans. In Proc. Of International Conference on Semantics of a Networked World (ICSNW 2006), pp. x-x, Springer LNCS , 2006. Accepted for publication. Guarded Open Answer Set Programming with Generalized Literals. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of Fourth International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems (FoIKS 2006), pp. 179-200, Springer LNCS 3861, 2006. Preferential Reasoning on a Web of Trust. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2005), pp. 368-382, Springer LNCS 3729, 2005. Synthesis from Temporal Specifications Using Preferred Answer Set Programming. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of ICTCS 2005, pp. 280-294, Springer LNCS 3701, 2005. Guarded Open Answer Set Programming. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 8th International Conference on Logic Programming and Non Monotonic Reasoning (LPNMR 2005), pp. 92-104, Springer LNAI 3662, 2005. Intelligence Analysis using Quantitative Preferences. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of Answer Set Programming: Advances in Theory and Implementation (ASP 2005), pp. 233-247, Research Press International, 2005.

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Extending Conceptual Logic Programs with Arbitrary Rules. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of Answer Set Programming: Advances in Theory and Implementation (ASP 2005), pp. 27-41, Research Press International, 2005. 3 Nonmonotonic Ontological and Rule-Based Reasoning with Extended Conceptual Logic Programs. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 2nd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2005), pp. 392-407, Springer LNCS 3532, 2005. Weighted Answer Sets and Applications in Intelligence Analysis. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 11th International Conference on Logic for Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Reasoning (LPAR 2004), pp. 169-183, Springer LNCS 3452, 2005. An Ordered Logic Program Solver. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of Seventh International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages (PADL 2005), pp. 128-142, Springer LNCS 3350, 2005. Semantic Web Reasoning with Conceptual Logic Programs. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 3rd International Workshop on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web, pp. 113-127, Springer LNCS 3323, 2004. Hierarchical Decision Making by Autonomous Agents. Stijn Heymans, Davy Van Nieuwenborgh and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 9th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence (JELIA 2004), pp. 44-56, Springer LNAI 3229, 2004. On Programs with Linearly Ordered Multiple Preferences. Davy Van Nieuwenborgh, Stijn Heymans and Dirk Vermeir. In Proc. Of 20th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2004), pp. 180-194, Springer LNCS 3132, 2004. Integrating Description Logics and Answer Set Programming. S. Heymans and D. Vermeir. In Proc. Of International Workshop on Principles and Practice of Semantic Web Reasoning (PPSWR 2003), pp. 146-159, Springer LNCS 2901, 2003. Integrating Semantic Web Reasoning and Answer Set Programming. S. Heymans and D. Vermeir. In Proc. Of Answer Set Programming:

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Advances in Theory and Implementation (ASP03), pp. 194-208, Volume 78 of CEUR Proceedings, 2003. Integrating Ontology Languages and Answer Set Programming. S. Heymans and D. Vermeir. In Proc. Of Fourteenth International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, pp. 584-588, IEEE Computer Society, 2003. A Defeasible Ontology Language. S. Heymans and D. Vermeir. In Proc. Of Confederated International Conferences: CoopIS, DOA, and ODBASE 2002, pp. 1033-1046, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2519, 2002. Using Preference Order in Ontologies. S. Heymans and D. Vermeir. In Proc. Of Thirteenth International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, pp. 85-89, IEEE Computer Society, 2002.

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4. Semantics in Business Information Systems Cluster (SEBIS) In the following we describe the SEBIS cluster in general terms, in terms of the objectives it takes care, in terms of the project it takes care, and in terms of its members. 4.1. General Description Name Semantics in Business Information Systems Acronym SEBIS Web site http://sebis.deri.org Leader Ying Ding and Martin Hepp Team Senior Researchers:

Ying Ding Matin Hepp Junior Researchers: Tobias Bürger Jan Henke Dumitru Roman Francois Scharffe Katharina Siorpaes Michael Stollberg Students: Daniel Bachlechner Andreas Klotz Bernhard Leschinger Michael Luger Kathrin Prantner

Objectives (1) Ontologies Projects dip, EASIER, Eastweb, enRIAF, etPlanner, MUSING, myOntology,

OnTourism, SUPERMartin

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Mission In our research group, we work at transferring Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services technology to research problems in Business Information Systems, in order to bridge the gap between the fundamental work yielded by the Formal Ontology and Semantic Web communities on one hand, and the application-oriented challenges of BIS/MIS as a discipline. This includes the following two dimensions: Maturing Semantic Web foundations, so that they become compatible with the real world complexity and scale.This includes four main areas of research:

• Ontology engineering, • Community-driven ontology building, • Economic aspects of ontology building and usage, and • Ontology Management Systems (OMS).

Applying Semantic Web technology to core challenges of Information Systems in order to realize and evaluate the business benefit and to identify the open research challenges. We currently focus on various application domains, e.g.:

• Semantics-supported Business Process Management, • Semantic Web services, especially WSMO/WSML/WSMX, and • Electronic Markets and Electronic Procurement.


DIP: a) Delivery of M30 deliverables WP1: Final version of Reasoner Technology Scan and Recommendation and WSML Semantics Specification WP2: Final version of editing and browsing, versioning, mapping; preparation of Ontology Management Book WP3: „Goal Ontologies for Effective Resource Management” and “Semantic Web Services grounding specification” WP4: Final version of Discovery Module Prototype and, Orchestration engine prototype b) Preparation of the final review (October 23-26, 2006 in Innsbruck) MUSING

• Deliverables: • D18: Position paper on multi-industry methodologies and

tools (basically a journal paper; due M12 – April 2007) • D30: Solution simulations (experiments of ontology-

supported Business Intelligence; due M18 – August 2007) • Tasks:

• 3.1 Ontologies development and management • Propose Ontology languages, methodologies, and

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propose/provide infrastructure • 5.1 Methodologies and Tools paper (same as D18) • WP 5 lead • 6.4 Domain Ontology Financial Risk Management • 7.4 Domain Ontology Internationalization • 8.4. Domain Ontology IT Operational Risk

SUPER Delivery of M6, M12, M18 deliverables WP1: (Semantic Business Process Ontology and BP Operational Semantics)

• D1.1 Process Modelling Ontology and Mapping to WSMO (M12) • Process Ontology Language and • D1.3 Operational Semantics for Semantic Business Processes • (currently lead by NUIG, negotiations to shift responsibility to

UIBK; M12) • D1.4 Process Ontology Query Language merged with D 1.3 (M18)

WP11: • D11.2 SBPM community building activities (M18)

Contributions WP 2 (Semantic Process Life Cycle Methodology and Evaluation) WP 8 (Telecoms Use Case framework and Ontology)

4.2. Objectives

• Ontologies (1) 4.2.1. Ontologies Nr 1 Title Ontologies Mission statement

In this research topic, we want to advance the state of the art the use of ontologies for advancement in the automation of business processes. Ontologies in our understanding are community contracts about a representation of a domain of discourse. Representation in here includes (1) formal parts that can be used for machine reasoning, and (2) informal parts like natural language descriptions and multimedia elements that help humans establish, maintain, and renew consensus about the meaning of concepts. In our opinion, both aspects of ontologies are equally important, and we watch the current dominance of the formal aspects of ontologies in academic research with unease. Our contributions address the following two main dimensions of using ontologies for real application:

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Maturing Semantic Web foundations, so that they become compatible with the real world complexity and scale. This includes four main branches of research: Ontology Engineering Methodologies for and prototypes of industry-strength business ontologies, e.g. the gen/tax methodology for deriving ontologies from existing hierarchical standards and taxonomies (UNSPSC, eCl@ss, ...) and eClassOWL, the first serious attempt of building an ontology for e-business applications; and in general advancing the state of the art in e-business data and knowledge engineering, including metrics for content. Community-driven Ontology Building For quite a while, we have been trying to hand back control over the evolution of ontologies to the user community, including semi-automated approaches and OntoWiki, a Wiki-centric ontology building environment. In this segment also fall quantitative comparisons of community-centric and engineering-based ontology building. Economic Aspects of Ontology Building and Usage Building ontologies consumes resources, and in an economic setting, these resources are justified and will be spend (by rational economic actors, at least) only if the effort needed to establish and keep alive a consensual representation of a domain of discourse is outweighed by the business gain, either in terms of cost, added value, or strategic dimensions, e.g. process agility. This research branch is rather young and underdeveloped, but an important piece of understanding and fueling the use of ontologies in business applications. Building actual ontologies for core challenges of Information Systems in order to realize and evaluate the business benefit and to identify the open research challenges. We currently focus on five specific application domains: Semantics-supported Business Process Management, i.e. the idea to mechanize Business Process Management by using Semantic Web techniques and especially Semantic Web Services. There is a first vision paper and a Working Group being founded. Semantic Web services, especially WSMO/WSML/WSMX, i.e. the use of ontologies and related technology for the automation of Web services discovery, composition, execution, and monitoring.

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Electronic Markets and Electronic Procurement, including a reference framework for ontology-supported electronic procurement and an analysis of the true complexity of business matchmaking. eTourism, e.g. the automation of the discovery and booking of tourism offerings. Financial reporting, e.g. the automated mediation between financial 2data (e.g. XBRL data) so that balance sheets and other documents from multiple sources can be integrated on the fly.

Web site http://ontologies.deri.org Leader Martin Hepp Cluster SEBIS Team Senior Researchers:

Martin Hepp Junior Researchers: - Students: Daniel Bachlechner Yihong Ding Bernhard Leschinger


Current Status

A major bottleneck towards business applications of Semantic Web technology and machine reasoning is the lack of industry-strength ontologies that go beyond academic prototypes. The design of such ontologies from scratch in a textbook-style ontology engineering process is in many cases unattractive, for it would require significant effort, and because the resulting ontologies could not build on top of existing community commitment. Also, real-world problems of data and systems interoperability can only be overcome using Semantic Web technology if ontologies exist that represent the very standards currently in use in systems and databases. There exist at least four major categories of such standards:

1. XML schema definitions for message exchange (BMEcat, ebXML, RosettaNet, …)

2. Non-XML message format standards (UN/EDIFACT, X12, SWIFT, VDA, SEDAS, EANCOM, CIF, OASIS UBL, …)

3. Taxonomies and thesauri (eCl@ss, UNSPSC, RosettaNet technical dictionary, …)

4. Numbering schemes and other shallow vocabularies (EAN, UPC, DUNS, ILN, ISO 639, …)

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These specifications, though mostly informal in nature, are likely the most valuable asset on the way to real business ontologies that can help solve real business interoperability problems, since they reflect some degree of community consensus and contain, readily available, a wealth of concept definitions. However, the transformation of such standards into useful ontologies is not as straightforward as it appears, because of the following reasons:

1. The specifications come in a variety of formats, e.g. XML, CSV, Microsoft Access, PDF, or plain text, and mostly lack a formal meta-model.

2. The specification and the documentation can be very voluminous, rendering manual translation unfeasible.

3. The same standard can be used in different ways with incompatible semantics in different contexts.

In our research work, we want to advance the state of the art in collaborative ontology building and the mechanized and semi-automated transformation of existing industrial standards into useful ontologies.

Future Steps In the next time, we will develop generic methodologies and tools for the reuse of existing standards and consensus for creating industry-strength ontologies.

Publications Journals Martin Hepp: Products and Services Ontologies: A Methodology for Deriving OWL Ontologies from Industrial Categorization Standards, nt'l Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems (IJSWIS), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 72-99, January-March 2006. Martin Hepp: Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services. Father and Son or Indivisible Twins? IEEE Internet Computing, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 85-88, March-April 2006. DOI: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MIC.2006.42 Conferences Martin Hepp: The True Complexity of Product Representation in the Semantic Web Accepted for the 14th European Conference on Information System (ECIS 2006), June 12-14, 2006, Gothenburg, Sweden. Martin Hepp, Katharina Siorpaes, Daniel Bachlechner: Towards the Semantic Web in E-Tourism: Can Annotation Do the Trick? Accepted for the 14th European Conference on Information System (ECIS 2006), June 12-14, 2006, Gothenburg, Sweden.

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Martin Hepp, Jörg Leukel, and Volker Schmitz A Quantitative Analysis of eCl@ss, UNSPSC, eOTD, and RNTD: Content, Coverage, and Maintenance Proceedings of the IEEE ICEBE 2005, October 18-20, Beijing, China, pp. 572-581. Martin Hepp, Frank Leymann, John Domingue, Alexander Wahler, and Dieter Fensel Semantic Business Process Management: A Vision Towards Using Semantic Web Services for Business Process Management Proceedings of the IEEE ICEBE 2005, October 18-20, Beijing, China, pp. 535-540. Martin Hepp: A Methodology for Deriving OWL Ontologies from Products and Services Categorization Standards Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2005), May 26 - May 28, 2005, Regensburg, Germany, pp. 1-12. Martin Hepp, Jörg Leukel, and Volker Schmitz: Content Metrics for Products and Services Categorization Standards Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce and e-Service (EEE-05), March 29 - April 1, 2005, Hong Kong, pp. 740-745. Workshops Martin Hepp Representing the Hierarchy of Industrial Taxonomies in OWL: The gen/tax Approach Proceedings of the ISWC Workshop on Semantic Web Case Studies and Best Practices for eBusiness (SWCASE'05), November 7, Galway, Ireland, pp. 49-56. Posters and Poster Proceedings Martin Hepp: eClassOWL: A Fully-Fledged Products and Services Ontology in OWL Poster Proceedings of the 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2005), November 7-11, 2005, Galway, Ireland. Martin Hepp, Daniel Bachlechner, and Katharina Siorpaes: OntoWiki: Community-driven Ontology Engineering and Ontology Usage based on Wikis Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym 2005), October 16-18, 2005, San Diego, California, USA

Software releases

a. BPMO: Business Process Management Ontology and Formal Semantics

b. SUPER Management Ontology on Business Processes c. GoodRelations: An ontology for capturing the relationship

between goods and Web resources


• DIP • EASAIER • EastWeb • EnIRaF • etPlanner • MUSING • myOntology • OnTourism • SUPERMartin

4.3.1. DIP

Name Data, Information and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services Acronym DIP Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEBIS Leader Martin Hepp Objective Ontologies, Developer tools, Discovery, Choreography, Mediation,

Grounding, Formal languages, Reasoning, Execution Website http://dip.semanticweb.org/ Team Student Researchers:

Martin Hepp Junior Researchers: Jan Henke Jacek Kopecky Francois Scharffe Michael Stollberg Students: - Additional Contributors: Senior Researchers:

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Michal Zaremba.: Architecture tasks WP6, technology buddy WP9

Junior Reserachers: Jos de Bruijn: WP 1 tasks Emilia Cimpian: Mediation WP 5 Thomas Haselwanter: has done orchestration engine Adina Sirbu: Discovery component Students: -

Mission The mission is to develop a conceptual framework, reference implementation, and use cases as proof-of-concept for Semantic Web services.


Total 230.76 per month 6.5

Duration 36 months 01/04 – 12/06 Major tasks • Develop WSML language and infrastructure

• Develop Ontology Management environment for WSML • Develop core WSMX components: discovery, orchestration,

grounding Deliverables (remaining deliverables)

UIBK leads • D1.6 Reasoner Technology Scan and Recommendation (Livia) • D1.7 WSML Semantics (Livia, Jos) • D1.10 WSML DL Reasoner (Livia) • D2.6v3 Ontology Mapping and Language Editor (Francois) • D2.10 Ontology Management Book (Martin) • D3.10 Goal Ontologies for Effective Resource Management (M.

Stollberg) • D3.12 Semantic Web Services grounding specification (Jacek) • D4.13 Aligning WSMO and WSMX with Existing Policy

Specifications (Jacek) • D4.14 Discovery Module Prototype (Adina) • D4.20 Orchestration engine prototype (Sami/T.Haselwanter) • D7.9 RIF Working Group Contributions (Jos)

UIBK contributes All contributions except for D2.4 and 2.8 are less or equal to 2 MMs!

• D1.9 WSML Flight Reasoner (Livia) • D2.4v3 Versioning Tool (Jacek) • D2.8v3 Editing and Browsing Tool (Jan) • D2.9v3 Ontology Reporting Tool (Jan) • D2.11 OMS Maintenance and Support (Jan) • D5.8a First prototype of mediation and composition in real

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world scenario; internal (Emilia) • D5.8b Final prototype of mediation and composition in real

world scenario (Emilia) • D6.11 Semantic Web Services Architecture and Information

Model (Michal) • D6.14 Semantic Web Services Architecture and Information

Model (Michal) • D9.11 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) v 1.0 (Michal) • D9.12 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) v 2.0 (Michal) • D9.14 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) Final Version

(Michal) • D14.1d Fourth set of external WSMO Tutorials (M. Stollberg) • D14.1e Fifth set of external WSMO Tutorials (M. Stollberg) • D14.5b Industrial Workshop (M. Stollberg)

4.3.2. EASAIER

Name Enabling Access to Sound Archives through Integration, Enrichment

and Retrieval Acronym EASAIER Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEBIS Leader Ying Ding Objective Ontologies, Application Website http://www.easaier.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

Ying Ding Junior Researchers: Francois Scharffe Students: Michael Luger

Mission This project will enable enhanced access to sound archives by providing multiple methods of retrieval, integration with other media archives, content enrichment and enhanced access tools. It offers methods of searching content based on audio features, musical features, or speech content. EASAIER also supports cross-media retrieval, enabling access to other media besides just audio. It implements recent advances in machine learning, music and speech processing, and information

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retrieval. Furthermore, it addresses a growing demand for interactive electronic materials.



Duration 30 months 05/06 – 10/08 Major tasks a. WP2 Media Semantics and Ontologies

b. T 2.1 Ontology and semantics for media object representation – Analysis of the requirements for the representation of semantic aspects of sound objects and related media. A principle component of this task will be the alignment of the Ontology language recommendations with the European effort of WSMO

c. T 2.2 Ontology management environment – This will support a scalable infrastructure for ontology editing, browsing, merging, aligning, and versioning.

Deliverables D2.1 Report on metadata management infrastructure and ontology language for media objects – (Month 24)

4.3.3. EastWeb

Name Building an integrated leading Euro-Asian higher education and

research community in the field of the Semantic Web Acronym EastWeb Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEBIS Leader Ying Ding Objective Application Website http://odle.dit.unitn.it/eastweb/indexphp?action=site&site=

EASTWEB Team Senior Researchers:

Ying Ding Junior Researchers: Alice Carpentier Students: -

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Mission This project aims to build an integrated leading Euro-Asian high education and research community in the field of the Semantic Web. Direct target groups are graduate students, faculty staff and enterprises management personnel. Indirect target groups are European and Asian students, researchers and enterprises personnel at large.


Total 2 Per month 0

Duration 36 months 03/06 – 02/09 Major tasks • Action leader (Summer school on Semantic Web (SSSW), Asian

Semantic Web Conference (ASWC), Eastweb Research events) • Coordinator for DL-KM distance education and KM platform

activity Deliverables None

4.3.4. EnIRaf

Name Enhanced Information Retrieval and Filtering for Analytical Systems Acronym enIRaF Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEBIS Leader Ying Ding Objective Application Website http://eniraf.mis.ae.poznan.pl/ Team Senior Researchers:

Ying Ding Junior Researchers: Alice Carpentier Students: -

Mission This project aims at the improvement of the IRaF system in order to better satisfy user needs by providing training in the following areas: formal models of ontologies, software and tools for ontologies, Semantic Web and Web Services, human language technology, decision making. Scientific quality of the training is assured by a co-operation with leading research centers from Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, and UK.

person*mon Total 0 per month 0

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ths budget Duration 48 months 10/04 -09/08 Major tasks none Deliverables none 4.3.5. etPlanner

Name etPlanner Semantische Suche Acronym etPlanner Funding line ECCA Cluster SEBIS Leader Martin Hepp Objective Ontologies, Application Website http://www.etourism-

austria.at/portal/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 Team Senior Researchers:

Martin Hepp Junior Researchers: - Students: Daniel Bachlechner

Mission Tourism-related businesses need fast, wide-reaching announcement facilities to advertise their products. etPlanner is a mobile system for planning customized tourism experience. Using mobile devices (e.g. PDA, mobile phones) consumers get their visit planned in an intelligent way and will be supported throughout their whole journey.


Total: 45 Per month: 1.25

Duration 36 months 04/05 – 3/08 Major tasks In the 2. Project-year a fully funktionable etPlanner-Framework will be

developed on basis of the existing prototype. The architecture of the etPlanner Frameworks will be widened, especially concerning a flexible integration of touristy performances and functionalities as well as the connection to other systems.

Deliverables

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4.3.6. MUSING

Name Multi-Industry, Semantic-based Next Generation Business Intelligence Acronym MUSING Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEBIS Leader Martin Hepp Objective Ontologies, Application Website n/a Team Senior Researchers:

Martin Hepp Junior Researchers: Jan Henke Students: Yihong Ding Bernhard Leschinger 2 Master students

Mission MUSING aims at developing a new generation of Business Intelligence (BI) tools and modules based on semantic-based knowledge and content systems. MUSING will integrate Semantic Web and Human Language technologies and combine declarative rule-based methods and statistical approaches for enhancing the technological foundations of knowledge acquisition and reasoning in BI applications. The breakthrough impact of MUSING on semantic-based BI, and its paradigm of multi-industry potentiality will be measured as the result of user-driven RTD developments in three vertical domains:

– Finance, through development and validation of next generation (Basel II and beyond) semantic-based BI solutions, with particular reference to Credit Risk Management;

– Internationalisation, (i.e., the process that allows an enterprise to evolve its business from a local to an international dimension, hereby expressly focusing on the information acquisition work concerning international partnerships, contracts, investments) through development and validation of next-generation semantic-based internationalisation platforms;

– Operational Risk Management, through development and

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validation of semantic-driven knowledge systems for measurement and mitigation tools, with particular reference to operational risks faced by IT-intensive organisations.


Total 82.65 Per month 2

Duration 48 months 04/06 – 03/10 Major tasks • 3.1 Ontologies development and management

• Propose Ontology languages, methodologies, and propose/provide infrastructure

• 5.1 Methodologies and Tools paper (same as D18) • WP 5 lead • 6.4 Domain Ontology Financial Risk Management • 7.4 Domain Ontology Internationalization • 8.4. Domain Ontology IT Operational Risk

Deliverables • D18: Position paper on multi-industry methodologies and tools (basically a journal paper; due M12 – April 2007)

• D30: Solution simulations (experiments of ontology-supported Business Intelligence; due M18 – August 2007)

4.3.7. myOntology Name myOntology: Open Ontology Environment for Semantic Web-based E-

Commerce Acronym myOntology (was renamed from:Ontoword) Funding line FIT-IT Semantic Systems 2006 Cluster SEBIS Leader Martin Hepp Objective Ontologies, Applications Website http://www.myontology.org (not yet up, but domain already booked) Team Senior Researchers:

Martin Hepp Junior Researchers: Katharina Siorpaes, Francois Scharffe, NN Students: Michael Luger

Mission Building a framework and prototype for Semantic-Web-based E-Commerce and collaborative Ontology Engineering based on Wiki

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Technology.


85 MM / 24 months = 3.54 MM/months

Duration 10/2006 – 9/2008 Major tasks • Building a Wiki-based Ontology Platform

• Conceptual Framework for E-Commerce Deliverables • D1.1 State-of-the-art in Ontology Engineering, Instance Data

and Mapping Creation • and Management – Month 4 • D1.2 Definition of Processes in community-driven ontology,

instance data and mapping • creation and management – Month 6 • D1.3 Definition of Roles in community-driven ontology,

instance data and mapping • creation and management – Month 6 • D1.4 Definition of Processes in community-driven ontology,

instance data and mapping • creation and management, revised version – Month 20 • D1.5 Definition of Roles in community-driven ontology,

instance data and mapping • creation and management – Month 20 • D2.1 Specification of a Wiki language for collaborative

ontology, instance data and • mapping creation and management – Month 10 • D2.2 Design of graphical UI elements for collaborative

ontology, instance data and • mapping creation and management – Month 16 • D2.3 System architecture for a platform for collaborative

ontology, instance data and • mapping creation and management – Month 12 • D2.4 Implementation of a test platform for collaborative

ontology, instance data and • mapping creation and management – Month 24 • D3.1 Requirements and State-of-the-art Document for a

Scalable Ontology, Instance • Data and Mapping Management Infrastructure – Month 6 • D3.2 Abstract Specification of a Scalable Ontology, Instance

Data and Mapping • Management System – Month 12 • D3.3 Prototype Implementation of a Scalable Ontology,

Instance Data and Mapping • Management System – Month 24 • D4.1 A limited number of product and service ontologies –

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Month 24 • D4.2 Supplier Ontology – Month 16 • D4.3 Offer Ontology – Month 16 • D4.4 Running Version of semantic web enhanced directory

service WKO.at – Month 14 • D4.5 Ontology retrieval functionality – Month 16 • D4.6 Ontology matching functionality – Month 20 • D4.7 IAC Workflow description – Month 15 • D4.8 IAC adaptations – Month 20 • D4.9 IAC Ontology retrieval & matching functionality – Month

20 • D4.10 Instancing tool – Month 20 • D4.11Test results – Month 24 • D5.1 Ontology retrieval tool – Month 14 • D5.2 First integration approach System One – Month 16 (M12) • D5.3 First integration approach Smart Information Systems –

Month 24 (M16) • D5.4 Review and Results Report – Month 24 (M20) • D6.1 Dissemination strategy and dissemination plan – Month 6 • D6.2 Report on and Evaluation of the dissemination strategy –

Month 24 • D6.3 Standardization plan – Month 6 • D6.4 Report on standardization activities and achieved results –

Month 24 • D 7.1 a – c Periodic Progress Reports (for every 6-months-

period, until Month 18) • D 7.2 Final Project Report – Month 24

4.3.8. OnTourism Name Ontology-based Online Tourism Offer Integration Acronym OnTourism Funding line FFG, BRIDGE Cluster SEBIS Leader Martin Hepp Objective Application, Developer tools Website n/a Team Senior Researchers:

Martin Hepp Ying Ding Junior Researchers:

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Michael Stollberg Students: Andreas Klotz

Mission Today’s information management concepts and solutions for the complex tasks of tourism intermediaries – such as regional agencies, national travel organizations (NTOs), supra-national aggregators, and commercial retailers – are still low-level from a semantic point of view. Hence, information creation, maintenance and delivery being the primary business process of tourism intermediaries faces heterogeneities in various dimensions, requires manual coordination tasks, and suffers from missing consensus on agreed concepts and technologies. OnTourism is aimed at (1) applying, concretizing and evaluating Semantic Web technologies such as ontologies, semantic annotation of content and semantic search to this information-rich and economically quite important domain, (2) identifying, developing and integrating reference ontologies for the tourism industry, and (3) showing the proof-of-concept in a real-world scenario of the Austrian tourism industry. Based on a semantic content management approach as well as mediator and data extraction technologies developed in previous research projects such as Harmonize and Harmo-TEN (www.harmo-ten.org), or utilizing specialized data wrapping technologies such as liXto ®, OnTourism seeks to explore and expand the potential of advanced semantic technologies in a research domain of strong national interest, strength, and tradition.


Total: 36 per month: 1,7

Duration 21 months 07/06 – 03/08 Major tasks WP2: Ontology Management (lead by UIBK DERI)

This WP provides the ontology management (OM) methodology, tools and infrastructure necessary for the project. The major efforts are targeted to further development, customization and tuning of OM developed outside the project. OnTourism is aligned from this perspective with the results of projects such as DIP and SEKT. In a more general scope, it is based on the work done in the Ontology Management Working Group (http://www.omwg.org, in terms of engineering efforts) and the SDK cluster, in terms of the research and methodological framework. Beside ontology management, this work package will yield a set of domain ontologies for the tourism and travel industry. WP3: Semantic Content Management Processes (lead by UIBK DERI) This WP is mainly concerned with the organization of all content management processes of tourism intermediaries. The basic idea is that the content will be integrated in a semantic, ontology-based registry,

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thus the entire content organization will be founded on ontologies and Semantic Web Services technology as provided by WP 2.

Deliverables From the list below, UIBK is responsible only for deliverables in WP 2, 3, and 6: Staffing cannot be assigned at this point in time, since there is none. We will be recruiting one senior and one junior researcher for this project.

D1.1 Use Case Design 1 R D1.2 Use Case Evaluation Framework 1 R D1.3 Use Case Evaluation Report 1 R D2.1 Ontology Management Requirements 2 R D2.2 Ontology Management Model 2 R D2.3 Tourism Ontologies Draft Version 2 R D2.4 Tourism Ontologies Final Version 2 R D3.1 State-of-the-Art and Requirements Analysis 3 R D3.2 Content Management Design 3 R D3.3 Content Management Implementation 3 P D4.1 State-of-the-Art and Requirements Analysis 4 R D4.2 Content Classification and Annotation Design 4 R D4.3 Content Classification and Annotation Implementation 4 P D5.1 Tourism Meta Portal Design 5 R D5.2 Tourism Meta Portal Prototype 5 P D5.3 Tourism Meta Portal Evaluation Report 5 R D6.1 First Project Report 6 R D6.2 Second Project Report 6 R D6.3 Final Project Report 6 R

4.3.9. SUPERMartin

Name Semantics utilized for Process Management within and between

Enterprises Acronym SUPER-Martin Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEBIS Leader Martin Hepp Objective Ontologies, Choreography, Formal languages Website http://super.semanticweb.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

Martin Hepp

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Junior Researchers: Dumitru Roman Students: -

Mission Conceptual framework, reference implementation, and use case proof-of-concept for Business Process Management based on Semantic Web Services


Total: 70 mm Per month: 2

Duration 36 months 04/06 – 03/09 Major tasks • WP1 SBPM Ontology (SEBIS cluster leads)

• WP2 SBPM life Cycle (SEBIS cluster as a contributor) • WP8 Telecoms Framework (SEBIS cluster as a contributor) • WP10 Exploitation (SEBIS cluster as a contributor) • WP12 Dissemination (SEBIS and SEE contribute)

Deliverables IBK Business Layer lead: • D1.1 Process Modeling Ontology and Mapping to WSMO

(SEBIS cluster) • D11.2 SBPM community building activities (SEBIS cluster)

UIBK Business Layer contributions: • Several deliverables in WP 2, 10, 12

Staffing not completed – 1 new senior + 1-2 master students for modeling tasks needed. Martin has 25% and leads WP1.

4.4. Staff Here we discuss student, junior, and senior researchers of the SEBIS cluster. 4.4.1. Student Researchers Student Researchers Nr Name Supervisor 1 Daniel Bachlechner Martin Hepp 4 Bernhard Leschinger Martin Hepp 5 Michael Luger Ying Ding 7 Kathrin Prantner 4.4.2. Junior Researchers Junior Researchers No Name Objective Cluster

3 Tobias Bürger SEBIS 8 Jan Henke SEBIS

18 Dumitru Roman Choreography SEBIS 19 Francois Scharffe Mediation SEBIS 22 Katharina Siorpaes SEBIS 24 Michael Stollberg SEBIS

4.4.2.1. Tobias Bürger

Name Tobias Bürger Entry date February 2006 Cluster SEBIS Objective Projects 1) GRISINO, Task T1.1 (Re-assessment of State of the Art: Grid;

SWS; KCOs), Deliverable D1.1 (State of the Art in SWS, GRID and “Intelligent” Objects – Can they meet?)

2) SALERO, Task WP3.1 (Ontologies to describe Low-level-, Semantic features and Context of use for Multimedia Objects), Deliverable D3.1.1 (Representation techniques for multimedia objects)

Research topic My current research mainly deals with the notion of “intelligent content”, which is content that is self-describing, adaptive to context and user needs. The two projects I work on approach the problem of modelling content in this way from two different views: 1) GRISINO, deals with KCOs that were developed in the recently

finished EU project METOKIS1

and their relation to Semantic Web Services (SWS). KCOs are a model for knowledge enhanced multimedia content objects and are based on the DOLCE

2 foundational ontology. They have so-called semantic

facets that are modular interfaces to describe the properties of KCOs, including the 'raw' content object or media, metadata and knowledge specific to the content object and knowledge about the topics of the content (its meaning). My current research for that tries to find answers on the question how to make KCOs compatible with SWS in order to have context sensitive SWS that can understand KCOs, for example to base composition or selection of services on the state of these objects. Vica versa it should be able to re-contextualize KCOs by SWS (if necessary) in order to use them in foreign environments.

2) In SALERO our aim is to develop an intelligent content model for

multimedia content and also to establish a formal or de facto standard for intelligent content. The semantically aware content objects should amongst others be able to self-adapt to the context

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of the media production workflow and be the enabler for a facilitated indexing, adaptation and most importantly re-use of media resources. Therefore we currently investigate the requirements for these objects and investigate especially how multimedia standards can be combined with user- or domain-models. For that task, a deep understanding of the relation of multimedia models (e.g. MPEG-7, MPEG-21) with upper level ontologies (i.e. domain ontologies) has to be developed. For high-level semantic features of the multimedia data we have to investigate which ontology language is appropriate for the requirements of the project. Here we will evaluate if WSML or OWL-Flight can be used. Important at this point is not only the modelling of the multimedia content but also the description of services, ie. how to deal with the content.

1 http://metokis.salzburgresearch.at

2 http://www.loa-cnr.it/DOLCE.html


I started work on my PhD in November 2005, having in mind a publishing framework that is centered around intelligent content objects. Meanwhile I aligned my PhD to my project work at DERI. However, at the moment the main focus is kept on semantically modelling of (media-rich) content, I additionally want to analyze how these models can be combined with semantically enabled service oriented architectures in order to negotiate and expose the content's functionality and to deal with it in a standardized way. This should enable trading, sharing and re-using of content in a controlled way. I currently observe if and how it is possible to conceptually map task descriptions of intelligent content objects with goal/function descriptions of Semantic Web Services. Therefore my next step will be to analyze if it is possible to map concepts of DDPO (DOLCE Descriptions&Situations Plan Ontologies) to WSMO goal descriptions. The work done in the two projects SALERO and GRISINO can serve as an integral part of my PhD work. Additionally, I’m also part of another IST project that recently started and where our (my) task is the design of an intelligent media framework that is centered around so called intelligent media objects. The work done in this project will also help me to further understand the needs for semantically describing and handling of media rich content.

Implementations Publications Tobias Bürger: "An Intelligent Media Framework for Multimedia

Content" Accepted for the 1st International Workshop on Semantic Web Annotations for Multimedia (SWAMM), May 22, 2006, Edinburgh, Scotland. Sebastian Schaffert, Diana Bischof, Tobias Bürger, Andreas Gruber,

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Wolf Hilzensauer, and Sandra Schaffert: Learning with Semantic Wikis. Salzburg Research Technical Report, March 2006. Tobias Bürger, Georg Güntner: "SMART CONTENT FACTORY ? SEMANTIC KNOWLEDGE BASED INDEXING OF AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVES" in Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on the Integration of Knowledge (EWIMT '05), Semantic and Digital Media Technologies, 2005. Tobias Bürger, Erich Gams, Georg Güntner: "Smart Content Factory - Assisting Search for Digital Objects by Generic Linking Concepts to Multimedia Content", in Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (HT '05), 2005. Georg Güntner, Tobias Bürger, Erich Gams: "Smart Content - Scenarios and Technologies for a Knowledge-based Audiovisual Archive" in Proceedings of EChallenges 2005, 2005.

4.4.2.2. Jan Henke

Name Jan Henke Entry date May 2004 Cluster SEBIS Objective A Usable Group Editor for Ontologies Projects DIP, MUSING Research topic Ontological Engineering, Groupware Engineering, Usability

Engineering Progress towards PhD

Two thirds are missing

Implementations DOME (http://dome.sourceforge.net/) Publications Jan Henke. The table metaphor: A representation of a class and its

instances. 2nd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2005), Workshop on User Aspects of the Semantic Web, May 29th-June 1st, 2005. Heraklion, Greece Anna V. Zhdanova, Reto Krummenacher, Jan Henke, Dieter Fensel Community-Driven Ontology Management: DERI Case Study Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence Jan Henke. Towards a Usable Group Editor for Ontologies. Full paper at the Doctoral Consortium of the Fifth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2006) November 5-9, 2006. Athens, Georgia, USA

4.4.2.4. Dumitru Roman

Name Dumitru Roman Entry date November 2003 Cluster SEBIS Objective Choreography Projects Project name: SWING (Semantic Web services Interoperability

Geospatial decision making) Tasks: the main task in the project is to apply WSMO/L/X to the Geospatial decision making research area; other tasks: delegated (by Martin Hepp) Technical Coordinator of the project and WP7 Dissemination and Exploitation work package leader Deliverables: (for the next 6-9 months; responsible or contributor; note that at this time it is not clear how many PM will be associated to each deliverable as this is decided at the kick-off meeting which is currently taking place) D2.1 Spatial Logic Operators (Month 9) D6.1 Architecture and Component requirements (Month 6) D7.1 Public Web Site (Month 6) D7.5 Information dissemination plan (Month 6)

Research topic The research topic I am interested in is Semantic Web Services and their application to service-oriented environments. More specifically, in this context, I am interested in issues related to service process modelling and analysis, workflows, and to some degree reasoning about specifications of processes and workflows, as well as how such languages and frameworks can be integrated/complemented with widely adopted industrial standards in this area, like UN/EDIFACT or RosettaNet. Specific focus include the applicability of formal languages like Concurrent Transaction Logic (CTR) to more user oriented languages like Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL), and integration with industrial standards in this area. To some extent the research topic includes also mediation of processes and protocols in Semantic Web Services.


The topic for the thesis is more or less defined: the proposal is to extend expressive languages that implement workflow patterns (e.g. YAWL) to support global constraints - as a need to provide a powerful control-flow language complemented with support for constraints modelling; a CTR-based semantics for such a language is

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meant to be defined - as a mean to enable mechanized support for analyzing specifications in such a language. CTR itself needs some extensions, as well as some of its workflow scheduling techniques; in parallel, a translation mechanism from the extended CTR specifications to ASMs is meant to be provided – as a mean to enable flexibility and automatic support for checking the consistency of different level of abstractions in the design of service behavior specification. The resulting model, language, and methodology are meant to complement and integrate with the already existing WSMO/L/X framework.

Implementatios Publications D. Roman, J. de Bruijn, A. Mocan, I. Toma, H. Lausen, J. Kopecky,

D. Fensel, J. Domingue, S. Galizia, and L. Cabral: Semantic Web Services - Approaches and Perspectives. In J. Davies, P. Warren, and R. Studer (eds.), Semantic Web Technologies. To appear. J. Noll, D. Roman, and M. Pilarski: Roaming of Advanced Telecom Services through Semantic Annotations. EEE International Conference on Pervasive Services. 2006. H. Lausen, A. Polleres, J. de Bruijn, M. Stollberg, D. Roman, and D. Fensel: Enabling Semantic Web Services: The Web Service Modeling Ontology. Springer-Verlag Publishing House. To appear. D. Roman: Semantic Web Services: Perspective and Approaches. In Proceedings of the Workshop on The Next Generation Web Technologies. Published by KISS. Dejon, South Korea, March, 2006. M. L. Brodie, D. Fensel, and D. Roman: Semantically Enabled Service-Oriented Architectures (SESA). IEEE IT Professional. Under submission, 2006. J. Veijalainen and D. Roman: From EDI to SOA: An Inter-Organizational Perspective. IEEE IT Professional. Under submission. 2006. D. Roman, J. de Bruijn, A. Mocan, H. Lausen, C. Bussler, and D. Fensel: WWW: WSMO, WSML, and WSMX in a nutshell. Under submission. 2006. P. Dini, P. Lorenz, M. Freire, and D. Roman. Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW'06). IEEE Computer Society Press. 2006.

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D. Roman, I. Toma, and D. Fensel: Semantic Web Services - A Technology for Service-Oriented Computing. In Encyclopedia of Internet Technologies and Applications. Mário Freire and Manuela Pereira (Editors). Idea Group Reference. To Appear. I. Toma, D. Roman, and D. Fensel: Modelling Semantic Web Services in ASG: The WSMO-based Approach. In Proceedings of Semantic Content Engineering, Schriftenreihe Informatik, Band 17. S. Reich, G. Güntner, T. Pellegrini, A. Wahler (Hg.). 2006. D. Fensel, I. Toma, and D. Roman: Towards a Semantically Enabled Service Oriented Architecture. In Proceedings of Semantic Content Engineering, Schriftenreihe Informatik, Band 17. S. Reich, G. Güntner, T. Pellegrini, A. Wahler (Hg.). 2006. B. Sapkota, D. Roman, and D. Fensel: Distributed Web Service Discovery Architecture. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW'06), IEEE Computer Society Press, Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, February 23-25, 2006. J. Kopecký, D. Roman, M. Moran, and D. Fensel: Semantic Web Services Grounding. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW'06), IEEE Computer Society Press, Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, February, 23-25, 2006. M. Stollberg; D. Roman, A. Duke, and C. Bussler. Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Web Service Choreography and Orchestration for Business Process Management. In A. Haller and C. Bussler (Eds.): Business Process Management Workshops BPM 2005 International Workshops, BPI, BPD, ENEI, BPRM, WSCOBPM, BPS, Nancy, France, September 5, 2005. Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3812, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, 2006. J. Domingue, D. Fensel, and D. Roman. Semantic Web Services with the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). In T. Payne (edt.), AgentLink News, Issue 19, pages 7 – 9, ISSN 1465-3842, November 2005. I. Toma, D. Roman, K.Iqbal, J. Hofer, D. Fensel, and S. Decker. Towards Semantic Web Services in Grid Environment. In proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and Grid (SKG2005), Beijing, China, Nov 27, 2005.

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M. Burstein, C. Bussler, M. Pistore, and D. Roman. Proceedings of the Workshop on WWW Service Composition with Semantic Web Services 2005 (wscomps05). Published by the University of Technology of Compiegne, Compiegner, France, September 19, 2005. ISBN 2-913923-18-6. I. Toma, D. Roman, K. Iqbal. ASG - Adaptive Services Grid. Poster at the 4th International Semantic Web Conference 2005 (ISWC 2005). Galway, Ireland, 6-10 Nov, 2005. M. Stollberg, C. Feier, D. Roman, and D. Fensel. Semantic Web Services - Concepts and Technology. Book Chapter. To appear in Text, Speech and Language Technology series of Kluwer. B. Sapkota, L. Vasiliu, I. Toma, D. Roman, C. Bussler. Peer-to-Peer Technology Usage in Web Service Discovery and Matchmaking. In proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering 2005 (WISE 2005), New York City, New York, Nov 20-22 2005. I. Toma, K. Iqbal, M. Moran, D. Roman, T. Strang, and D. Fensel. An Evaluation of Discovery approaches in Grid and Web services Environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Grid Services Engineering and Management, Erfurt, Germany, September 2005. I. Toma, B. Sapkota, J. Scicluna, J. Gomez, D. Roman and D. Fensel. A P2P Discovery mechanism for Web Service Execution Environment. Proc. of 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop WIW'2005, Innsbruck, Austria, June 6-7, 2005, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, online CEUR-WS.org/Vol-134/lenzerini.ps. J. Domingue, D. Roman, and M. Stollberg. Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) - An Ontology for Semantic Web Services. Position paper at the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, June 9-10, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria. Accessible online at http://www.w3.org/2005/04/FSWS/Submissions/1/wsmo_position_paper.html C. Feier, D. Roman, A. Polleres, J. Domingue, M. Stollberg, and D. Fensel. Towards Intelligent Web Services: The Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC’05), Hefei, China.

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D. Roman, U. Keller, H. Lausen, J. de Brujin, R. Lara, M. Stollberg, A. Polleres, C. Bussler, and D. Fensel. Web Service Modeling Ontology. Applied Ontology 1(1), 2005. Stollberg, M.; Roman, D.; Toma, I.; Keller, U.; Herzog, R.; Zugmann, P.; Fensel, D.: Semantic Web Fred - Automated Goal Resolution on the Semantic Web. Accepted for the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, January 2005. Rubén Lara, Dumitru Roman, Axel Polleres, Dieter Fensel: A Conceptual Comparison of WSMO and OWL-S. European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS 2004), Erfurt, Germany, September 27-30, 2004, pages 254-269. Stollberg, M.; Roman, D.; Gomez, J. M.: A Mediated Approach towards Web Service Choreography. In Proceedings of the workshop "Semantic Web Services: Preparing to Meet the World of Business Applications" held at the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference, Hiroshima, November 2004. A. Netin, D. Roman, O. Cret. FPGA-based Hardware/Software Co-Design of an Expert System Shell Based on Belief Revision Concepts. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, Lisbon, Portugal, Springer-Verlag Publishing House, pages 1067 - 1071, September 1-3, 2003. A. Netin, D. Roman, O. Cret. Hardware / software codesign of an expert system. Aurel Netin, Dumitru Roman, Octavian Cret. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Control, Systems And Computer Science – CSCS-14, vol. 2, Bucharest, Romania, pages 180 – 186, July 2-5, 2003.

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4.4.2.5. Francois Scharffe

Name Francois Scharffe Entry date September 2004 Cluster SEBIS Objective Mediation Projects <Dip, T2.6, T2.6>, <SEKT, T4.2, T4.4, T4.5, T4.6, D4.4.2, D4.5.2,

D4.5.4>, <KW, T2.2.5, D2.2.6> Research topic Keywords: Ontology Mapping, alignment and matching, data

mediation, mapping language, mapping algorithms Ontology mediation is the discipline aiming at reconciling heterogeneous data description to enable communication between applications having a semantic description. The practical realization of ontology mediation require different technologies, from the representation of the correspondences between the ontological entities to the development of user tools. I concentrate my thesis on a back-end ontology mediation system, taking especially care of representing the ontology mappings (via the abstract mapping language) and discovering them (via a set of linguistic and graph based algorithm). An important contribution of this work is to give a representation of the mappings independent from the representation language, giving a common platform for research in mapping discovery that can be integrated in different applications (Semantic knowledge management and Semantic web services).


Ontology Mediation Management Abstract: This document presents the structure of my PhD as far as now (end of March 2006). For each chapter a figure indicates the percentage of realization until now. For the relevant chapters, the project(s) in which the work is done is mentioned. I don't have any precise deadline but expect a first draft together with the relative implementation at the end of the year. 1 Introduction (0) 2 State of The Art (50)

-Mapping Representation -COWL -Alignment Format

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-SKOS -Mapping Discovery -CMS -Cupid -OLA -S-Match -FOAM

3 Ontology Mapping Representation / Abstract Mapping Language (SEKT) (80) -Motivation -Ontology language independence -Mapping Concept hierarchy -Subset of first-order logic -More expressive -Complex Mappings -Conditional Mappings -Instance Transformation -Human readable -Syntax -Surface syntax -RDF/XML syntax -Semantics -OWL Grounding -WSML Grounding -First-order Reference Semantics

4 Ontology Mapping Discovery (SEKT) (40) -Linguistic Techniques -Graph Based Techniques -Combination of Different Techniques -Notion of Measure and Threshold -Combination Parameters

5 Ontology Mapping API (SEKT, DIP, TSC) (50) -General Architecture -Modules -Object Model -Parser Module -Abstract Syntax Parser -XML Parser -Export Module -WSML/ WSMO Mediator -OWL/ OWL+SWRL -RDF Schema -Mapping Language Syntaxes

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-Adapters -WSMO4j -OWL API -Mapping Discovery Module

6 Two scenarios (30) -Digital Library (SEKT Project) -General Description -Mediation Technology -WSMO Mediators (Dip Project) -General Description -Data Mediation Framework in WSMX

7 Conclusion (0) Implementations Ontology Mapping API

Programmative support for the mapping language and mapping automation (in-progress). Used as the basis for different graphical ontology mapping tools (Ontomap from Ontoprise (SEKT), Unicorn Ontology Mapping Editor (DIP), WSMX data mediation tool). The API and the language are now developed in cooperation with INRIA (Jerome Euzenat). Future directions are on the automation of mapping.

Publications Conference papers: Francois Scharffe: Instance Transformation for Semantic Data Mediation. the 2006 International Conference on Semantic Web and Web Services Conference (SWWS'06), June 2006, Las Vegas, USA. Ying Ding and Francois Scharffe and Andreas Harth and Aidan Hogan: AuthorRank: Ranking Improvement for the Web. The 2006 International Conference on Semantic Web and Web Services (SWWS'06), June 2006, Las Vegas, USA. Francois Scharffe, Jos de Bruijn: A Language to specify Mappings between Ontologies, IEEE Conference on Internet-Based Systems SITIS, December 2005, Yaounde, Cameroon. Articles in books: Jos de Bruijn, Marc Ehrig, Cristina Feier, Francisco Martín-Recuerda, François Scharffe, and Moritz Weiten. Ontology mediation, merging and aligning. In Semantic Web Technologies. Wiley, UK, 2006.

4.4.2.6. Katharina Siorpaes

Name Katharina Siorpaes Entry date March 2004 Cluster SEBIS Objective Finding real business scenarios where the usability and potential of

SW technology can be demonstrated. Projects • Musing

• MyOntology • Probably OnTourism

Research topic Applying SW technology in different areas, such as tourism, various business areas, and the legal domain. The usability of SW applications, such as ontology editors, must be increased in order to enable non-computer scientists to use these tools.


I have completed my Master degree in computer science in August 2006 with my thesis “Semantic Web and e-Tourism: Investigating opportunities and downfalls of applying Semantic Web technology in e-tourism”. I have just started defining a topic for my PhD.

Implementations OnTour-I, OnTour-II, OntoWiki Publications • Martin Hepp, Katharina Siorpaes, and Daniel Bachlechner:

Towards the Semantic Web in E-Tourism: Can Annotation Do the Trick, June 2006.

• Martin Hepp, Katharina Siorpaes, and Daniel Bachlechner: Towards the Semantic Web in e-Tourism: Lack of Semantics or Lack of Content?, June 2006.

• Martin Hepp, Daniel Bachlechner, and Katharina Siorpaes: Harvesting Wiki Consensus - Using Wikipedia Entries as Ontology Elements, June 2006.

• Daniel Bachlechner, Katharina Siorpaes, Holger Lausen, Dieter Fensel: Web Service Discovery - A Reality Check, June 2006.

• Martin Hepp, Daniel Bachlechner, and Katharina Siorpaes: OntoWiki: Community-driven Ontology Engineering and Ontology Usage based on Wikis, October 2005.

4.4.2.7. Michael Stollberg

Name Michael Stollberg Entry Date May 2003 Cluster SEBIS Objective Semantic Goal Caching Projects Project name: DIP

Tasks: WP 2 manager, researcher (i.e. working on deliverables / work packages), project management assistance for Martin Hepp Deliverables: (for 2006) D3.10 Goal Description Ontology June 06 lead D3.8 (Chor & Orch version II + III) June / Dec 06 part D2.10 Ontology Management Book Dec 2006 part D2.12 WP 2 Final Report Dec 2006 lead D14.2 Tutorials & Dissemination ongoing part D15.2 Project Management ongoing part

Research topic My research (= PhD) topic is Semantic Goal Caching, short SGC. The idea is to capture discovery results for already solved goals and utilize this knowledge for omitting or reducing the number of matchmaking operations for detecting usable Web services for new, semantically similar goals. This allows achieving significant scalability increases of Web service detection, in dependence of the scenario setting. In consequence, the central research questions (= central aspects of my PhD work) are:

1. Goals and Semantic Matchmaking: definition, usage, and semantic description of goals as formalized client requests; and the central operation for Web service detection (discovery and composition) on basis of formal semantic descriptions of goals and Web services

2. Caching Mechanism for Goals: specification & prototype implementation for the SGC technique

3. Usability Evaluation: exhaustive examination of application scenarios of Web services / service-oriented computing & evaluation of the usability of Semantic Goal Caching with respect to the achievable efficiency increase.

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Naturally, my work is aligned with the WSMO framework (description model for Goals & Web services, semantic matchmaking as elaborated in WSMO). However, I intend to specify my technical approach in a language-independent manner so that it is also applicable for other Semantic Web Service frameworks. Regarding the contributions & expected applicability of the work, I will present a not before existing technique that overcomes one of the central bottlenecks of Semantic Web and Web services technology: scalability for the Web. This is critical for the success of semantic technologies, especially with respect to industrial applicability. Furthermore, the third part (usability evaluation) is intended to provide insights into the problems arising for real-world applicability of Web service / SOA and semantic technology. This co-aligns with the research aims of the SEBIS cluster.


I have presented the initial ideas in some publications (see below, not all are related to the PhD work). A detailed plan for the PhD thesis has been submitted to the SEBIS cluster. There is also a working draft of my PhD. [available on request] Currently, I am working on the detailed specification of the SGC technology. I have completed the major parts of the first aspect (goals), and currently work on a couple of technical reports that elaborate the technical / formal details of the SGC technology. As soon as these will be completed, I will use them as a basis for publications (as well as completion of the PhD thesis itself). As potential reviewers, I have gotten positive acceptance from the following people: David Martin (SRI), John Domingue (KMI), Laurent Henocque (ILOG / University of Marseille). It is to remark that I had to change my PhD topic in 2005 (due to bankruptcy of Net Dynamics as the project partner).

Implementations - - (merely applier / tester / reviewer, resp. project manager) Publications Cimpian, E.; Mocan, A.; Stollberg, M.: Mediation Enabled

SemanticWeb Services Usage. Accepted for 1st Asian Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2006), Beijing, China

Keller, U.; Lausen, H. and Stollberg, M.: On the Semantics of Functional Descriptions of Web Services. In Proc. of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2006), Budva, Montenegro.

Stollberg, M.; Roman, D.; Duke, A. and Bussler, C.: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Web Service Choreography and Orchestration for Business Process Management. In A. Haller and C. Bussler (Eds.): Business Process Management Workshops BPM 2005 International Workshops, BPI, BPD, ENEI, BPRM,

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WSCOBPM, BPS, Nancy, France, September 5, 2005. Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3812, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, 2006. Online at: http://www.springeronline.com/3-540-32595-6

Stollberg, M.; Cimpian, E.; Mocan, A. and Fensel, D.: A Semantic Web Mediation Architecture. In Proc. of the Canadian Semantic Web Symposium (CSWWS 2006), Quebec, Canada.

Lausen, H.; Ding, Y.; Stollberg, M.; Fensel, D.; Lara, R.; Han, S.-K.: Semantic Web Portals: State-of-the-Art Survey. In Journal of Knowledge Management 9(5), Special Issue on Semantic Knowledge Management, pp. 40 - 49, 2005.

Stollberg, M.; Cimpian, E.; Fensel, D.: Mediating Capabilities with Delta-Relations. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, December 2005; EUR Workshop Proceedings Vol 168.

Stollberg, M.; Strang, T.; Fensel, D.: Automated Collaboration on the Semantic Web. In GESTS International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering 17(1), 2005.

Stollberg, M. and Strang, T.: Integrating Agents, Ontologies, and Semantic Web Services for Collaboration on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Agents and the Semantic Web, 2005 AAAI Fall Symposium Series Arlington, Virginia, USA, 4th - 6th November, 2005.

D. Roman, U. Keller, H. Lausen, J. de Brujin, R. Lara, M. Stollberg, A. Polleres, C. Feier, C. Bussler, and D. Fensel: Web Service Modeling Ontology. In Applied Ontology 1(1), October 2005.

Bussler, C.; Duke, A.; Roman, D.; Stollberg, M.: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Web Service Choreography and Orchestration for Business Process Management. In conjunction with the Third International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2005), Nancy, France, September 2005.

Stollberg, M., Feier, C.; Roman, D., Fensel, D.: Semantic Web Services - Concepts and Technology. In N. Ide, D. Cristea, D Tufis (eds.): Language Technology, Ontologies, and the Semantic Web. Kluwer Publishers, 2006 (to appear).

Stollberg, M.: Automated Collaboration on the Semantic Web. In Doctoral Symposium at the Fifth International Conference on Web

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Engineering (ICWE 2005), Sydney, Australia, July 2005.

Stollberg, M.: Reasoning Tasks and Mediation on Choreography and Orchestration in WSMO. In Proceedings of the 2nd International WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005, EUR Workshop Proceedings Vol. 134.

Feier, C.; Roman, D.; Polleres, A.; Domingue, J.; Stollberg, M. and Fensel, D.: Towards Intelligent web Services: Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC) 2005, Hefei, China, August 23-26, 2005.

Domingue, J. B.; Roman, T.; Stollberg, M. (Eds.): Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) - An Ontology for Semantic Web Services. Position paper at the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, June 9-10, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria.

Stollberg, M.; Keller, U.; Fensel, D.: Partner and Service Discovery for Collaboration Establishment with Semantic Web Services. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Services, Orlando, Florida, July 2005.

Stollberg, M.; Roman, D.; Toma, I.; Keller, U.; Herzog, R.; Zugmann, P.; Fensel, D.: Semantic Web Fred - Automated Goal Resolution on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, January 2005.

Stollberg, M.; Herzog, R.; Zugmann, P.: Semantic Web Fred. Poster at the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference ISWC2004, Hiroshima, Japan, November 2004.

Stollberg, M.; Keller, U.; Zugmann, P.; Herzog, R.: Semantic Web Fred - Agent Cooperation on the Semantic Web, demonstration at the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference, Hiroshima, Japan, 7 - 11 November 2004.

Stollberg, M.; Lausen, H.; Lara, R.; Ding, Y.; Sung-Kook, H.; Fensel. D: Towards Semantic Web Portals. In C. Bussler, S. Decker, D. Schwabe, O. Pastor (eds): Application Design, Development and Implementation Issues in the Semantic Web 2004, Proceedings of the WWW2004 Workshop on Application Design, Development and Implementation Issues in the Semantic Web, New York, NY, USA, May 18, 2004. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073.

U. Keller, M. Stollberg, D. Fensel: WOOGLE meets Semantic Web

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Fred. Proceedings of the Workshop on WSMO Implementations (WIW 2004) Frankfurt, Germany, September 29-30, 2004. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, online at CEUR-WS.org/Vol-113/.

R. Lara, S. H. Han, H. Lausen, M. Stollberg, Y. Ding, and D. Fensel: An Evaluation of Semantic Web Portals. In Proceedings of the IADIS Applied Computing International Conference 2004, Lisabon, Portugal, March 23-26, 2004.

S. Arroyo, Y. Ding. R. Lara, M. Stollberg, and D. Fensel: Semantic Web Languages: Strenghts and Weakness, International Conference in Applied Computing (IADIS04), Lisabon (Portugal), 23-26 March 2004.

Stollberg, M.; Roman, D.; Gomez, J. M.: A Mediated Approach towards Web Service Choreography. In Proceedings of the workshop on Semantic Web Services: Preparing to Meet the World of Business Applications held at the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference, Hiroshima, November 2004.

Ying Ding, Dieter Fensel, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Michael Stollberg, Sung-Kook Han (Ed.): Proceedings of the ECAI 2004 Workshop on Application of Semantic Web Technologies to Web Communities, CEUR, ISSN 1613-0073, Vol-107, 2004. available at: http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-107/

Stollberg, M.; Zhdanova, A., V.; Fensel, D.: hTechSight: A Next Generation Knowledge Management Platform. In Journal for Information & Knowledge Management, Vol. 3, No.1 (March 2004), pp. 47-66.

Stollberg, M. and Rhomberg, F.: Survey on Goal-driven Architectures. DERI Technical Report DERI-2006-06-04, June 2006.

Lausen, H.; Stollberg, M.; Lara, R.; Ding, Y.; Han, S.-K.; Fensel, D.: Semantic Web Portals: State of the Art Survey, Technical Report DERI-TR-2004-04-03, 2004.

Stollberg, M.; Lausen, H.; Arroyo, S., Smolle, P.; Herzog, R.; Fensel, D.: Fred Whitepaper: An Agent Platform for the Semantic Web, Technical Report DERI TR-2004-01-09, 2004.


1 Dr. Ying Ding 2 Dr. Martin Hepp Ontologies

4.4.3.1. Ying Ding

Name Ying Ding Entry date February 2003 Cluster SEBIS Objective WSMX Discovery box Projects <KWeb, WP1.5 leader, D1.5.5 Due end of this year>, <TSC, WP2

participation, D2.3>, <RW2, project management report, every half yearly report>

Research topic triple space computing, web ranking based on metadata, product classification. Details are Semantic Google PeopleRank This work adopts Google's PageRank idea to rank people based on web FOAF data or vCard data. This methodology can be further extended to any community portal such as Orkus, Linkedin and so on. Co-occurrence clustering based on PeopleRank show the map of the social networks. SemanticPageRank To improve Google's PageRank by assigning weights to different links based on link ontology. Furthermore semantics of the links can be obtained from the anchor text of the links. Context of the in-bound and out-bound links also provides important information to improve PageRank. $ E-Commerce GoldenBullet is the semi-automatic product description classification system based on UNSPSC. It has been implemented and tested with real industrial data. The key algorithm originates from information retrieval and machine learning area. $ Semantic Web Ontology is the backbone of Semantic Web technology. How to generate ontology semi-automatically and create on-site mapping and

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versioning of various ontologies are critical and interesting research areas. Ontology generation Research is focusing on how to use linguistic support to extract part of domain or application ontology semi-automatically. Classes of ontologies can be normalized as key noun phrases. Relation extraction is considered as one of the bottlenecks of the ontology generation. Associated relationship among noun phrases is currently identified as the way to extract relation among these phrases. Future research will be focus on verb, adjective or preposition extraction as relations of ontologies. Ontology mediation Ontology meditation is the key part for the whole ontology management structure. Current solutions for ontology mediation still stay at the stage of manually aligning and mapping ontologies with some limited recommendation services. Research is focusing on to identify patterns for ontology mediation. Patterns should be stored in mediation libraries allowing for flexible and easy access and reuse. Ontology mediation library should be set up to manage various mediation patterns. Patterns with some similarity will be clustered together (called patterns cluster) to facilitate the reuse. Personalized view on one mediation pattern can be tailored according to the requirement of specific task or application.


Habil title: Semantic Web: from concept to application Abstract: This habilitation thesis aims to explore the evolution of the Semantic Web since the author has been involved in the very earlier stage of the field and witnessed and experienced these interesting historical changes. It focuses on the basic research to prove Semantic Web as pragmatic solutions for the current Web and also takes some applications as proof of concept to show the real life value of the deployment of the Semantic Web technologies. The whole content of the thesis will be follows. Section 2 mainly discusses the theoretical part of the Semantic Web, which includes ontology, ontology learning, ontology mapping, and ontology versioning. Section 3 illustrates the real-life applications, such as ontology libraries, eCommerce, Knowledge Management, Semantic Web portal, and Semantic Web Services. Section 4 is about the general discussion of the Semantic Web, pros and cons, and future. Progress: I have discussed this with Prof. Gerti Kappel from Technical University of Wien. But the requirement of this university is hard to fulfill because I need to have one single authored journal paper on the different area. I would like to recommend changing to another university to see the possibilities.

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Implementations My Habilitation thesis is already more than 200 pages based on the works I have done after my PhD. Also I am organizing conferences and workshops and give teachings in order to improve my profile.

Publications Ying Ding, Francois Scharffe, Andreas Harth and Adrian Hogan (2006): AuthorRank: Ranking Improvement for the Web. The 2006 International Conference on Semantic Web and Web Services (SWWS06), June 26-29, 2006, Las Vegas, USA. Reto Krummenacher, Francisco Martin-Recuerda, Martin Murth, Johannes Riemer, Ying Ding, Dieter Fensel (2006): Triple Space Computing: New communication paradigm for web services. Poster at the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference 2006, June 11-14, 2006, Budva, Montenegro. Holger Lausen, Ying Ding, Michael Stollberg, Dieter Fensel, Ruben Lara and Sung-Kook Han (2005): Semantic Web Portals – State of the Art Survey. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(5), 40-49. Ying Ding and Dieter Fensel (2005). Semantic Web powered portal infrastructure. The 9th International Symposium on Social Communication, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, Jan 24-28, 2005. Ying Ding, Dieter Fensel, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Michael Stollberg, Sung-Kook Han (ed.): Proceedings of the ECAI 2004 Workshop on Application of Semantic Web Technologies to Web Communities, CEUR, ISSN 1613-0073, Vol-107, 2004 Stollberg, M.; Lausen, H.; Lara, R.; Ding, Y.; Sung-Kook, H.; Fensel. D (2004): Towards Semantic Web Portals. In C. Bussler, S. Decker, D. Schwabe, O. Pastor (eds): Application Design, Development and Implementation Issues in the Semantic Web 2004, Proceedings of the WWW2004 Workshop on Application Design, Development and Implementation Issues in the Semantic Web, New York, NY, USA, May 18, 2004. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073. S. Arroyo, Y. Ding, M. Stollberg and D. Fensel (2004): Semantic Web Languages. Strengths and Weakness. International Conference in Applied computing (IADIS04), Lisbon (Portugal), 23-26 March 2004. R. Lara, S. Han, H. Lausen, M. Stollberg, Y. Ding, D. Fensel (2004). An Evaluation of Semantic Web Portals. In Proceedings of the IADIS Applied Computing International Conference 2004, Lisbon, Portugal, March 23-26, 2004.

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S. Arroyo, R. Lara, J. Gomez, D. Berka, Y. Ding & D. Fensel (2004): Semantic aspects of web services (book chapter). Munindar P.Singh (ed.) Practical Handbook of Internet Computing. Chapman Hall and CRC Press, Baton Rouge. 2004. H. Lausen, M. Stollberg, R. Lara, Y. Ding, S. Han and D. Fensel (2003): Semantic Web Portals – State of the Art Survey. Technical Report, DERI-Innsbruck. Y. Sure, H. Akkermans, J. Broekstra, J. Davies, Y. Ding, A. Duke, R. Engels, D. Fensel, I. Horrocks, V. Iosif, A. Kampman, A. Kiryakov, M. Klein, T. Lau, D. Ognyanov, U. Reimer, K. Simov, R. Studer, J. van der Meer, and F. van Harmelen (2003): On-To-Knowledge: Semantic Web Enabled Knowledge (book chapter), N. Zhong, J. Liu and Y. Yao (eds.), Web Intelligence. Springer, 2003, pages 277-300. D. Fensel, F. van Harmelen, Y. Ding, M. Klein, H. Akkermans, J. Broekstra, A. Kampman, J. van der Meer, Y. Sure, R. Studer, U. Krohn, J. Davies, R. Engels, V. Iosif, A. Kiryakov, T. Lau, and U. Reimer (2003): On-To-Knowledge: Semantic Web Enabled Knowledge Management, IEEE Computer. D. Fensel, F. van Harmelen, Y. Ding, et al (2003). On-To-Knowledge in a Nutshell. Special Issue of IEEE Computer on Web Intelligence (WI) Y. Ding, D. Fensel and Hans-Georg Stork (2003). The Semantic Web: from Concept to Percept. Austrian Artificial Intelligence Journal, 21 (4), 4-18.15. Y. Ding, D. Fensel (2003). Semantic Web: The Next Generation Web – Guest Editor Introduction. Austrian Artificial Intelligence Journal, 21 (4). 1-3. Y. Ding, D. Fensel and Hans-Georg Stork (2003). Semantic web enabled web services – Guest Editor Introduction. Austrian Artificial Intelligence Journal, 21 (5), 1-4. Y. Ding, D. Fensel, M. Klein, B. Omelayenko and E. Schulten (2003): The role of ontologies in eCommerce (book chapter). S.Stab & R. Studer (eds.) Handbook on Ontologies, Springer. D. Fensel, C. Bussler, Y. Ding, and B. Omelayenko: The Web Service Modeling Framework WSMF, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 1(2), 2002.

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M. Klein, Y. Ding, D. Fensel and B. Omelayenko (2002). Ontology management: Storing, aligning and maintaining ontologies (book chapter). In J. Davis, D. Fensel and F. van Harmelen (eds.) Towards the Semantic Web: Ontology-driven knowledge management, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. D. Fensel, C. Bussler, Y. Ding, V. Kartseva, M. Klein, M. Korotkiy, B. Omelayenko, and R. Siebes: Semantic Web Application Areas. In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, Stockholm - Sweden, June 27-28, 2002. Y. Ding, D. Fensel, M. Klein, and B. Omelayenko: The Semantic Web: Yet Another Hip? Data and Knowledge Engineering, 41(3), p. 205-227, 2002. D. Fensel, B. Omelayenko, Y. Ding, E. Schulten, G. Botquin, M. Brown, and A. Flett (2002): Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce (Book). Ying Ding & Schubert Foo (2002). Ontology Research and Development: Part 1 – A Review of Ontology Generation. Journal of Information Science, 28(2). B. Omelayenko, M. Crubézy, D. Fensel, R. Benjamins, B. Wielinga, E. Motta, M. Musen, and Y. Ding: UPML: The Language and Tool Support for Making the Semantic Web Alive. In D. Fensel et al. (eds.), Spinning the Semantic Web, MIT Press, Boston, to appear 2002 (book chapter). Ying Ding & Schubert Foo (2002): Ontology Research and Development: Part 2 – A Review of Ontology mapping and evolving. Journal of Information Science, 28(4). Y. Ding, M. Korotkiy, B. Omelayenko, V. Kartseva, V. Zykov, M. Klein, E. Schulten, and D. Fensel: GoldenBullet: Automated Classification of Product Data in E-commerce, BIS-2002: 5th International Conference on Business Information Systems, Pozna, Poland, April 24-25, 2002. Y. Ding, M. Korotkiy, B. Omelayenko, V. Kartseva, V. Zykov, M. Klein, E. Schulten, and D. Fensel: GoldenBullet in a Nutshell, FLAIRS-2002: The 15th International FLAIRS Conference, Beachside Resort and Conference Center, Pensacola Beach, Florida, May 14-16, 2002. Ying Ding (2001). A review of ontologies with the Semantic Web in

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view. Journal of Information Science, 27(6) 377-384(8) Ying Ding & Dieter Fensel (2001). OntoWeb: The Thematic Network for Semantic Web. AgentLink Newsletter 8.11-13. Ying Ding (2001). IR and AI: The role of ontology. In Proc. 4th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries, Dec 10-12, Bangalore, India. Y. Ding and D. Fensel (2001). Ontology Library Systems: The key for successful Ontology Reuse. The first Semantic web working symposium, Stanford, USA, July 29th-August 1st, 2001 Y. Ding and R. Engels (2001). IR and AI: Using co-occurrence theory to generate lightweight ontologies. Workshop on Digital Libraries (Dlib2001), 12th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA2001), Munich, Germany, Sep 3-7, 2001. Y. Ding, G. Chowdhury, S. Foo (2001). Bibliometric cartography of information retrieval research by using co-word analysis. Information Processing & Management, 37(6), 817-842. Dieter Fensel , Ying Ding, Ellen Schulten, Borys Omelayenko, Guy Botquin, Mike Brown, and Alan Flett (2001): Product Data Integration in B2B E-commerce. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(4): 54-59.

4.4.3.2. Martin Hepp

Name Martin Hepp Entry date January 2005 Cluster SEBIS Objective (1) Ontologies Projects DIP: DERI lead, WP4 lead, D 2.10 Ontology Management Book

SUPER: WP 1 lead and contributions to other WPs - roughly 30 MM for the first 18 MMs to coordinate MUSING: DERI lead SWING: temporary DERI lead FIT-IT proposal lead Various other stuff. More than enough.

Research topic My major research interest is Semantics in Business Information Systems, especially the use of ontologies for advancement in the automation of business processes. Ontologies in my understanding are community contracts about a representation of a domain of discourse. Representation in here includes (1) formal parts that can be used for machine reasoning, and (2) informal parts like natural language descriptions and multimedia elements that help humans establish, maintain, and renew consensus about the meaning of concepts. In my opinion, both aspects of ontologies are equally important, and I watch the current dominance of the formal aspects of ontologies in academic research as with unease. My contributions address the following two main dimensions of using ontologies for business information systems: 1. Maturing Semantic Web foundations, so that they become compatible with the real world complexity and scale. This includes four main branches of research. 1.1 Ontology Engineering Methodologies for and prototypes of industry-strength business ontologies, e.g. the gen/tax methodology for deriving ontologies from existing hierarchical standards and taxonomies (UNSPSC, eCl@ss, ...) and eClassOWL, the first serious attempt of building an ontology for ebusiness applications; and in general advancing the state of the art in e-business data and knowledge engineering, including metrics for

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content. 1.2 Community-driven Ontology Building Since my PhD thesis I have been trying to hand back control over the evolution of ontologies to the user community, including semi-automated approaches and OntoWiki, a Wiki-centric ontology building environment. In this segment also fall quantitative comparisons of community-centric and engineering-based ontology building. 1.3 Economic Aspects of Ontology Building and Usage Building ontologies consumes resources, and in an economic setting, these resources are justified and will be spend (by rational economic actors, at least) only if the effort needed to establish and keep alive a consensual representation of a domain of discourse is outweighed by the business gain, either in terms of cost, added value, or strategic dimensions, e.g. process agility. This research branch is rather young and underdeveloped, but an important piece of understanding and fueling the use of ontologies in business applications. 1.4 Ontology Management Systems The use of Semantic Web technology beyond toy applications requires ontology management infrastructure for editing and browsing, versioning, mapping and merging, and ontology mediation, that remains cognitively adequate and sufficiently performant for large ontologies. I chair the Ontology Management Working Group (OMWG), in which we are trying to develop a consistent framework of requirements plus prototypes of ontology management infrastructure that meets this demand. 2. Applying Semantic Web technology to core challenges of Information Systems in order to realize and evaluate the business benefit, and to identify the open research challenges. I currently focus on three specific application domains: 2.1 Semantics-supported Business Process Management, i.e. the idea to mechanize Business Process Management by using Semantic Web techniques and especially Semantic Web Services. There is a first vision paper and a Working Group being founded. 2.2 Semantic Web services, especially WSMO/WSML/WSMX, i.e. the use of ontologies and related technology for the automation of Web services discovery, composition, execution, and monitoring. I am member of the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) Working Group and project manager of the EU-funded Integrated Project "DIP - Data, Information, and Process Integration with Semantic Web

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Services" (FP6-507483). This research direction is complemented by work on using the idea of persistent publication, as an alternative to the predominant message exchange paradigm of today's Web services. See work on Triplespace Computing. 2.3 Electronic Markets and Electronic Procurement, including a reference framework for ontology-supported electronic procurement and an analysis of the true complexity of business matchmaking.


I have been admitted as a habilitation candidate at the University of Würzburg, School of Economics and Business Management, as of November 7, 2005. The members of my habilitation committee are Prof. Rainer Thome (Würzburg), Prof. Ronald Bogaschewsky (Würzburg), and Prof. Matthias Schumann (University of Göttingen). The regulations require that I settle an agreement with my thesis committee about the results to be achieved in teaching, scholarship, and service in order to be eligible. This agreement is in the stage of finalization. All requirements for the degree should be fulfilled by the end of 2007.

Implementations eclassOWL goodRelations

Publications Journal Papers Peer-reviewed Journals Hepp, Martin: Products and Services Ontologies: A Methodology for Deriving OWL Ontologies from Industrial Categorization Standards, in: Int'l Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems (IJSWIS), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 72-99, January-March 2006. Hepp, Martin: Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services: Father and Son or Indivisible Twins?, in: IEEE Internet Computing, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 85-88, March-April 2006. Hepp, Martin; Leukel, Jörg; Schmitz, Volker: A Quantitative Analysis of Product Categorization Standards: eCl@ss, UNSPSC, eOTD, and RNTD, submitted to Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS, Springer). Other Journals Hepp, Martin; Thome, Rainer: XML-Spezifikationen und Standards für den Datenaustausch, in: wisu – das wirtschaftsstudium, 32 (2003) 4, pp. 510-518. Hepp, Martin; Thome, Rainer: Dateiorganisation, in: wisu – das wirtschaftsstudium, 31 (2002) 4 (Studienblatt).

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Hepp, Martin; Doerflein, Michael: Katalogdatenintegration auf Basis von Güterklassen, in: Deutsche EC/EDI-Gesellschaft: eBusiness aktuell 2002, Berlin 2002, pp. 20-26. Hepp, Martin; Thome, Rainer: Datenmodellierung, in: wisu – das wirtschaftsstudium, 30 (2001) 7, (Studienblatt). Hepp, Martin; Schinzer, Heiko: B2B-Marktplätze, in: wisu – das wirtschaftsstudium, 29 (2000) 11, pp. 1513-1521. Conference and Workshop Papers Peer-reviewed Conference and Workshop Proceedings Martin Hepp, Daniel Bachlechner, and Katharina Siorpaes: Harvesting Wiki Consensus - Using Wikipedia Entries as Ontology Elements, Proceedings of the 1st Workshop: SemWiki2006 - From Wiki to Semantics, co-located with the 3rd Annual European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2006), June 12, 2006, Budva, Montenegro (forthcoming). Martin Hepp: The True Complexity of Product Representation in the Semantic Web, Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Information System (ECIS 2006), June 12-14, 2006, Gothenburg, Sweden (forthcoming). Martin Hepp, Katharina Siorpaes, Daniel Bachlechner: Towards the Semantic Web in E-Tourism: Can Annotation Do the Trick? Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Information System (ECIS 2006), June 12-14, 2006, Gothenburg, Sweden (forthcoming). Hepp, Martin: eClassOWL: A Fully-Fledged Products and Services Ontology in OWL, in: Poster Proceedings of the 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2005), November 7-11, 2005, Galway, Ireland. Hepp, Martin; Bachlechner, Daniel; Siorpaes, Katharina: OntoWiki: Community driven Ontology Engineering and Ontology Usage based on Wikis, in: Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym 2005), October 16-18, 2005, San Diego, California, USA. Hepp, Martin: Representing the Hierarchy of Industrial Taxonomies in OWL: The gen/tax Approach, in: Proceedings of the ISWC Workshop

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Semantic Web Case Studies and Best Practices for eBusiness (SWCASE05), November 7, 2005, Galway, Ireland, pp. 49-56. Krummenacher, Reto; Hepp, Martin; Polleres, Axel; Bussler, Christoph; Fensel, Dieter: WWW or What is Wrong with Web services, in: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE European Conference on Web Services (IEEE ECOWS 2005), November 14-16, Växjö, Sweden, pp. 235-243. Hepp, Martin; Leymann, Frank; Domingue, John; Wahler, Alexander, and Dieter Fensel: Semantic Business Process Management: A Vision Towards Using Semantic Web Services for Business Process Management, in: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2005), October 18-20, Beijing, China, pp. 535-540 Hepp, Martin; Leukel, Jörg; Schmitz, Volker: A Quantitative Analysis of eCl@ss, UNSPSC, eOTD, and RNTD Content, Coverage, and Maintenance, in: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2005), October 18-20, Beijing, China, pp. 572-581. Schmitz, Volker; Leukel, Jörg; Hepp, Martin: Integrierte Dokumentation und Spezifikation von E-Business-Standards mit XML Schema-Annotationen, in: Proceedings of the Berliner XML Tage 2005 (BXML 2005), September 12-14, Berlin, Germany, pp. 179-190. Hepp, Martin; Leukel, Jörg; Schmitz, Volker: Content Metrics for Products and Services Categorization Standards, in: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce and e-Service (EEE-05), March 29 – April 1, 2005, Hong Kong, pp. 740-745. Hepp, Martin: A Methodology for Deriving OWL Ontologies from Products and Services Categorization Standards, in: Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2005), May 26-28, 2005, Regensburg, pp. 1-12. Hepp, Martin: Measuring the Quality of Descriptive Languages for Products and Services, in: Proceedings of the Multi-Konferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik MKWI 2004, March 9-11, 2004, Essen, pp. 157-168. Page 3 of 4 Others Hepp, Martin: Product Reasoning Services: Economic Relevance and

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Architectural Approaches, in: Proceedings of the 5. Paderborner Frühjahrstagung "Innovationen im E-Business", Paderborn, Germany, April 10, 2003, pp. 469-477. Hepp, Martin: Interoperabilität, Metamarktplätze und agentenbasierte Arbitrageure, in: Proceedings of the 4. Paderborner Frühjahrstagung "Modelle im E-Business", Paderborn, Germany, April 11, 2002, pp. 475-489. Hepp, Martin; Boehnlein, Claus: Modellierung der Pflege von Standards mit Hilfe höherer Petri-Netze, in: Proceedings of the 8th Symposium "Simulation als betriebliche Entscheidungshilfe", Göttingen, Germany, March 11, 2002, pp. 3-13 . Book Chapters Hepp, Martin: XML-Spezifikationen und Klassifikationsstandards für den Datenaustausch, in: Thome, R.; Schinzer, H.; Hepp, M. (eds.): “Electronic Commerce und Electronic Business. Mehrwert durch Integration und Automation“, 3rd edition, Vahlen, Munich 2005, pp. 191-216. Thome, Rainer; Schinzer, Heiko; Hepp, Martin: Electronic Commerce: Ertragsorientierte Integration und Automatisierung, in: Thome, R.; Schinzer, H.; Hepp, M. (eds.): “Electronic Commerce und Electronic Business. Mehrwert durch Integration und Automation“, 3rd edition, Vahlen, Munich 2005, pp.1-28. Hepp, Martin: Datenschutz (p. 157); Datensicherheit (pp. 157f. ); Elektronische Unterschrift (p. 188), in: Horváth, P.; Reichmann, T.: „Vahlens Großes Controllinglexikon“, 2nd ed., Vahlen, München 2002. Hepp, Martin: Electronic Procurement (pp. 171f.), Computervirus (pp. 119f.); Datensicherheit (pp. 148-150 ), in: Mertens, P. et al.: „Lexikon der Wirtschaftsinformatik“, 4th ed., Springer, Berlin etc. 2001. Non-refereed Publications, Working Papers, and Posters Hepp, Martin; Leukel, Jörg; Schmitz, Volker; Fensel, Dieter: PRODIS 2005: Workshop on Product-related Data in Information Systems (Workshop Summary), in: Cremers, A.; Manthey, R; Martini, P.; Steinhage, V.: Proceedings of INFORMATIK 2005, September 19-22, 2005, Bonn, p. 443. Hepp, Martin: Product Representation in the Semantic Web, Working

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Paper, April 2004. Hepp, Martin: OntoMeter: Metrics for Ontologies, poster presented at the 1st European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS2004), Heraklion, Greece, May 10 – May 12, 2004. Hepp, Martin: Using Web Services for the Maintenance and the Version Management of Descriptive Languages for Products and Services, research report about an internship at the IBM Software Solutions Development Lab in Böblingen, Germany, May 12 – May 16, 2003. Page 4 of 4 Books Hepp, Martin; Polleres, Axel; van Harmelen, Frank; Genesereth, Michael (eds.): Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services (MEDIATE 2005), CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, Vol. 168, 2005. Thome, Rainer; Schinzer, Heiko; Hepp, Martin. (eds.): Electronic Commerce und Electronic Business. Mehrwert durch Integration und Automation, 3rd edition, Vahlen, Munich 2005. Hepp, Martin: Güterklassifikation als semantisches Standardisierungsproblem, Deutscher Universitaets- Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany 2003. Standards Submissions Jos de Bruijn, Christoph Bussler, John Domingue, Dieter Fensel, Martin Hepp, Uwe Keller, Michael Kifer, Birgitta König-Ries, Jacek Kopecky, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Eyal Oren, Axel Polleres, Dumitru Roman, James Scicluna, Michael Stollberg: Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO), W3C Member Submission, http://www.w3.org/Submission/WSMO/, 2005.

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5. Semantic Execution Environment Cluster (SEE) In the following we describe the SEE cluster in general terms, in terms of the objectives it takes care, in terms of the project it takes care, and in terms of its members. 5.1. General Description Name Semantic Execution Environment Acronym SEE Web site http://see.deri.org Leader Michal Zaremba (Deputy: Mick Kerrigan) Team Senior Researchers:

Michal Zaremba Junior Researchers: Emilia Cimpian Graham Hench Zhou Jingtao Mick Kerrigan Adrian Mocan Omair Shafiq Adina Sirbu Zhixian Yan Students: Thomas Haselwanter Mark Mattern

Objectives Applications (2), developer tools (3), mediation (8), and execution management (15)

Projects ASG, SEEMP, SemanticGov, SemBiz, SUPERMichal, TSC Mission It is mission of the Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) cluster to

create an execution environment for the dynamic discovery, selection, mediation, invocation and inter-operation of Semantic Web Services. Enterprises' information systems were subject of great changes during the last years. In order to adjust to more and more dynamic business demands, a new concept/paradigm has come to replace the traditional applications: the service. By this (and by some other auxiliary changes) the information system as a whole becomes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Such an approach offers a set of advantages that comes with SOA but it doesn't solve all the interoperability problems that existed for classical applications too. Inside of a particular SOA, independent services offering the same functionality should be seamlessly interchangeable with each other. Different such services can have different vendors, and as a consequence, different peculiarities. Our platform is going to be a sample implementation of the Web Services Modelling Ontology (WSMO) which

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describes all aspects of Semantic Web Services. Our goal is to provide both a testbed for WSMO and to demonstrate the viability of using WSMO as a means to achieve dynamic inter-operation of Web Services. Semantic Web has been a domain of research for IT for half of a decade, and represents the vision of the new Web, a Web containing “machine understandable" information. Semantic Web Services is a relatively new area, exploring how the classical Web Services can be enhanced from a static to a dynamic Web Services in a semantic context. That is, not only the data on the Web can be augmented with semantics but the applications (i.e. Web services) as well. By successfully applying semantics to a dynamic Web, the number of error prone and laborious tasks fulfilled by humans today would be reduced. Furthermore, the costs of knowledge management or business to business integration tasks would be drastically decreased. Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) cluster acts in this context, combining the benefits of semantics and Semantic Web Services with new architectural practices producing the concept of a Semantic Service Oriented Architecture. Following work initiated in WSMX working group we will adapt a top-down, component based development approach, delivering a whole framework capable of carrying out in the future, the dynamic discovery, mediation, selection, invocation and inter-operation of Web Services. From the beginning we aim to include all the services of the WSMX platform, providing complete implementation for them in the later stages of the project. The strong component decoupling allows new components to be plugged in and provides opportunities to achieve richer functionality. Each subsequent version of our platform will extend and improve the functionality of the components of the framework until it reaches the full Semantic Web Services support. The SEE cluster is open for any new members and to extend it existing foundation of work on the SWS platform. We aim to integrate together DERI Innsbruck teams to build together the complete Semantic Web Services execution environment.


The SEE team members’ actively participate in the appropriate standards bodies, specifically the OASIS, and will seek to influence these bodies towards adopting SEE findings and ideas. The team leader is currently co-chairing the Oasis Semantic Execution Environment technical committee, whose declared objective is to provide guidelines, justifications and implementation directions for an execution environment for Semantic Web services. Several proposed members of the team also contributed to WSMX W3C submission. Being actively involved in several EU projects, the team members can easily interact with researchers from both academia and industry, receiving inputs that will guide their work. Also, the team members contributed to earlier prototype versions of WSMX architecture, which has been used as an execution environment in various European projects dealing with Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services.

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Current responsibilities of particular members of SEE team are structured around two dimensions:

• DERI objectives • Project responsibilities

In terms of DERI objectives, SEE cluster contributes to the following WSMX services: developer tools, end user applications, mediation, discovery, choreography, storage and communication, reasoner, monitoring (leader to be decided) and execution management. The most advanced WSMX components are the ones driven by SEE cluster, which are developer tools, mediation (data and process) and execution management. In terms of project responsibilities, members of SEE cluster have been involved in several projects, namely: SUPER, DIP, SemBiz, SEEMP, KW, ASG, TripleSpace, AsiaLink, Tripcom and SemGov. For SEEMP, ASG and SemanticGov the SEE cluster takes the full responsibility for the complete execution of the project for DERI Innsbruck (from a local coordination to research lead and scientific contributions). SUPER is shared together with SEBIS cluster and project has been divided on the workpackages level. For other projects members of SEE cluster remain contributors leading deliverables or contributing to them. Currently following deliverables are assigned to SEE researchers: • ASG – D1.I-6 WSML reasoner engine implementation 2nd release • ASG – D1.I-7 M30 Update of Collection of semantic specifications

for ASG services • ASG – D2.I-3 Service Matchmaker & Query Processor 1st Release • DIP – D6.11 Semantic Web Services Architecture and

Information Model • DIP – D6.14 Semantic Web Services Architecture and

Information Model • DIP – D9.11 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) v 1.0 • DIP – D9.12 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) v 2.0 • DIP – D9.14 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) Final

Version • SUPER – D6.3 Process Ontology Reasoner • SUPER – D12.3 Dissemination Strategy and SDK Activities • SUPER – contribution to WP4 BP Mediation, WP5 Modeling

Analysis Tools, WP6 SBPM Execution Engine, WP11 Community, Standards, WP12 Dissemination

• Tripcom and Triplespace – contribution to several deliverables • SemanticGov - WP3: Design of Semantic Web Service Architecture

for National and Pan-European e-Government services (second highest involvement)

• SemanticGov - WP5: Development of SWS Execution Environment for

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• SemanticGov - Services (highest involvement, leaders of WP) • SemanticGov - D3.1: SemanticGov Architecture v.1 • SemanticGov - D3.2: SemanticGov Architecture v.2 • SemanticGov - D3.3: Analysis of Mediator Requirements and

Mediator Implementation • SemanticGov - D5.1: Design and development of SemanticGov

software components v.1 • SemanticGov - D5.2: Design and development of SemanticGov

software components v.2 • SEEMP - Involved in all 8 work packages • SEEMP – WP 3 SEEMP Platform Functional Specification (lead

partner) • SEEMP - D21 (Contributor): Semantic and Technical Aspects in e-

Gov Software Development • SEEMP - D31 (Coordinator): SEEMP Platform Specifications • SEEMP - D41 (Contributor): SEEMP Components Design • SEEMP - D43 (Contributor): 1st SEEMP Interoperability

Framework • SEEMP - D51 (Coordinator): Requirements and Specifications

Revision • SEEMP - D53 (Contributor): Final SEEMP Interoperability

Framework • SEEMP - D71 (Contributor): Project Presentation • SEEMP - D73 (Contributor): Exploitation and Dissemination Plan • SEEMP - Project Management Reports • SemBiz – have not started yet and will be probably postponed later

2006 • ASG – WSML reasoner engine implementation 2nd release • ASG – Update of Collection of semantic specifications for ASG

services 5.2. Objectives

• Applications (2), • Developer tools (3), • Mediation (8), and • Execution Management (15)

5.2.1. Applications Nr 2 Title Applications Mission Mission of the Application box is to develop a common understanding

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statement of various technologies intended to facilitate the use of other services of SESA using semantic annotations. This working group will develop (1) use case scenarios that help validate the real-world fitness of SESA components and (2) domain-specific implementations which will be used for testing of SESA services.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Applications Leader Michal Zaremba Cluster SEE, SEBIS Team Senior Researchers:

Ying Ding Michal Zaremba Junior Researchers: Holger Lausen Students: Mark Mattern


Current Status

Semantic Web Services challenge (www.sws-challenge.org) has been our first attempt to provide a case bed for future Application box. The goal of the SWS Challenge is to develop a common understanding of various technologies intended to facilitate the automation of mediation, choreography and discovery for Web Services using semantic annotations. The intent of this challenge is to explore the trade-offs among existing approaches. Additionally we would like to figure out which parts of problem space may not yet be covered. The challenge aims to provide a forum for discussion based on a common application. This Challenge seeks participation from industry and academic researchers developing software components and/or intelligent agents that have the ability to automate mediation, choreography and discovery processes between Web services. This work is related to but distinct from the IEEE Contest in several respects. First, the SWS Challenge focuses on the use of semantic annotations: participants are provided with semantics in the form of natural language text that they can formalize and use in their technologies. Second, this is a challenge rather than a contest, meaning that workshop participants mutually evaluate and learn from each others' approaches.

Future Steps The first step is to form an Applications group, as till now the group operated unofficially and consisted only of two members: Holger and Michal. Once formed, more detailed plan will be established. At this stage we can say for sure that we will continue work on SWS challenge. The second phase of this challenge planned for June 2008 has been described in detail at www.sws-challenge.org and following phases will be defined also by us. We also consider to create similar challenges for other domains (e.g. banking, government, telecom etc.), but for the next

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couple of months our major focus remain RosettaNet and integration and discovery aspects as defined on by current specification of the challenge.

Publications Since the Applications box has just started its existence, there are no accepted publications yet.

Software releases

The current implementation of Semantic Web Services challenge is available at www.sws-challenge.org. Future releases will be listed on Application website.

5.2.2. Developer tools Nr 3 Title Developer Tools Mission statement

The mission of the developer tools working group is to produce high quality tools related to Semantic Web Services that can be used by users of all competency levels. To this end we provide a large number of tools that can be used by users with different skill sets. Members of the working group are working on tools for managing WSMO ontologies, web services, goals and mediators, for creating mappings between WSMO ontologies for runtime mediation, for executing WSDL web services and managing WSMO execution environments.

Web site Information: http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Developer_Tools Releases: http://wsmt.sourceforge.net & http://dome.sourceforge.net

Leader Mick Kerrigan Cluster SEE, (SEBIS) Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Jan Henke Mick Kerrigan Adrian Mocan Students: Thomas Haselwanter Nathalie Steinmetz Martin Tanler


In the SEEMP project work will be done on improving the WSMO Choreography support in the plug-ins from the WSMT, for example adding choreography support to the WSML Text Editor and WSML Visualizer. Further contributing projects are SUPER, SemBiz, and RW2

Current Status

The developer tools implemented with DERI are broken down into a number of plug-ins for Eclipse. The plug-ins are bundled together as two different products, namely the Web Services Modeling Toolkit (WSMT) and the DERI Ontology Management Environment (DOME). The WSMT is aimed at covering all the functionality of WSMO, WSML and

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WSMX. With the WSMT the user is able to create and manage WSMO ontologies, web services, goals and mediators through the WSML human readable syntax, create mappings between two WSML ontologies for the purposes of instance transformation and thirdly manage and interact with the WSMX environment. The primary focus of DOME is the use of WSMO as an ontology language and thus focuses only on the ontology and mediator parts of the WSMO specification. Users of DOME can create and manage their WSMO ontologies and mediators through the WSML human readable, XML and RDF syntaxes. They can also create mappings between two ontologies that can be used later by an execution environment. The plug-ins shipped in these tools includes: WSMO4J: The WSMO4J plug-in provides access to the functionality of WSMO4J, which is a parser, serializer and object model for WSMO documents. This plug-in provides a standard integration point for all tools that need to perform some operation on WSMO descriptions. WSML Reasoner: The WSML Reasoner plug-in exposes the functionality of the WSML 2 Reasoner to other plug-ins in the WSMT. The reasoner can translate the ontology elements in a WSML description into predicates and rules and provides a facade allowing integration with many different underlying reasoners. WSML: This plug-in layers on top of the WSMO4J plug-in and provides Eclipse GUI related functionality for WSML. WSML Text Editor: The WSML Text Editor Plug-in provides a text editor for editing the human readable syntax of WSML. This text editor presents advanced features so that users who prefer to work with the raw syntax of a WSML document can get added value from the tool set. WSML Conceptual Editor: This editor allows for visual editing of ontologies. It includes two sub-views – a class tree and an instance table. The class tree displays the hierarchy of classes and relations including their attributes and parameters; also axioms are available here. WSML Visualizer: The WSML Visualizer is an ontology engineering tool based on a graph based approach. It is unique in that it is not just an ontology visualization tool bolted on top of an existing ontology engineering tool, but there is full editing support for WSMO ontologies, web services, goals and mediators built into the visualization. WSML Reasoner View: This plug-in provides an Eclipse view based upon the functionality of the WSML Reasoner plug-in. This allows the

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user to execute queries over the ontology that is open in the currently selected editor. AML: The AML plug-in provides access to the functionality of the Abstract Mapping Language created by the Ontology Management Working Group (OMWG). This functionality includes a parser, serializer and object model for Mapping documents. This plug-in provides a standard integration point for all tools that need to perform some operation on AML Documents. AML Text Editor: The AML Text Editor Plug-in provides a text editor for editing the AML syntax. This text editor presents advanced features so that users who prefer to work with the raw syntax of an AML document can get added value from the tool set. AML Conceptual Editor: The mapping tree editor is responsible for the visual editing of documents in the abstract mapping language. It displays the tree of elements that can be created in this language and allows for editing through the use of the context menu. WSMX Data Mediation Mapping Tool: The Data Mediation Mapping Tool Plug-in offers an alternative to manual, text-based mapping creation between ontologies. That is, a set of graphical mechanism are in place in order to support the domain expert in his/her work, and to offer a truly semi-automatic system for ontology alignment. WSDL Invocation: This plug-in can be used to invoke a WSDL web service. The user can provide a WSDL document and the plug-in will provide templates for the messages that need to be sent to invoke a given operation. WSMX Management: The WSMX Management plug-in in the WSMT provides a perspective and a number of UI components for managing the WSMX server and the WSMX adapter framework.

Future Steps For each of the plug-ins there are a large number of features planned for each, that lead these plug-ins in the direction of more usable, featureful tools for described ontologies, web services mediators and goals, creating mappings between different ontologies and using execution environments and services.

Publications Conferences Mick Kerrigan: WSMOViz: An Ontology Visualization Approach for WSMO, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Visualization (IV06), July, 2006, London, England

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Workshops Adrian Mocan and Emilia Cimpian: Mapping Creation Using a View Based Approach, Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services (Mediate 2005), Dec, 2005, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Mick Kerrigan: The WSML Editor Plug-in to the Web Services Modeling Toolkit}, Proceedings of the 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW), June, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria Jan Henke: The table metaphor: A representation of a class and its instances, Proceedings to Workshop on User Aspects of the Semantic Web (ESWC), May, 2005, Heraklion, Greece Tutorials Semantic Web Service Systems and Tools}, 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), Nov, 2005, Galway, Ireland Posters Tools for the Web Services Modeling Language (WSML), International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML), Nov, 2005, Galway, Ireland

Software releases

Web Services Modeling Toolkit including plug-ins: - WSML Plug-in - WSML Text Editor Plug-in - WSML Vizualizer Plug-in - WSML Reasoner View Plug-in - Abstract Mapping Language Plug-in - Abstract Mapping Language Text Editor Plug-in - WSMX Management Plug-in DERI Ontology Management Environment including plug-ins - WSML Conceptual Editor Plug-in - AML Conceptual Editor Plug-in - Mapping Plug-in - Versioning Plug-in

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5.2.3. Mediation Nr 8 Title Mediation Mission statement

Mediation in WSMX aims at providing flexible mediation service in WSMX at both data and process level. Data Mediation provides automatic data transformation from the format used by the source party to the format required by the target party involved in conversation. As WSMX is a semantic enabled service execution environment, we assume that the data to be mediated is semantically described, i.e. it consists of ontology instances. As a consequence the WSMX Data Mediation Service has to support instance transformation from terms of one ontology to the terms of another ontology, based on set of already created mappings between the two given ontologies. The Process Mediator component has the task of solving the communication (behavioral) mismatches that may occur during the communication between a requestor and a provider of a service. As in WSMO, the requestor is a WSMO Goal, while the provider is a Semantic Web Service, the Process Mediator’s task is be to accommodate the mismatches between the goal’s requestedChoreography and the SWS’s choreography.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Data_Mediation, http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Process_Mediation

Leader Adrian Mocan Cluster Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) and Semantics in Business

Information Systems (SEBIS) Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Emilia Cimpian (PM) Adrian Mocan (DM and PM) Richard Pöttler Francois Scharffe (DM) Omair Shafiq Students: Thomas Haselwanter


Knowledge Web, SemanticGov, Sekt, SemBiz, SUPER, SEEMP, DIP, TSC, TripCom

Current Status

The Data Mediation service in WSMX aims to provide a solution to solve the heterogeneity problems that can appear at the data level. As all messages in WSMX are semantically described in WSML, the data to be mediated is described in terms of ontologies, i.e. data consists of ontology instances.

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In this context, the heterogeneity problems at the data level appear when the requester and the provider of a service use different ontologies to conceptualize their domain. As a consequence, data has to be transformed from terms of one ontology (e.g. requester’s ontology) into terms of the other ontology (e.g. provider’s ontology). Due to the fact that these transformations are taking place during run-time the whole process has to be completely automatic. The data mediator component in WSMX achieves this by relying on a set of mappings (semantic relationships) between the source and target ontology identified during design-time and stored in a persistent storage. The mappings are in fact logical rules that are executed during run-time by a reasoner component against the incoming data, to output data as required by the target party. There are several ways (languages) of representing these rules, depending of the reasoning support available. In order to encourage interoperability between various mediation systems and to allow a flexible and an easy management of these mappings, a language independent format (called the Abstract Mapping Language) is used. As a consequence, each time a set of such mappings have to be used in a concrete scenario (as the instance transformation in WSMX) the mappings have to be “grounded” to a concrete ontology representation language (in our case WSML). The grounding not only transforms the mappings in an executable form, but also associate them a formal semantics, a meaning in respect with the concrete representation language and the mediation scenario to be used in. The WSMX Data Mediation service is a data mediation engine capable of performing instance transformation for given pairs of ontologies based on a given set of mappings. These mappings are represented as statements in an Abstract Mapping Language which assures an ontology representation language neutrality. By applying different grounding mechanism, the same set of abstract mappings can be used in different mediation scenarios using different reasoning systems. The Process Mediator component currently consists from the following subcomponents:

− Validator – determines if a certain instance is expected or not by the targeted partner (valid or not from the conversation point of view);

− Internal Repository – stores the instances that are going to be sent at some point in time to one of the partners;

− WSML Reasoner – actually a wrapper for the KAON reasoner

− Core Component – manage the interaction with other DIP components, and to coordinate the activities of the Process Mediator internal sub-components.

The process mediation works with an old version of choreography

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specification, and an old version of Choreography Engine. This was due to the necessity to have a working version of Process Mediator, while the work on the Choreography Engine was advancing in a very alert rhythm.

Future Steps Data Mediation Service o As a WSML reasoner (MINS) is now available, a replacement of

the Flora-2 reasoner is necessary. By this replacement the burdensome introduced by the rapper around the Flora-2 reasoner will be eliminates. In this way, the focus can be shifted from overcoming the technical problems to real improvements of the services. In addition, this will allow the development of a unified grounding mechanism, by updating the already existing grounding in Abstract Mapping Language to the requirements of the Data Mediation Service.

o The storage mechanism used by the Data Mediation Service to store mappings is currently a MySQL (http://www.mysql.com) database. It is in out intention to provide means for usage of alternative storing mechanisms, ranging from a simple file system to a more complex and efficient ones like the one used by WSMX itself.

o The Data Mediation Service highly depends of the mappings generated during design-time phase. A great benefit would be to deliver the Data Mediation Service as a stand-alone application as well that would allow the testing of the mappings outside of the WSMX system. If integrated in WSMT, such testing could take place during the actual creation of mappings, giving a valuable real-time feed-back to the domain expert.

o As we act in the Semantic Web Services area the Data Mediation Service has to be made available as a Semantic Web Services. As such, one of the future plans is to deploy it as a WSDL service and to provide the necessary semantic descriptions for it.

o It is important to test the feasibility and the soundness of our conceptual ideas implemented through this Data Mediation Service. We intend to test this service on real data and to make a set of measurements regarding the efficiency and time consuming aspects of the instance transformation process.

Mapping API

o Automation Algorithms: The mapping API provide also support to automate mapping using a set of string distance, graph matching and linguist techniques in order to facilitate to the user the elaboration of the mapping document. This imply to be able to manipulate the ontological entities by making adapters to the respective APIs (WSMO4j, OWL API).

o Transformation functions: The mediated instances have in

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certain cases to be structurally transformed. We will provide a set of functions realizing these transformations.

Process Mediation For the future, the following sub-components need to be updated: Validator – this component operates on the choreographies sent by the Choreography Engine. It needs to be updated to properly work with the latest version of the Choreography engine WSML Reasoner – migrate from KAON to MINS; this may cause some flaws in the execution process. Core Component – the logic driving the Core Component functionality needs to be extended, for addressing more complex scenarios

Publications Michael Stollberg, Emilia Cimpian, Adrian Mocan, Dieter Fensel: A Semantic Web Mediation Architecture, Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium (CSWWS 2006), June 2006, Québec city, Canada Adrian Mocan, Emilia Cimpian: Mapping Creation Using a View Based Approach, 1st International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services (Mediate 2005), December 2005, Amsterdam, Netherlands Francois Scharffe, Jos de Bruijn: A Language to specify Mappings between Ontologies, IEEE Conference on Internet-Based Systems SITIS6, December 2005, Yaounde, Cameroon. E. Cimpian, A. Mocan: WSMX Process Mediation Based on Choreographies, 1st International Workshop on Web Service Choreography and Orchestration for Business Process Management, September 2005, Nancy, France. E. Cimpian, M. Kerrigan: WSMX Process Mediation, Second WSMO Implementation Workshop, June 2005, Innsbruck, Austria. (position paper). E. Cimpian: Process Mediation Using Choreographies, CDH Seminar, December 2005, Galway, Ireland.

5.2.4. Execution management Nr 15 Title Execution management Mission statement

The execution management component is responsible for the management of WSMX as a platform and for the coordination of the individual components. As the kernel of the system it enables and

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realizes the overall operational semantics of WSMX that let the system achieve the promised functional semantics of its client-side interface. It takes the functionality offered by the individual components of the framework and orchestrates these atomic pieces into a coherent whole in an orderly and consistent fashion. These properties are guaranteed by the execution semantics, which are executed over the set of services that are available to the execution management component

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Execution_Manager (scheduled for move)

Leader Thomas Haselwanter Cluster SEE Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Omair Shafiq Students: Thomas Haselwanter


DIP, Infrawebs, TSC; TripCom

Current Status

This component is available in a fully functional incarnation today. It provides (a) a rigid, managable infrastructure to components of WSMX and (b) enables execution semantics as a deployable formal definition of the operational behavior of the system. The execution management component provides a complete infrastructure to the components of the system, including boot-strap, registration, hot-deploy and life-cycle management. As in all systems of a certain complexity, management becomes a critical issue. We make a clear separation between domain problem logic and management logic, treating them as orthogonal concepts. If we did not separate these two elements, it would become increasingly difficult to maintain the system and keep it flexible, as it grows and matures. From a certain perspective it could be argued that the very process of making management explicit captures an invariant that helps to leverage the support for dynamic, informed change of the rest of the system. Naturally, presenting a coherent view of all management aspects of components and not getting lost in complexity are conflicting goals and subject to compromise, yet the available WSMX consoles manage to present a unified view that covers the infrastructure subsystems as well as the components instrumentation. The kernel employs self-

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management techniques such as scheduled operations and automatic recovery from subsystem failures, and additionally allows administration through management consoles. With the kernel being representation agnostic, management consoles may be anything from command prompts or web interfaces to dedicated standalone management applications, of which currently one instance of each of these three categories exists. The development approach is iterative and results are measured and driven by builds, and further grouped by versions, which translates directly to targets and milestones in project management lingua. Today the execution management stands at milestone 5 and iteration 83, providing a usable and working base today.

Future Steps Two main pillars are scheduled for exploration, the use of web service technology within the kernel and the use of semantic technology within the kernel and the components interfaces, which will result in the crossing of the border to a self-executing architecture. The architecture specification will define web service interfaces as well as semantic descriptions of these services, on which work has begun. With Milestone 6 (kernel modularization) in October, milestone 7 (intrakernel services) is targeted for the end of the year. Due to its ambitient nature experiments for milestone 8 (intrakernel semantics) will run concurrently to the implementation of the two earlier two milestones. There will be operatively working, early iteration at the end of the year, but efforts for milestone 8 will continue into 2007.

Publications T. Haselwanter, Maciej Zaremba and Michal Zaremba. Enabling Components Management and Dynamic Execution Semantic in WSMX. WSMO Implementation Workshop 2005 (WIW 2005), 6-7 June, Innsbruck, Austria.

Software releases

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsmx


• ASG • SEEMP • SemanticGov • SemBiz • SUPERMichal • TSC

5.3.1. Adaptive Service Grid

Name Adaptive Services Grid Acronym ASG Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEE Leader Emilia Cimpian Objective Ontologies, Applications, Adaptation, Composition, Grounding,

Monitoring, Formal languages, Reasoning, Storage, Execution Website http://asg-platform.org Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Emilia Cimpian Adina Sirbu Darko Anicic Students: -

Mission The goal of Adaptive Services Grid (ASG) is to develop a proof-of-concept prototype of an open development platform for adaptive services discovery, creation, composition, and enactment.


Total: 168 Per months: 5,5

Duration 30 months 09/04 – 02/07 Major tasks service discovery

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Deliverables Remaining: • D1.I-6 WSML reasoner engine implementation 2nd release

(lead) (Adina Sirbu, Sven Groppe, Jinghua Groppe) • D1.I-7 M30 Update of Collection of semantic specifications for

ASG services (lead) (Jinghua Groppe, Adina Sirbu, Sven Groppe)

• D2.I-3 Service Matchmaker & Query Processor 1st Release (contribute) (Sven Groppe, Adina Sirbu)

• D2.IV Documentation of Interaction among Components (contribute) (N.N.)

• D2.I-4 Service Matchmaker & Query Processor 2nd Release (contribute) (N.N.)

5.3.3. SEEMP

Name Single European Employment Market Place Acronym SEEMP Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEE Leader Mick Kerrigan Objective Developer tools, Mediation, Choreography Website http://www.seemp.org Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Mick Kerrigan Students: -

Mission The mission is to design and implement in a prototypal way an interoperability architecture for public e-Employment services which encompasses cross-governmental business and decisional processes, interoperability and reconciliation of local professional profiles and taxonomies, semantically enabled web services for distributed knowledge access and sharing.

Budget (in Total: 37 per month: 1

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terms of m*m) Duration 30 months 01/06 – 06/08 Major tasks Involved in all 8 work packages

WP 3 SEEMP Platform Functional Specification (lead partner) Deliverables • D21 (Contributor): Semantic and Technical Aspects in e-Gov

Software Development • D31 (Coordinator): SEEMP Platform Specifications • D41 (Contributor): SEEMP Components Design • D43 (Contributor): 1st SEEMP Interoperability Framework • D51 (Coordinator): Requirements and Specifications Revision • D53 (Contributor): Final SEEMP Interoperability Framework • D71 (Contributor): Project Presentation • D73 (Contributor): Exploitation and Dissemination Plan • Project Management Reports

5.3.4. SemanticGov

Name Providing integrated Public Services to Citizen at the National and Pan-

European level with the use of Emerging Semantic Web Technologies Acronym SemanticGov Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEE Leader Adrian Mocan Objective Ontologies, Developer tools, Discovery, Composition, Mediation,

Grounding, Reasoning, Storage Website http://www.semantic-gov.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

Michal Zaremba Junior Researchers: Emilia Cimpian Graham Hench Mick Kerrigan Adrian Mocan Omair Shafiq

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Adina Sirbu Students: Thomas Haselwanter

Mission SemanticGov aims at building the infrastructure (software, models, services, etc) necessary for enabling the offering of semantic web services by public administration (PA). Through this cutting edge infrastructure, SemanticGov will address longstanding challenges faced by public administrations such as achieving interoperability amongst PA agencies both within a country as well as amongst countries, easing the discovery of PA services by its customers, facilitating the execution of complex services often involving multiple PA agencies in interworkflows.



Duration 36 months 01/06 – 12/08 Major tasks • WP3: Design of Semantic Web Service Architecture for

National and Pan-European e-Government services (second highest involvement)

• WP5: Development of SWS Execution Environment for Services (highest involvement, leaders of WP)

Deliverables • D3.1: SemanticGov Architecture v.1 - SEE Cluster • D3.2: SemanticGov Architecture v.2 - SEE Cluster • D3.3: Analysis of Mediator Requirements and Mediator

Implementation - SEE Cluster • D5.1: Design and development of SemanticGov software

components v.1 - SEE Cluster • D5.2: Design and development of SemanticGov software

components v.2 - SEE Cluster 5.3.5 SemBiz

Name Semantic Business Process Management for flexible dynamic value

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chains Acronym SemBiz Funding line FIT-IT Cluster SEE Leader Emilia Cimpian Objective Development of the Business Process Management Suite Website http://www.sembiz.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

Michal Zaremba Junior Researchers: Emilia Cimpian Students: To be determined

Mission Bridging the gap between the business level perspective and the technical implementation level in Business Process Management (BPM) by semantic descriptions of business processes along with respective tool support.


74 1,5

Duration 24 months Major tasks WP1: Semantic Business Process Modeling Ontology Deliverables Lead:

WP1: Semantic Business Process Modeling Ontology WP6: Dissemination WP7: Project Management

5.3.6. SUPERMichal

Name Semantics utilized for Process Management within and between

Enterprises Acronym SUPER-Michal Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster SEE Leader Michal Zaremba

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Objective Semantic Execution Environment Website http://super.semanticweb.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

Michal Zaremba Junior Researchers: Emilia Cimpian Graham Hench Mick Kerrigan Adrian Mocaan Students: Thomas Haselwanter

Mission The major objective of SUPER is to raise Business Process Management (BPM) to the business level, where it belongs, from the IT level where it mostly resides now. This objective requires that BPM is accessible at the level of semantics of business experts. Semantic Web and, in particular, Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology offer the promise of integrating applications at the semantic level. By combining SWS and BPM, and developing one consolidated technology SUPER will create horizontal ontologies which describe business processes and vertical telecommunications oriented ontologies to support domain-specific annotation. Therefore this project aims at providing a semantic-based and context-aware framework, based on Semantic Web Services technology that acquires, organizes, shares and uses the knowledge embedded in business processes within existing IT systems and software, and within employees' heads, in order to make companies more adaptive.


Total 86 Per month 2,5

Duration 36 months 04/06 – 03/09 Major tasks • WP4 BP Mediation

• WP5 Modeling Analysis Tools • WP6 SBPM Execution Engine • WP11 Community, Standards • WP12 Dissemination (SEBIS and SEE contribute)

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Deliverables Lead: • D6.3 Process Ontology Reasoner (SEE cluster) • D12.3 Dissemination Strategy and SDK Activities (SEE cluster)

Contributions. All deliverables from the following workpackages:

• WP4 BP Mediation • WP5 Modeling Analysis Tools • WP6 SBPM Execution Engine • WP11 Community, Standards • WP12 Dissemination

5.3.7. TSC

Name Triple Space Computing Acronym TSC Funding line FFG, FIT-IT Cluster UBISERV Leader Reto Krummenacher Objective Storage Website http://tsc.deri.at/ Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Darko Anicic Graham Hench Reto Krummenacher Omair Shafiq Students: Michael Luger

Mission The aim of the TSC project is to develop Triple Space Computing as communication and coordination framework for Semantic Web and Semantic Web services. The outcome of the TSC project will be a generic framework and prototype implementation for a Triple Space Computing environment.


Total 28 Per Month 1

Duration 30 months 03/05 – 08/07

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Major tasks • Mediation within Triple Space (TS) • Querying of data - Discovery/Localization of TS • Implementation of prototype • Use Case: TS in respectively between WSMXs • Design of Mediation and Query Engine • Implementations • WSMX integration of TS

Deliverables • D2.3 Mediation and Query Engine • D3.3 Triple Storage Repository • D3.4 Discovery and Mediation prototypes • D4.1 Integration of WSMX and TSC • D4.2 WSMX Triple Space prototype • D6.3 Final Project Report

5.4. Staff Here we discuss student, junior, and senior researchers of the SEE cluster. 5.4.1. Student Researchers Student Researchers Nr Name Supervisor 2 Thomas Haselwanter Michal 6 Mark Mattern Holger 5.4.2. Junior Researchers Junior Researchers No Name Objective

4 Emilia Cimpian Mediation 7 Graham Hench Reasoning 9 Zhou Jingtao

11 Mick Kerrigan Developer Tools 15 Adrian Mocan Mediation 21 Omair Shafiq Storage & Communication 23 Adina Sirbu Discovery 27 Zhixian Yan

5.4.2.1. Emilia Cimpian

Name Emilia Cimpian Entry date February 2006 Cluster Semantic Execution Environment - SEE Objective Mediation Projects So far I’ve been working on DIP. From now on I’ll be mainly

involved in SemBiz (coordination work) and Super, and also in other projects coordinated by the SEE cluster if this will be required. I don’t know yet in what deliverables I will be involved, since these projects are going to start, or they started recently.

Research topic Going from the most general to the particular research topic, my interests would be: Semantic Web Services – of a particular interest for me is the SWS interoperability, which is strongly dependent of how SWS interfaces are represented. Two aspects of interest result from this: the choreography and the orchestration. WSMO choreography being just a particular representation of public processes, I’m trying to extend my research to other business process representation languages as well. The orchestration is also interested from the interoperability point of view, but I haven’t invested too much time in finding good solutions of how the orchestration can be represented. Mediation Framework – developing a framework able to solve all types of mismatches in a SWS environment is quite an interesting challenge from my point of view (of course, the implementation of such a framework is not a one man/woman task). WSMO mediators provide conceptual support for doing this, although some of the mediators are underspecified being still on-going work. Additionally WSMX provides means for actually realizing the mediation service for two particular levels (data and process), but these two prototypes are offering partial support, for simple cases and they are not as easy to use as they should be. A global mediation architecture, with different execution semantics and different entry points would be, in my opinion, the right solution for the problem (but these would mean equivalent efforts as for WSMX itself).

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Process Mediation – the main part of my research, a working prototype operating on the choreographies of two participants in a conversation. This prototype is able to solve a limited set of behavioral mismatches and for now can operate only with two choreographies. What I would consider a challenge is to extend it to address more mismatches (still what and how is to be determined, probably based on use-cases produced in different projects) and also to allow the communication of multiple partners, not only two (which may be useful for the actual orchestration of SWSs).


Implementation of Process Mediation – not robust and complex enough, but still can be used as proof of concept for a PhD External Supervisor: John Domingue Currently documenting for the State of the Art section

Implementations Process Mediation prototype, available from downloading from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsmx/

Publications M Stollberg, E. Cimpian, A. Mocan, D. Fensel: A Semantic Web Mediation Architecture, Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium 2006 (to appear) E Cimpian, A. Mocan: WSMX Process Mediation Based on Choreographies, 1st International Workshop on Web Service Choreography and Orchestration for Business Process Management, September 2005, Nancy, France. E. Cimpian, M. Kerrigan: WSMX Process Mediation, Second WSMO Implementation Workshop, June 2005, Innsbruck, Austria. (position paper). A. Mocan, E. Cimpian: Mappings Creation Using a View Based Approach, First International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services, December 2005, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. M. Stollberg, E. Cimpian, D. Fensel: Mediating Capabilities with Delta-Relations, First International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services, December 2005, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E. Cimpian: Process Mediation Using Choreographies, CDH Seminar, December 2005, Galway, Ireland. A. Haller, E. Cimpian, A. Mocan, E. Oren, C. Bussler: WSMX - A Semantic Service-Oriented Architecture, International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2005), 2005, Orlando, Florida, USA. L. Vasiliu, S. Harand, E. Cimpian: The DIP Project: Enabling Systems & Solutions for Processing Digital Content with Semantic

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Web Services, European Workshop on the Integration of Knowledge, Semantics and Digital Media Technology, November 2004, London, UK. Adrian Mocan, Emilia Cimpian, Michal Zaremba, Christoph Bussler: Mediation in Web Service Modeling Execution Environment (WSMX), Information Integration on the Web (iiWeb2004), August 2004, Toronto, Canada

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5.4.2.2. Graham Hench

Name Graham Hench Entry date June 2005 Cluster SEE & “Reasoner Working Group” Objective Reasoner Component – specifically maintaining/updating

wsml2reasoner Projects SENSE – Project (at least DERI’s part) will begin this Friday

(7.4.06). DERI will be responsible for various tasks/deliverables ranging from ontology engineering/developing, to implementing basic reasoner functionalities to meet the project needs. DERI will mainly contribute to the following WP, though is indeed involved in almost every WP: 2 – “Ontology and Reasoner Development” 3 – “Multi-Agent System Development” Personally, my specific contributions will focus on implementing the reasoner functionalities. SUPER – Project began today (3.4.06) – DERI will contribute to various WP, specifically: 1 – Project lead for D1.1 “Process Modeling Ontology” & D1.5

“Process Ontology Query Language” 5 – Project lead for D5.6 “Process Ontology Query Language Parser” 11 – Project lead for D11.2 “Setup SBPM Community Portal” Personally, my specific contributions will again focus on implementing the reasoner functionalities, namely development of a process reasoner. Will later contribute to TSC & TripCom

Research topic Currently, I am not a student – though my main research focus as of recently is further developing an extendable and fully functional WSML reasoner


Currently, I am not a PhD student because there are problems with the approval of my foreign academic degree.

Implementations -Past/Completed – -OMWG – Mediation Module

-Mapping API – -Groundings -Re-implemented Abstract Syntax export/serialization

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-Implemented WSML & OWL/RDF/XML exports/serializations

-Documentation and further implementations -Current/Future –

-Reasoner Component – -wsml2reasoner- maintenance, unit tests, updates, and bug fixes -Adaptation of current wsml2reasoner to new reasoner

-Implementation of semi-naïve and dynamic filtering evaluation algorithms for query answering

-SUPER – -DERI Innsbruck representative for WP6 and leader for

deliverable 6.3, i.e. development and implementation of a process ontology reasoner to enhance the execution engine by allowing external querying of running process instances

-TSC – -D4.2 – implementation of WSMX/TSC prototype

-SENSE – -WP3 (Multi-Agent System Development) –

integration/implementation of Triple Space -Contribute to WP2 (Ontology and Reasoner Development),

WP4 (Semantic Façade Design), WP5 (System Integration), & WP6 (Verification & Testing)

Publications Extensive proofreading and editorial contributions Planned publications:

• ESWC 2007 - Paper submission on IRIS implementation and implementation support

• SEnSE dissemination - Reasoning within semantically-enabled multi- agent systems

• SUPER dissemination - Process Ontology Reasoning for SBPM

5.4.2.3. Zhou Jingtao Name Jingtao Zhou Entry date December 2006 Cluster Semantic Execution Environment - SEE Objective Semantic Mediation and Integration Projects By now, I have taken part in several projects working as from

programmer, system analyst, technical leader and project manager. These projects include “Semantic Integration of Enterprise Heterogenous Data Sources based on Semantic Web”, “Semantic and Model Based Integration of Enterprise Heterogenous Data Sources (http://aame.nwpu.edu.cn/smi/)”, “Information Sharing and Visualization Technologies for Network Product Development”, “Computer Aided Man-hour Rationing System for Mould and Fixture Apparatus”, ”Web-based Products Information Sharing & Visualization System”, and “Computer Aided Process Planning and Information Management System for Machining Parts”.

Research topic I have a fierce interest in developing new generation technologies of information mediation, integration and management for enterprises by undertaking the intersection research of semantic web, peer-to-peer, web service and grid computing technologies.

Progress towards PhD/Habil

Implementations Semantic and Model Based Integration prototype, http://aame.nwpu.edu.cn/smi/

Publications Edited Books Zhou Jingtao, Zhao Han, Wang Kefei, et al, (eds), “Complete Handbook for Eclipse”, Publishing House of Electronics Industry, 2006 Papers (In English) Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, Mingwei Wang, Han Zhao “Semantic Integration of Enterprise Information: Challenges and Basic Principles”, the First Asia Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2006), LNCS 4185, pp. 219 – 233, 2006. Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, Mingwei Wang, Han Zhao “XML-RDB Driven Semi-Structure Data Management”, Journal of Information and computing Science, 2006 (Accepted) Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, Mingwei Wang, Han Zhao

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“Enterprise Information Integration: State Of The Art and Technical Challenges”, PROgraming LAnguages for MAchine Tools conference, China, 2006 (Accepted) Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, Shusheng Zhang, Han Zhao “SGII: Combining P2P Data Integration Paradigm and Semantic Web Technology On Top Of OGSA-DAI”, CCGrid 2006 – IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid 2006, Singapore, May 2006 Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, “Semi-Structure Data Management by Bi-Directional Integration between XML and RDB”, The 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design May 3-5, 2006, Nanjing, P.R. China Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, “Semantic Enterprise Information Integration”, ICEIS 2006 – 8th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Paphos – Cyprus, May 2006 (accepted) Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, “ESD: Enterprise Semantic Desktop“, International Workshop on Web-based Internet Computing for Science and Engineering (WBICSE'06), APWeb 2006, LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, Vol.3842, pp: 943 – 946, 2006 Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, “Semantic-Grid-Enabled Peer-To-Peer Framework for Enterprise Information Integration“, International Conference on Advanced Design and Manufacture, January 2006 Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, “Catching Concepts From Databases by Schema-Based Column Matching and Clustering“, International Conference on Advanced Design and Manufacture, January 2006 Jingtao Zhou, Mingwei Wang, “Semantic Desktop Data Grid: Towards Integration and Coordination of both Organizational and Personal Information on Top of P2P Semantic Grid“, SWAP 2005 (Semantic Web Applications and Perspectives), 2nd Italian Semantic Web Workshop Trento, Faculty of Economics, 14-15-16 December, 2005 (accepted paper) Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, Han Zhao, Mingwei Wang, “SGII: Towards Semantic Grid-based Enterprise Information Integration“, The 4th International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing, LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 3795, pp: 560 - 565, 2005

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Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, Mingwei Wang, Han Zhao, et al, “Concept Capture Based On Column Matching and Clustering“. IEEE Computer Society, 1st International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and Grid, BeiJing, 2005 Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhangg, Mingwei Wang, Peng Li, Han Zhao, Chao Zhang, Xiaofeng Dong, Kefei Wang, “Element Matching by Concatenating Lingistic-based Matchers and Constraint-based Matcher“, The 17th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), IEEE Computer Society, Hong Kang, pp: 265-269, 2005 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Sun Hongwei, et al, “An XML-based schema translation method for relational data sharing and exchanging“, The 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD 2004), Vol.1, pp:714-717, 2004 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Sun Hongwei, et al, “An XML-Based Architecture for Semantic Integration of Heterogeneous Relational Databases“, Proceeding of International Workshop on Grid and Cooperative Computing, Sanya, China, pp:465-474, Dec 2002 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Sun Hongwei, et al, “Constraints Preserving Mapping from Relational Schema to XML-Schema“, In Proceeding of 8th Joint International Computer Conference, Ningbo, China, pp:60-65, Nov 2002 Mingwei Wang, Shusheng Zhang, Jingtao Zhou, Han Zhao, An Architecture of Semantic Desktop Data Grid, The 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design May 3-5, 2006, Nanjing, P.R. China (accepted) Mingwei Wang, Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, “A Model for Resolving Semantic Conflicts in Collaborative Design“, Proceedings of the International conference on Advanced Design and Manufacture 8-10 January, 2006, Harbin, China Mingwei Wang, Jingtao Zhou, Shusheng Zhang, “Multi-Agent Based Cooperative Knowledge Based Engineering Framework“, Proceedings of the International conference on Advanced Design and Manufacture 8-10 January, 2006, Harbin, China

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Sun Hongwei, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao et al, “XQuery-to-SQL Translating Algorithm with Little Dependence on Schema Mapping Between XML and RDB“, The Eight International Conference on CSCW in Design, Xiamen, China, Vol.1, pp: 526-531, May 26-28, 2004 Sun Hongwei, Zhang ShuSheng, Zhou Jingtao, et al, “The Three-tired Bi-directional Integration between XML and RDB“, Proceeding of the 8th Joint International Computer Conference, Ningbo, China, pp: 87-91, Nov 2002 Sun Hongwei, Zhang ShuSheng, Zhou Jingtao, et al, “An XML-to-RDB Independent Translating Algorithm from XQuery to SQL“, Proceeding of 8th Joint International Computer Conference, Ningbo, China, pp:562-566, Nov 2002 Sun Hongwei, Zhang ShuSheng, Zhou Jingtao, et al, “Mapping XML-Schema to Relational Schema“, LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, Vol.2510, pp:322-329, October 2002 Sun Hongwei, Zhang ShuSheng, Zhou Jingtao, et al, “Constraints-preserving Mapping Algorithm from XML-Schema to Relational Schema“, LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE,Vol.2480, pp:193-207, Sep.2002 Papers (In Chinese) Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Zhao Han, Wang Mingwei, Zhang Chao, Wang Kefei, Dong Xiaofeng, “Semantic Model-based Bus Architecture for Enterprise Information Integration”, Jisuanji Jicheng Zhizao Xitong/Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems-CIMS, 2006 (to appear) Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Dong XiaoFeng, Wang Kefei, Zhao Han, Zhang Chao, “Service Oriented Semantic Navigation of Enterprise Data“, Jisuanji Jicheng Zhizao Xitong/Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems-CIMS, Vol.11, No.9: 1333-1339+1350, 2005 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Wang Mingwei, “New Semantic-based Work Model for Collaborative Engineering“, Computer Engineering, Vol.31, No.13: 24-26,2005 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Wang Mingwei, Sun Hongwei, He

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Yanli, Gao Junjie, “A Method for Merging XML Schema Based Heterogeneous Resource Databases “, Mechanical Science and Technology, Vol.23, No.5: 627-630,2004 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Sun Hongwei, Wang Mingwei, “XML-based Schema Translation Method for Relational Data Sharing and Exchanging“, Jisuanji Jicheng Zhizao Xitong/Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems-CIMS, Vol.9, n SUPPL: 127-129+135, 2003 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang shushing, Wang Jian, Yang Bailong, Wang Mingwei, He Yanli, “A STEP-based Method for Product Information Organization Under IIE Circumstance“, Computer Engineering and Applications, Vol.39, No.17: 11-13, 2003 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Sun Hongwei, Wang Mingwei, “A New Translation Algorithm Based on Constraints-Preserved Mapping from Relational Schema to XML Schema“, Journal of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Vol.21, No.3: 373-376, 2003 Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Sun Hongwei, Li Rong, Wang Mingwei, Wang He, “Study and Implementation of Extensible Limit Deviation Automatic Labeling System“, Mechanical Science and Technology, Vol.22, No.2: 312-314, 2003 Wang Mingwei, Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, “A Multi-Agent Based Cooperative Knowledge Based Engineering Framework“, Application Research of Computers, September 2006 Wang Mingwei, Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Chen Yaqi, “Active Information Sharing System Framework Based On Workflow“, Manufacturing Automation, February 2006 Zhao Han, Zhou Jingtao, Zhang Shusheng, Zhang Chao, “Semantic Model Construction Method for Heterogeneous Database Integration“, Jisuanji Jicheng Zhizao Xitong/Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems-CIMS, 2006 (to appear) Zhu Lixin, Zhou Jingtao, Gao Junjie, Zhang Shusheng, “A Study on the Development of Man-hour Ration Based on Artificial Neural Networks”, Mechanical Science and Technology, Vol.23, No.6:702-704+747, 2004 Zhang Chao, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, “A Semantic Modeling Approach for Heterogeneous Data based Protégé Knowledge Model“, Computer Engineering and Applications, December 2006

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(to appear) Zhang Chao, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, “A Requirement Driven Approach for Building Semantic Model, Application Research Of Computers“, May 2006 (to appear) Liu Dongjun, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, “Research and application on the ontology exchange based on PSL“, Machinery Design & Manufacturing, No.10: 81-83, 2005 Dong Xiaofeng, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, Zhao Han, Feng Yun, Tian Zhanqiang, “Semantic Query of Enterprise Data Base on Semantic Model”, Application Research Of Computers, November 2006 (to appear) Sun Hongwei, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, Wang, Jing, “XQuery-to-SQL translation with little dependence on schema mapping between XML and RDB“, Jisuanji Fuzhu Sheji Yu Tuxingxue Xuebao/Journal of Computer-Aided Design and Computer Graphics, Vol.16, No.9: 1301-1306, 2004 Sun Hongwei, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, Wang, Jing, Zhao Han, “Synchronized Update in Data Integration Between XML and RDB Source“, Xibei Gongye Daxue Xuebao/Journal of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Vol.22, No.3: 333-337, 2004 Li Peng, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, et al, “Research on the Information Share of Product’s 3D-Model Based on the Web“, Computer Engineering and Applications, Vol.40, No.13: 46-48, 2004 Sun Hongwei, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, Wang Jing, “Three-Tier Bi-Directional Data Integration Between XML(eXtensible Markup Language) and RDB(Relational Data Base)“, Xibei Gongye Daxue Xuebao/Journal of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Vol.21, No.5: 511-514, 2003 Li Peng, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, “Group technology applied in CAMRS System, Computer Applications“, Vol.23, No.6: 42-43, 2003 Sun Hongwei, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, et al, “Bi-directional Mapping Between XML and Database Based on Model-drive“, Computer Engineering and Applications, Vol.38, No.4:25-27, 2002 Gao Junjie, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, “Application of Hybrid Reasoning Method In Computer-Aided Ration of Man Hour and

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Tools“, Computer Applications, Vol.22, No.12: 37-40, 2002 Gao Junjie, Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Jingtao, “The Design and Implement of the Intelligent Decision Support for CAMRS System“, The Place of Science and Technology for Postgraduate, Northwestern Polytechnical University Publication, 2002 Li Rong, Zhang Shushen, Zhou Jingtao, “Research on Dimension Verification between Part Process Drawing and Design Drawing“, Journal Of Engineering Graphics, Vol.23, No.2:18-22, 2002 He Yanli, Yang Haicheng, He Weiping, Zhou Jingtao, “Information Query for Manufacturing Oriented Resources: Acknowledged Based Approach“, Computer Engineering & Science, Vol.26, No.6: 77-80, 2004 He Yanli, Yang Haicheng, He Weiping, Zhou Jingtao, “Knowledge Integration for Information Integration“, Computer Engineering and Applications, Vol.39, No.4: 38-41, 2003

5.4.2.4. Mick Kerrigan

Name Mick Kerrigan Entry date February 2006 Cluster SEE Objective Component Leader for Developer Tools Box and co-component

leader for discovery box. Projects Project: SEEMP

Role: LFUI Project Coordinator, WP3 Leader, Contributor to deliverables Deliverables: D21 (Contributor): Semantic and Technical Aspects in

e-Gov Software Development D31 (Coordinator): SEEMP Platform Specifications D41 (Contributor): SEEMP Components Design D43 (Contributor): 1st SEEMP Interoperability Framework D51 (Coordinator): Requirements and Specifications Revision D53 (Contributor): Final SEEMP Interoperability Framework D71 (Contributor): Project Presentation D73 (Contributor): Exploitation and Dissemination Plan Project Management Reports

Project: OntoStar Role: LFUI Coordinator Deliverables: None Project: SystemOne Role: LFUI Coordinator Deliverables: None Project: OASIS SEE TC Role: TC Secretary Deliverables: Admin Work, Case Studies and Architecture document

Research topic My research to this date with DERI (in Galway) has focused on development of tools that aid in the adoption of technologies like

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WSMO, WSML and WSMX. At this point this is still my focus and my current project work is reflecting this (It would appear that the LFUI effort in the SEEMP project will focus on enhancing our tools). My aim is that over the next 4 – 6 months to extending the WSMT into a heavily featured toolkit for WSMO, WSML, WSMX, IRSIII and WSDL by using my own skills and those of the other contributors in the “Developer Tools” box, namely Jan Henke, Adrian Mocan, Martin Tanler, Thomas Haselwanter and Nathalie Steinmetz, as well as other resources from other institutes, for example Barry Norton from Open University. More specifically this research focuses on identifying the requirements that ontology engineers have, whether they are advanced users who want to be hands on with the raw syntax or more beginner users who need to be guided through the process in a more graphical way. Once these requirements are identified my focus is on implementing these solutions in the most usable way possible. Thus the aim is to provide high-quality tools that can be used by users of all competency levels. As part of this research I also want to look at current mechanisms for quantitatively analysing the usability of tools (I intend to use Jan as a spring board for this research as I believe he has done a lot of work in this area). This research will include applying these techniques to the WSMT, specifically to analyse how much easier it is to build semantic descriptions using WSMT over tools like WSMO Studio, Onto Studio, and Protégé. I am also contributing to the discovery box where my current aim is to try and look at how users do, should and need to model web services (and goals) in WSMO, in order to achieve goal based discovery of web services, so that we can feed this information back into the design phase. More generally this research interest extends itself in the direction of potentially providing a set of “best practices” for creating WSMO ontologies, web services, goals and mediators, using the WSML language and supporting these best practices through the developer tools.


As I have only been in DERI Innsbruck for a very small period of time and I have only just completed my Masters Thesis, I have not given the topic a huge amount of thought yet. My current plans are to continue working in the Developer Tools research area, actively looking for a good thesis topic, while also reading around the other “boxes” to see what interests me. Some of the crazy thesis ideas:

1) Extension of WSMOViz: further research into how to best represent WSMO choreographies, orchestrations and logical

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expressions graphically. Further research into how to improve the graph scalability problem while still showing all the complexities in the visualization, is also possible.

2) WSML Instance Store: provide a tool for extracting WSMO

ontologies from database schemas and creating database schemas from WSMO ontologies. The mappings created to do this can then be used for runtime extraction of WSMO Instances from an underlying relational database. I know some research has been done on this in the past for other ontology languages and certainly some research on previous efforts would be needed first.

3) WSMX Selection: At the end of last year I wrote a paper

entitled “Web Service Selection Mechanisms in the Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX)” which I will present at the Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) later in April 2006. This paper outlines a number of selection mechanisms for WSMX, automatic, semi-automatic and manual that use non-functional properties along with some group collaborative filtering techniques to provide a ranking over the web services returned by discovery.

4) Web Service Monitoring in WSMX: This falls into a similar

category as the previous thesis idea but looks more at the mechanisms and key performance indications for monitoring the process of invoking a web service as WSMX performs the invocation. This monitoring then allows for the non-functional properties of the web service description to be automatically maintained by WSMX (as obviously a web service cannot be trusted to provide reliable information on its own availability, scalability etc.).

So in short I have not got a clue yet ☺.

Implementations Web Services Modeling Toolkit v0.1 to v0.3 (Java swing version) Web Services Modeling Toolkit v1.0 to v1.2 (Eclipse based) including plugins:

- WSML Plug-in - WSML Text Editor Plug-in - WSML Vizualizer Plug-in - Abstract Mapping Language Plug-in - Abstract Mapping Language Text Editor Plug-in - WSMX Management Plug-in

Publications Papers

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Xia Wang, Tomas Vitvar, Mick Kerrigan and Ioan Toma: A QoS aware Selection Model for Semantic Web Services, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC), December, 2006, Chicago, USA (Awaiting Publication) Adrian Mocan, Emilia Cimpian and Mick Kerrigan: A Formal Model for Ontology Mapping Creation, Proceedings of the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), November 2006, Athens, Georgia, USA (Awaiting Publication) Mick Kerrigan: WSMOViz: An Ontology Visualization Approach for WSMO, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Visualization (IV), July, 2006, London, England Mick Kerrigan: Web Service Selection Mechanisms in the Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX), Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), Apr, 2006, Dijon, France Tomas Vitvar, Mick Kerrigan, Arnold van Overeem, Vassilios Peristeras and Konstantinos Tarabanis: Infrastructure for the Semantic Pan-European E-government Services, Proceedings of the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium on The Semantic Web meets eGovernment (SWEG), Mar, 2006, Stanford University, California, USA Mick Kerrigan: The Need for a Manual Web Service Selection Mechanism in the Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX), Proceedings of the 1st CIMRU, DERI, HP Research Seminar (CDH), Dec, 2005, Galway, Ireland Mick Kerrigan: The WSML Editor Plug-in to the Web Services Modeling Toolkit, Proceedings of the 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW), Jun, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria. Emilia Cimpian and Mick Kerrigan: WSMX Process Mediation, Proceedings of the 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW), Jun, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria. Book Chapters Michal Zaremba, Mick Kerrigan, Adrian Mocan and Matt Moran: Web Services Modeling Ontology. In: Jorge Cardoso and Amit Sheth (eds.) Semantic Web Services, Processes and Applications. Theses

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Mick Kerrigan (Masters Thesis), WSMOViz: An Ontology Visualization Approach for the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO), National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), March, 2006 Mick Kerrigan (Bachelors Thesis), I-Spy A 2nd Generation Meta Search Engine, University College Dublin (UCD), April, 2001 Tutorials Liliana Cabral, Mick Kerrigan and Maciej Zaremba: Semantic Web Service Systems, European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), June, 2006, Budva, Montenegro Mick Kerrigan, Adrian Mocan and Michal Zaremba: Applying Semantics to Service Oriented Architecture, OASIS Symposium "The Meaning of Interoperability" May, 2006, San Francisco, California, USA Semantic Web Service Systems and Tools, 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), Nov, 2005, Galway, Ireland Posters/Demos Jos de Bruijn and Mick Kerrigan: Tools for the Web Services Modeling Language (WSML), International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML), Nov, 2005, Galway, Ireland

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5.4.2.5. Adrian Mocan

Name Adrian Mocan Entry date February 2006 Cluster Semantic Execution Environment – SEE Objective - Data Mediation - Leader

- Developer Tools - Leading the work on the Ontology Mapping Plug-in

Projects 1 SemanticGov (FP6-2004-IST-4-027517) The main workpackages DERI Innsbruck is involved are starting only in the second half of 2006. As I am the responsible person from DERI Innsbruck side in this project I will probably be involved in most of them (at least for coordination purposes). Please finnd a least tasks and deliverables in this workpackages below: Tasks - Task 3.1 Application of WSM* to SemanticGov services version 1 - Task 3.2 Development of Mediator Support version 1 - Task 3.3 Application of WSM* to SemanticGov services version 2 - Task 3.4 Development of Mediator Support version 2 - Task 5.1 Design of the SemanticGov software components - Task 5.2 Implementation of the SemanticGov software components

v1 - Task 5.3 Implementation of the SemanticGov software components

v2 Deliverables - D3.1 SemanticGov Architecture v.1 - D3.2 SemanticGov Architecture v.2 - D3.3 Analysis of Mediator Requirements and Mediator

Implementation - D5.1 Design and development of SemanticGov software

components v.1 - D5.2 Design and development of SemanticGov software

components v.2 Tasks - Task 2.4.13 Data Mediation in Semantic Web Services

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Deliverables - D2.4.13. Data Mediation in Semantic Web Services (report +

prototype) Research topic My research work has taken place so far in the context of Semantic

Web Services. I was actively involved in WSMX design and development even from the beginning of this working group. My interests in WSMX are related to integration problems (data and process mediation, lifting and lowering, grounding) as well as in work-flow related aspects (choreography and orchestration). As WSMX is a reference implementation for WSMO, another point of interest for me is to keep an eye on the conceptual work done in WSMO as well as on the development of WSML. Out of the research work done in WSMX (or SEE), Service Oriented Architecture has become as well an appealing research topic for me. In the last couples of months through the OASIS SEE TC, SemanticGov project and the SEE cluster in general, I was involved in the work regarding on Semantic Service Oriented Architecture (or Semantic Enabled Service Architecture - SESA). This work tries to give shape to a new architecture that fully benefits of the advantages of the semantics and fully exploits the best practices coming from industry. While the research interests presented above define the context in which I carry on my work, my main interest, and the one my PhD thesis will be based upon, is Data Mediation. Data mediation has been a well explored area (e.g. in the data base communities) but in the context of Semantic Web and Semantic Web services it brings new challenges as well as new opportunities. Data heterogeneity remains a problem even in the context of Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services. That is, different conceptualization of the same domain (i.e. ontologies) might be used in describing the data used by various parties, making the interchange of such data impossible. In this context, the advantage compared with previous attempts in solving data mismatches is that ontologies better described the data to be mediated. As such, the ontologies offer the means to solve the heterogeneity problems at the schema level and to use the bindings on the actual data during run-time processes. The schema mapping process can fully benefit from the semantic descriptions present in the ontologies, transforming a manual and error-prone task, in a semi-automatic (machine assisted) or even an automatic one. As presented above this work is been carried out as part of WSMX. The main requirement of such a component is to automatically perform semantic transformations of the incoming data from a form of representation used by the source in the representation required by the target. Due to the fact that this mediation scenario is performed in

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semantic environment, one of the main assumptions was that all the data passed through the system is semantically described. From a more technical point of view, this means that data to be mediated is represented by instances of the ontology used by the source party and accordingly, the mediated data would be expressed in terms of the target ontology. Another element that influenced the design decisions of WSMX Data mediation component has been the business orientation of the framework: WSMX has intended to act in a business environment and all the outputs of the framework in general and of its components in particular are expected to be 100% accurate. As a consequence, the output of the data mediator have to be correct and in concordance with users expectations. The data mediation in WSMX includes two phases: a design-time and a run-time phase. The design-time phase deals with finding and resolving the mismatches between the ontologies used to describe the exchanged data, while the run-time phase uses these findings in performing the actual transformation on the data. The first phase is covered by a semi-automatic mapping tool that allows the domain expert to create mappings between ontologies and to make them available for further usages. The mapping tool is a semi-automatic one because it assists the human domain expert in his work by offering suggestion and guidance in obtaining the desired result. The second phase is performed by the actual WSMX Data Mediation component that uses the mappings created during design-time and apply them on the incoming data. Such an approach assures that as long as correct mappings are available data mediation can be automatically and correctly performed inside the WSMX framework.


The thesis focuses on a set of strategies and enhancements of the classical approach towards ontology mapping tools and run-time mediation components. It also proposes a formal model that unites the conceptual models of the design-time and run-time tools, improving and making more explicit the process of translating the domain expert inputs (placed in a graphical interface) to the logical formalism that is to be executed by the run-time tool. Most of the work I have done in this direction, is captured in the implementation of the graphical mapping tool or of the run-time component. Still, there are project deliverables and publications (unfortunately more deliverables and less publications) that give a conceptual overview of this work. Those deliverables and publications will represent a starting point for the actual content of the thesis document. The first cut of the formal model has been finished but it still has to be extended and fully synchronized with the conceptual model behind the design-time and run-time mediation solutions. Another important point is to concretely prove the usefulness of this formal model, other then validation of and aws detection in the conceptual

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model of this mediation solution. The list below summarizes the work-status of the three main aspects presented above: - Early work on state of the art - Scattered documentation and conceptual level descriptions - Quite well advance implementation but no evaluation yet - First cut of the formal model; it still needs a better motivation and

to be further extended Implementations WSMT Ontology Mapping Tool - available at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsmt WSMX Data Mediation Component - available at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsmx

Publications Book Chapters Michal Zaremba, Matthew Moran, Adrian Mocan, Emilia Cimpian, Mick Kerrigan: Web Service Modeling Ontology. In Cardoso, J. and Amit Sheth (eds.), Semantic Web Services, Processes and Applications, 2006, Springer, ISBN: 0-38730239-5 Dimitru Roman, Jos de Bruijn, Adrian Mocan, Ioan Toma, Holger Lausen, Jacek Kopecky, Dieter Fensel, John Domingue, Stefania Galizia, Liliana Cabral: Semantic Web Services - Approaches and Perspectives. In J. Davies, P. Warren, and R. Studer (eds.), Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems, June, 2006. Workshop and Conference Papers T. Vitvar, A. Mocan, V. Peristeras. Pan-European E-Government Services on the Semantic Web Services, Workshop on E-Government: Barriers and Opportunities, May 2006, Edinburgh, Scotland M. Stollberg, E. Cimpian, A. Mocan, D. Fensel. A Semantic Web Mediation Architecture. Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium (CSWWS 2006), June 2006, Québec city, Canada A. Mocan, E. Cimpian. Mapping Creation Using a View Based Approach. 1st International Workshop on Mediation in Semantic Web Services (Mediate 2005), December 2005, Amsterdam, Netherlands E. Cimpian, A. Mocan. WSMX Process Mediation Based on Choreographies. 1st International Workshop on Web Service

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Choreography and Orchestration for Business Process Management (BPM 2005), September 2005, Nancy, France K. Verma, A. Mocan, M. Zaremba, A. Sheth, J. A. Miller: Linking Semantic Web Service Efforts, In Proceedings of the ICWS 2005 Second International Workshop on Semantic and Dynamic Web Processes (SDWP 2005). Orlando, Florida, 2005. A. Haller, E. Cimpian, A. Mocan, E. Oren, C. Bussler. WSMX - A Semantic Service-Oriented Architecture, International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2005), 12-15 July, 2005, Orlando, Florida, USA M. Moran, A. Mocan. Towards Translating between XML and WSML based on mappings between XML Schema and an equivalent WSMO Ontology. 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), 6-7th June, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria M. Moran, M. Zaremba, A. Mocan and C. Bussler. Using WSMX to bind Requester & Provider at Runtime when Executing Semantic Web services, In Proceedings of the 1st WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW2004). Frankfurt, Germany, 2004. Posters M. Moran, A. Mocan. WSMX – An Architecture for Semantic Web Service Discovery, Mediation and Invocation. 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004), 7-11 November 2004, Hiroshima, Japan A. Mocan, M. Zaremba; Mediation in Web Service Modeling Execution Environment (WSMX), Information Integration on the Web Workshop (iiWeb2004), Conference on Very Large Data Bases VLDB2004, August 2004.

5.4.2.6. Omair Shafiq

Name Omair Shafiq Entry Date January 2006 Cluster Semantic Executive Environment - SEE Objective Storage & Communication Projects TSC Project – Past and Current Work

Work Package 1 – TSC Framework D1.3: Specification of Mediation, Discovery and Data Models for Triple Space Computing T1.3: Specify how discovery and mediation works in TSC Work Package 2 – Interoperability and Architecture D2.3: Design of Mediation and Query Engine components for Triple Spaces T2.1: Design of the mediation and query engine components. T2.3: Overall Architecture Design. Work Package 4 – Case Study / Application of TSC in WSMX (leading the work package) D4.1: Integration of WSMX and TSC T4.1: Define the integration of WSMX in Triple Space Computing and vice versa D4.2: WSMX/TSC Prototype T4.2: Develop a WSMX Triple Space prototype T4.3: Evaluation and Validation of TSC technologies

TripCom Project – Future work (as TripCom project starts)

Work Package 2 - Triple Space Knowledge Representation D2.1: Representing RDF semantics in tuples T1.1: Specification of representation of RDF triple semantics in tuples D2.2: Specification of Triple Space ontology T2.2: Specification of representation of Triple Spaces through an ontology

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Work Package 4 - Triple Space and Semantic Web services D4.1: Architectural integration of triple spaces with web service infrastructures T4.1: Deployment of Web service infrastructure in a Triple Space D4.2: TripCom Grounding for Semantic Web Services T4.2: Mapping of Web service communication into a Triple Space D4.3: Methodology for adopting Semantic Web Services in a Triple Space environment T4.5: Analysis of approaches for the mapping of data, message, and protocol mediation in a Triple Space T4.3: Implementation of Web service registry mechanisms in a Triple Space D4.4: Methodology for augmenting Semantic Web Services with WS-* standards T4.4: Analysis of WS-* standards and how they map into a Triple Space environment D4.5: Triple Space integration with respect to WSMX (a semantic web services platform) T4.6: Integration and evaluation of Triple Space within WSMX Work Package 5 - Security and Trust D5.1: Requirement analysis and state-of-the-art T5.1: Requirement analysis and state-of-the-art of Web security and trust in distributed systems D5.2: Definition of security and trust support model for the reference architecture. T5.2: Definition of security and trust support model for the Triple Space. Work Package 6 - Triple Space Architecture and Component Integration D6.2: Triple Space reference architecture. T6.2: Identification of all components of the architecture including requirements on and responsibilities of the components D6.3: Platform API specification for interaction between all components. T6.3: Evaluation, selection and definition of necessary extensions of existing space middleware technologies

Grisino Project – Future work (as a part of M12 of the project, September/October

Work Package 3 – Semantic Web Services and Grid D3.2: Design and Specification of Integrated Services (SWS and

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Grid Services) T3.1: Survey and gathering of requirements for SWS and Grid based infrastructure

Research topic The main focus of my research topic is to fulfill requirements of TSC, TripCom and Grisino projects along with the WSMX/SEE development plan, details given in section 1.1. Along with this, I am also working on related ideas, details given in section 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. 1.1 Triple Space Computing for WSMX (Projects: TSC and TripCom) The Triple Space Computing has been realized as a middleware for communication and coordination middleware for different semantic web applications using RDF triples. Aim of my research is to use the Triple Space Computing middleware (we call Triple Space Kernel) for communication and coordination in Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX). It will address several issues that how and where exactly the TSC Kernel should be accommodated in the WSMX and then used for communication and coordination within the platform services of one WSMX node and for different WSMX nodes forming a WSMX cluster. 1.1.1 For communication and coordination within a WSMX In order to encapsulate Triple Space Kernel inside WSMX, a number of issues are needed to be solve, i.e. (1) RDF storage in the Resource Manager of WSMX, (2) Interfacing Triple Space Kernel with Resource Manager to provide persistent storage of triples, (3) Interfacing Triple Space Kernel with Execution Manager (WSMX core) to enable it manage the other WSMX components (platform services) communication via triple space and (4) Interfacing Triple Space Kernel with Communication Manger to provide triple space grounding for communication and coordination of service requestors with WSMX via triple space. 1.1.2 For communication and coordination of multiple interconnected WSMX nodes forming a WSMX cluster The next step after encapsulating Triple Space Kernel in WSMX is to enable coordination of different TS Kernels (using extended CORSO as TS-CORSO) to realize inter WSMX communication and coordination to form a WSMX cluster to support distributed service discovery, selection, composition etc. Different Triple Space Kernels residing in each WSMX node will coordinate with other kernels (using its coordination layer) to provide a single virtual space for different WSMX nodes to communicate with each other and in asynchronous manner thus helps decoupling the components with reference to time, space and location.

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1.2 Potential of W<Triple> in Grid Computing for Semantic Grid (Projects: Grisino) The aim of this research is to show the viability of Semantic Web Services and Triple Space Computing to realize the Semantic Grid vision and fulfill its core requirements, i.e. (1) Dynamic formation and management of Virtual Organizations, (2) Service negotiation and contract formation, (3) Metadata and semantic annotation and (4) Communication infrastructure for semantics in Grid. The goal to find out conceptual correlation between WSMO/L/X and OGSA and its concrete realization by comparing and relating WSMX with Grid Toolkits (i.e. Globus Grid Toolkit) to make them stand together. Moreover, Triple Space Computing is not just limited to Semantic Web Services, but also for Semantic Grid due to some similarity in the nature of requirements of both. 1.3 Software Agents interoperation with Semantic Web Services In context of recent updates in roadmap of Software Agents community to adapt Web standards, the aim of this research is to align Software Agents and Multi Agent Systems specifications with that of Semantic Web Services as Software Agents are being foreseen as potential user of Semantic Web Services in order to interact with semantic descriptions of SWS to autonomously discover, select, compose, invoke and execute the services based on user requirements. The goal is to fulfill a communication gap among both by making Multi Agent Systems adapt SWS standards. The even more important goal is to come up an EU or Austrian funding proposal out of it by proposing a roadmap to achieve this, i.e. an initial proposition of set of tasks at work package level could be (1) Requirements specifications, (2) Conceptual Analysis of both (Software Agents and Semantic Web Services), (3) Design and specification of SWS and MAS Interoperability Architecture, (4) Prototype Implementation, (5) Case Study for Software Agents interaction with Semantic Web Services and (6) Project dissemination and management plans. 1.4 A Geographical Monitoring Service for Web Service Monitoring Execution Environment It is a short term research where I intend to supervise a UIBK UG student (if allowed to do so) to develop a “geographical monitoring service for WSMX” which monitors and visualizes monitoring information of inter WSMX communication of multiple interconnected WSMX nodes deployed widely across the globe.


I am in the initial phase of my PhD where my goal is to learn and familiarize myself as much as possible with the WSMO/L/X

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concepts and technologies (which can be considered as literature review). In order to make my literature review useful for on-going activities in DERI and specifically SEE cluster, I

• Identified viability of the Triple Space Computing in Semantic Grid research, paper in 3rd Semantic Grid Workshop at Global Grid Forum 16 (GGF).

• With the discussions and inputs from all SEE members, carried out a detailed comparison of WSMX with OWL-S execution environments and prepared a conference publication out of it which is under review at ASWC 2006.

• Contributed in writing a book chapter with other SEE members to provide WSMX/SEE components functionality definitions and details.

• Contributing in Execution Semantics deliverable of OASIS SEE Technical Committee along with members from Open University and DERI Galway.

My area of contribution in SEE research and development plan (as being SEE cluster member and being involved in TSC and TripCom projects) is to provide WSMX with Triple Space Computing support. Along with this, I am working on putting more stuff in my (above mentioned) research topics. With this, I will able to finalize a mutually agreed PhD thesis topic (that could add maximum possible value to our on-going research and development, specifically SEE cluster) in next two to three months.

Implementations Triple Space Kernel in WSMX The objective is to develop a prototype of integration of Triple Space Kernel in Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX) as one of the major outcomes of TSC project. Currently, I am working on the architectural integration of WSMX with Triple Space Computing where I propose the interfacing of Triple Space Kernel with Execution Manager, Communication Manager and Resource Manager. It further describes that how exactly the Triple Space Kernel will be used for communication and coordination within a WSMX node and among multiple WSMX nodes forming a WSMX cluster followed by a case study about processing of execution semantics, communication of external service requesters with WSMX and invocation of external services over the triple space. In short, this work will provide detailed and concrete guidelines (recipe) for implementation of the “WSMX with TSC” prototype. It can be used in the “Semantic Web Services Architecture and Information Model” as working draft of OASIS Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) Technical Committee. The reference implementation is For further programming support, Graham Hench and Michael Luger

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have shown interest to join me in developing the prototype. Publications Omair Shafiq, Ioan Toma, Reto Krummenacher, Thomas Strang,

Dieter Fensel, "Using Triple Space Computing for communication and coordination in Semantic Grid", 3rd GGF Semantic Grid Workshop, Global Grid forum 16 (GGF16), February 2006, held at Athens Greece. Omair Shafiq, Emilia Campian, Matthew Moran, Adrian Mocan, Brahmananda Sapkota, Michal Zaremba, Dieter Fensel, “A comparison between WSMX and OWL-S environment” in 1st Asian Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2006), to be held in September 2006, Beijing China. (Submitted) Johannes Riemer, Francisco Martin-Recuerda, Ying Ding, Martin Murth, Brahmananda Sapkota, Reto Krummenacher, Omair Shafiq, Dieter Fensel and Eva Kühn, Triple Space Computing: Adding Semantics to Space-based Computing in 1st Asian Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2006), to be held in September 2006, Beijing China. (Submitted) Book Chapter: Michal Zaremba, Emilia Cimpian, Mick Kerrigan, Adrian Mocan, Omair Shafiq, Matthew Moran, Christoph Bussler, Semantic B2B Integration, SpringerLink Chapter. OASIS SEE TC on-going Working Draft: John Domingue, Barry Norton, Omair Shafiq, Maciej Zaremba, Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) Execution Semantics deliverable, An OASIS SEE Technical Committee working draft. Proposals for Workshop and Tutorial organization: Contributing to organize workshops and giving tutorials is an interesting experience which I want to have. So far, I got a chance to learn this by helping Ying in writing two workshop proposals: Semantic Web Applications Workshop proposal in ASWC 2006, Beijing China. EASTWEB Semantic Web education and training Workshop proposal in ASWC 2006, Beijing China.

5.4.2.7. Adina Sirbu

Name Adina Sirbu Entry date October 2005 Cluster Semantic Execution Environment - SEE Objective Discovery Projects 1. ASG

I am currently working on the refinement of the WSML/Flora-2 reasoner prototype used within the project. The second version of this prototype is part of the ASG deliverable D1.I-6 (WSML reasoner engine implementation 2nd release). The tasks are mainly solicited by ASG component C-2, and refer to the deployment of the prototype (providing a maven build for it and Linux, MacOS and Solaris support), the overall interaction with the prototype (for example allowing stateless interaction with the reasoner) and specific tasks related to the discovery extension of this prototype (for example: identification of services with semantically equivalent specifications, implementation of an internal mechanism to handle services with negative effects and so on). 2. DIP Responsible for implementation of the Discovery module prototype. This prototype will follow the specification in DIP deliverable D4.8 and will be used for the DIP deliverable D4.14 (Discovery module prototype). It will be part of the WSMX Discovery module; the level is discovery based on simple descriptions of services. 3. SemBiz I will take over WP2 (Semantic Business Process Querying, Discovery, and Composition), and correspondingly the deliverables: D2.1: State of the Art and Requirements on Semantic Querying, Discovery, and Composition D2.2: Semantic Business Process Querying, Discovery, and Composition Framework D2.3: Prototype Implementation

Research topic To a certain extent, my first months here have been an adaptation period. I am trying to be open to all subjects that are currently under research within the DERI community, and also to familiarize myself with the work that is being done/has already been done by the team.

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However, in order to prevent a too scattered approach to a PhD, I have chosen the area of service discovery as main interest. The main drive became understanding the conceptual solutions to this problem, with a special interest to the WSMO Discovery solution and the different steps involved in the process of locating services: goal discovery, web service discovery and service discovery. When referring to web service discovery, the theoretical specification of the approaches (keyword-based, lightweight, heavyweight) leaves place for much interpretation, especially when it comes to designing a running prototype. However, because of my recentness in this field, I cannot yet define a research problem that is at the same time worthy of a PhD and also solvable within three years of research work.


By implementing specifications for different discovery engines, I am learning the flaws and the tradeoffs of such proposals. I see my approach so far as learning by doing. My goal is, after gaining enough knowledge and experience, to design a solution that is theoretically valid but that is also feasible. From my current position, I see two main difficulties in the future progress towards a PhD. One of them will be to decide when the critical amount of knowledge and experience has been reached. The other will be to make sure that my PhD proposal actually brings enough novelty to the area. In these problems the research community will play an important role. By that I understand keeping in touch with related research through articles, research seminars, and informal conversations with people that have already contributed to the subject. But I assume the key role will be played by a supervisor, and more precisely his opinion on the worthiness and attainability of my solution.

Implementations ASG – I have collaborated to the first release of the WSML/Flora-2 reasoner engine (included in ASG deliverable D1.I-4). Currently, I am responsible for integrating the reasoner in the ASG platform. This implies continuously refining the prototype and providing support for all implementation issues.

DIP – Implementing the Discovery module prototype (included in DIP deliverable D4.14) based on the specifications in DIP deliverable D4.8. This prototype will be part of the WSMX Discovery component, corresponding to discovery at the level of simple descriptions of services.

Publications No publications so far

5.4.2.8. Zhixian Yan

Name Zhixian YAN Entry date August 2006 Cluster SEE (Semantics Execution Environment) Objective Making Semantics Real Projects SemBiz (Semantic Business Process Management for flexible

dynamic value chains) Research topic Semantic Web Service, Semantic Business Process Management Progress towards PhD

Just a beginner!

Implementations Publications

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8 Michal Zaremba 5.4.3.1. Michal Zaremba

Name Michal Zaremba Entry date February 2006 Cluster SEE Objective My role is to provide the coordination focal point for the rest of the

team. I am co-chairing OASIS SEE Technical Committee, which specifies functionality and interface for SEE components and execution semantics of the whole system.

Figure 5.4.3.1.1. SESA architecture

Projects Since its settling on Austrian soil, SEE cluster has got involved in

many projects. While I am personally not involved in all of them, an enormous portion of my time is consumed at this stage by advising my researchers on how to deal with problems and how to progress in these projects and to prepare new project proposals (NFN, SUN Excellence Center etc).

1. SUPER As it is still before kick-off meeting, I can only at this stage say in which workpackages SEE cluster is involved not me personally, as I

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still do not have a detailed plan with division of work per each person: WP1 SBPM Ontology WP2 SP life Cycle (SEBIS cluster is responsible to lead WP1, but SEE cluster takes the responsibility for D1.4) WP4 BP Mediation WP5 Modeling Analysis Tools WP5 Modeling Analysis Tools WP6 SBPM Execution Engine WP11 Community, Standards WP12 Dissemination (shared - both clusters take care; SEBIS cluster takes care of D12.3) Deliverables for SEE cluster (I will be probably directly only involved in D1.4 and D12.3, but quite possible I will also have to take care of Architecture, which is at this stage assigned to Galway)

D1.4 Process Ontology Query Language (SEE cluster) D6.3 Process Ontology Reasoner (SEE cluster) D12.3 Dissemination Strategy and SDK Activities (SEE cluster)

2. DIP

Deliverables which I am involved: D6.11 Semantic Web Services Architecture and Information Model D6.14 Semantic Web Services Architecture and Information Model D9.7 GIS Prototype v 1.0 D9.13 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) v.2.0

D9.14 SWS Enhanced GIS Prototype (WSMX) Final Version

3. SemBiz

We resubmitted SemBiz proposal

D11 - BPMO Requirements Analysis and Design D12 - BPMO version 1 D13 - BPMO version 2

4. SEEMP

No direct involvement yet. I promised Mick to join some of the meetings.

5. ASG Helping Emilia and Adina to run this project

6. TripleSpace

No direct involvement. I am helping Omair and Reto to figure out on how to use results of this project in WSMX.

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7. AsiaLink At this stage responsible for organization of Demo Session during ASWC2005. In the future participating in exchanges.

8. Tripcom No direct involvement. I am helping Omair and Reto to figure out on how to use results of this project in WSMX.

9. SemGov

No direct involvement. Advising Adrian. Helping with organization of some events e.g. WSMO/WSML/WSMX tutorial for SemGov project partners.

Research topic Enterprises’ information systems have been the subject of great changes in the last number of years. In order to adjust to the more dynamic demands of business, a new concept/paradigm has been introduced to replace traditional monolithic applications, namely the service. Information systems have to be re-tailored to fit this paradigm, with new applications being developed as services or old legacy systems being exposed via service interfaces. By this (and other auxiliary changes) the information system as a whole becomes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Such an approach offers a set of advantages that come with SOA’s (loose coupling between components, well defined interfaces, peer-to-peer interactions, etc) but it doesn’t solve all the interoperability problems that existed with classical applications. Inside of a particular SOA, independent services offering the same functionality should be seamlessly interchangeable with each other. Such services can have different vendors, and as a consequence, different peculiarities; hard-coded adapters to enable this plug-in and plug-out mechanism would be quite expensive especially when such points of adaptation have to be maintained and updated on frequent basis. My research in DERI is going to focus on the infrastructure for a Common Service Layer. By making the semantics a central player, the already recognized benefits of SOA can be enhanced to a level where flexible and dynamic solution towards organizing, managing and handling business interaction can be developed. In this SOA, semantics will be used in describing both the services offered by enterprises and the requests of parties interested in consuming their capabilities. Also the data to be exchanged between the business partners can be unambiguously semantically described in terms of ontologies. Following the SOA principle, the infrastructure will consists of independent components, each of them performing a discrete piece of functionality, interconnected by an event driven mechanism. The infrastructure for a Common Service Layer represents a framework capable of managing all the aspects related to

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semantically enhanced Web services, to enable their discovery, selection, composition, mediation and execution. This infrastructure will become an information system built according to the SOA principles that allows business entities to advertise and expose their own services or to consume other partners’ services, giving the illusion of a heterogeneity free environment


No progress toward Habil has been undertaken yet. Michal has just accomplished and defended his Ph.D. two years ago. His previous work was in area of a registry based approach to e-business in the agri-food sector. Thesis deals mainly with the integration and heterogeneity issues across virtual supply chains. The thesis reviewed existing technologies for integration and proposed an innovative solution involving ebXML specification and especially ebXML registry/repository standards, which was adjusted to specific conditions shaping agri-food industry in Ireland. All the functionality of the delivered toolkit was analysed from the perspective of the requirements of the selected end-user – an Irish manufacturer from the beverages sector. This work has not been further continued as thesis accomplished.

Implementations Web Services Execution Environment Web Services Execution Environment (WSMX) is a sample

implementation of the Web Services Modelling Ontology (WSMO). WSMX Core is a release of the compiled core of WSMX, along with a set of mock up components that implement the different interfaces in the WSMX Integration API.

Role in the project: project leader Number of developers: 20 Website: http://www.wsmx.org;

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsmx WSMX Integration API The WSMX Integration API is a collection of libraries required

for the integration of loosely coupled components with the main WSMX system. Components must implement interfaces from the provided infomodel to make this integration possible.

Role in the project: project leader Number of developers: direct 4; indirect around 30 contributors Website:

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=113321&package_id=154563

ebXML registry/repository – free ebXML (past) The goal of the ebxmlrr project was to deliver a functionally

complete reference implementation for the OASIS ebXML Registry specifications as defined by the OASIS ebXML

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Registry Technical Committee Role in the project: developer Number of developers: 40 Website: http://ebxmlrr.sourceforge.net/;

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ebxmlrr Semantic Agent (past) The goal of the Semantic Agent (2003) was to build a simple

semantic agent toolkit exchanging semantic information in peer-to-peer network

Role in the project: project leader Number of developers: 5

MOMENT Key Performance Indicator Toolkit (past) The goal of the Moment project was to apply a methodology to

support rapid establishment and efficient operations of new Extended Enterprise. Delivered Key Performance Indicator Toolkit was a visualization tool to represent in various forms key data generated through supply chains.

Role in the project: software development leader Number of developers: 2 Website: http://moment.nuigalway.ie

Publications M. Burstein, C. Bussler, M. Zaremba, T. Finin, M. Huhns, M. Paolucci, A. Sheth, S. Williams: A Semantic Web Services Architecture. IEEE Internet Computing. Vol. 9, No. 5, September, October 2005 M. Zaremba, M. Moran, M. Kerrigan, A. Mocan, book chapter on Web Services Modeling Ontology in Semantic Web Processes and Their Applications edited by Jorge Cardoso and Amit Sheth; to be published by Springer M. Zaremba, C. Bussler: Towards Dynamic Execution Semantics in Semantic Web Services, In Proceedings of the Workshop on Web Service Semantics: Towards Dynamic Business Integration, International Conference on the World Wide Web (WWW2005). Chiba, Japan, 2005. M. Zaremba, M. Moran. Enabling Execution of Semantic Web Services: WSMX Core Platform, In Proceedings of the 1st WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW2004). Frankfurt, Germany, 2004. K. Verma, A. Mocan, M. Zaremba, A. Sheth, J. A. Miller: Linking Semantic Web Service Efforts, In Proceedings of the ICWS 2005 Second International Workshop on Semantic and Dynamic Web Processes (SDWP 2005). Orlando, Florida, 2005

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T. Haselwanter, Maciej Zaremba and Michal Zaremba. Enabling Components Management and Dynamic Execution Semantic in WSMX. WSMO Implementation Workshop 2005 (WIW 2005), 6-7 June, Innsbruck, Austria. S. Arroyo, C. Bussler, J. Kopecký, R. Lara, A. Polleres, M. Zaremba, Web Service Capabilities and Constraints in WSMO. W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities for Web Services. Redwood Shores, CA, USA, 2004. E. Oren, A. Wahler, B. Schreder, A. Balaban, M. Zaremba, and M. Zaremba, Demonstrating WSMX: Least Cost Supply Management, 1st WSMO Implementation Workshop, Frankfurt, Germany, 2004. L. Vasiliu, M. Zaremba, M. Moran, C. Bussler ; Web-Service Semantic Enabled Implementation of Machine vs. Machine Business Negotiation,; 2004 IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC 2004), San Diego, USA. A. Mocan, M. Zaremba; Mediation in Web Service Modeling Execution Environment (WSMX), Information Integration on the Web Workshop (iiWeb2004), Conference on Very Large Data Bases VLDB2004, August 2004. M. Moran, M. Zaremba, A. Mocan and C. Bussler. Using WSMX to bind Requester & Provider at Runtime when Executing Semantic Web Services, In Proceedings of the 1st WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW2004). Frankfurt, Germany, 2004.

Tutorials

The Fifth International Conference on Semantic Web Services (ISWC2005), November 2005, Galway, Ireland - Semantic Web Services Systems and Tools The Fifth International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE 2005), July 2005, Sydney, Australia – Semantic Web Services: A Conceptual Model, Language and Execution Environment 2nd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2005), May 2005, Crete, Greece – Semantic Web Services Tutorial

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The Fourth International Conference on Semantic Web Services (ISWC2004), November 2004, Hiroshima, Japan - OWL-S and WSMO OASIS Symposium on the Future of XML Vocabularies, New Orleans, USA, April 24, 2004 - http://www.oasis-pen.org/events/symposium_2005/ NetObjectDays 2004, 27 September 2004, Erfurt, Germany – The Web Services Modeling Ontology - WSMO 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applications (AIMSA 2004), 01 September 2004, Varna, Bulgaria – The Web Services Modeling Ontology – WSMO

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6. Ubiquitous Services Cluster (UbiServ) In the following we describe the UbiServ cluster in general terms, in terms of the objectives it takes care, in terms of the project it takes care, and in terms of its members. 6.1. General Description Name Ubiquitous Services Acronym UbiServ Web site http://ubiserv.deri.org Leader Thomas Strang Team Senior Researchers:

Michael Jäger Axel Polleres Thomas Strang Junior Researchers: Jacek Kopecky Reto Krummenacher Ioan Toma Students: -

Objectives (5) Adaptation, (9) Grounding, (14) Storage & Communication Projects Grisino, SWING, TripCom Mission Ubiquitous Computing is the most recent evolution step in an evolution

chain characterizing different eras of internetworked computer systems. Building on the properties of Mobile Computing and Distributed Computing systems, Ubiquitous Computing systems are further characterized by at least three salient properties: context-awareness, ad-hoc networking as well as smart sensors and devices. From a service perspective, enhancements in the three respective research areas should enable a transition from the mobile services paradigm which is “any service for any person at any time and anywhere (at any cost)” to the more desirable ubiquitous services paradigm which is “the right service for the right person at the right time and at the right place (and with the right price)”. In our cluster we elaborate on the challenges of services in the emerging field of Ubiquitous Computing. This includes research on service description, discovery, distribution, deployment, composition and execution in Ubiquitous Computing environments. An important aspect is the area of ontology-based context modelling and retrieval as a key enabler of context-aware service discovery and execution technology in Ubiquitous Computing environments.

Major Everything related to teaching

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tasks and deliverables

(Project related tasks to be taken from PhD student's input)

6.2. Objectives

• (5) Adaptation, • (9) Grounding, • (14) Storage & Communication

6.2.1. Adaptation Nr 6 Title Adaption Mission statement

After discovering a set of potentially useful services, the Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) needs to check whether the services can actually fulfill the user's concrete goal and under what conditions. Those that cannot fulfill the goal are removed from the list of discovered services. This step is required as it is not feasible for a service to provide an exhaustive semantic description. Giving the Amazon bookstore service as an example, it is not feasible for Amazon to update the semantic description of their Web service every time a new book is available or an existing book is changed, therefore we must check that Amazon actually currently has a copy of the book requested by the user, and at an acceptable price. The process of checking whether and under what conditions a service can fulfill a concrete Goal is called negotiation in SEE, and it also encompasses so-called filtering. Once a list of Web services than can fulfill the user's concrete goal is prepared, the SEE must then choose one of the services to invoke. It is important that this selection is tailored to the user's needs, as for example while one user may require high quality another may prefer low price. This process is called selection. Negotiation, filtering and selection are tasks of the Adaptation

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=Adaptation Leader Ioan Toma Cluster Ubiquitous Services Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Jacek Kopecky (Negotiation) Ioan Toma (NFP, Filtering, Selection)

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Students: -


Possibly Grisino for NFP/Filtering, none yet for Negotiation

Current Status

Negotiation is not an explicit part of any DERI project as far as I know, I'm looking into incorporating negotiation into SUPER. NFP/Filtering: WSMO D28.4

Future Steps measurable results are the following functionalities: * checking which of the discovered Web services can fulfill the

user's concrete goal * finding out the non-functional properties related to the concrete

goal, e.g. the currently applicable price of the service * potentially also dynamic negotiation of such properties, e.g. the

best trade-off between quality of service and the respective price * filtering discovered Web services based on user's NFP constraints * selecting the most suitable Web service (or ordering them

according to suitability) with respect to the preferences of the user Negotiation (Jacek): I plan to write and submit a paper defining the scope of my negotiation research based on what I know about the topic so far, and that should be done before end of May 2006. The further measurable results and time lines will be defined by in the paper. NFP/Filtering (Ioan): 1. Develop the prototype for WSMX based on NFP using keywords.

(initial version by mid of May) 2. Define an ontology for NFP. Here I already have some

formalization of David O'Sullivan in OWL for his set of NFP. I will create the WSML version. (by end of April)

3. Use a WSML reasoner to perform a cleverer filtering. (first version of this prototype by end of June)

4. With respect to WSMO D28.4, probably iterations every 2 weeks, continuing along what is described in the Future Work section.

5. There may be NFP/Filtering-related tasks in the Grisino project Publications None so far Software releases

Negotiation (Jacek): implementation plan will be created after the scope is defined, either in the planned publication or in any project deliverables. NFP/Filtering (Ioan): currently only as indicated in the roadmap points.

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6.2.2. Grounding Nr 9 Title Grounding Mission statement

Apart from discovering Web services and composing them, the Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) also needs to communicate with the services — send the necessary request messages and receive the responses. All such external communication will be taken care of by this component. Because internal communication within the SEE uses semantic data and practically all currently deployed Web services use their specific XML formats, the External Communication component needs to translate between the involved data forms. This translation is also known as data grounding. Above that, this component also needs to support concrete network protocols (HTTP, SOAP, other bindings) to be able to exchange messages with the Web service.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/index.php?title=External_Communication Leader Jacek Kopecky Cluster Ubiquitous Services Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Adrian Mocan (Data grounding) Jacek Kopecký (Grounding) Students: - I take this as Innsbruck-specific, therefore I don't include anything about Matthew Moran who also works on data grounding.


DIP for grounding and W3C standardization work. TripCom for triple-space grounding. Possibly additional sources in Galway for Matthew

Current Status

1) WSMO D24.2 2) Membership in W3C WS-Description working group and Semantic Annotations for WSDL working group

Future Steps Measurable results are the following functionalities: * data grounding — two-way transformations between semantic data

within SEE and the XML data used in external communication * network protocol binding — based on the WSDL description of

the target Web service, the best supported protocol binding will be selected for communication

* triple-space grounding for communication with Web services using

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TripleS Data Grounding (Adrian): plan unknown, Matthew is the leader of that part of the WSMO deliverable D24.2, Adrian wants to help there; Matthew hasn't provided any concrete dates in recent email exchange. Network Protocol Grounding (Jacek): this part is done, we will work with choreography implementation to validate that it works, and for requirements on the component from the other components. Triple Space Grounding (Jacek): work scheduled for 2007 in Tripcom

Publications J. Kopecký, D. Roman, M. Moran, and D. Fensel: Semantic Web Services Grounding. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW'06), Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, February 23-25, 2006. Any data mediation publications by Adrian Mocan, but they are not directly related to the component.

Software releases

All as described in the current status

6.2.3. Storage & Communication Nr 14 Title Storage Mission statement

The storage component(s), plural on purpose, shall provide repositories to store “objects” needed to ensure successful processing of user request to SEE. There might be need for different storages tailored to the particular needs: Web service descriptions, goals, mediation rules, workflows, and execution semantics. It is already known that the Execution Management component requires repositories for ontologies and data instances (service descriptions in particular). The idea is to use a Triple Space infrastructure to do so. The mission of the Storage Component team is thus to find out which means of storage are required and in what way these requirements can be fulfilled in the easiest and simplest way to provide optimal service to the application layer components and the vertical services.

Web site http://wiki.wsmx.org/?title=Storage Leader Reto Krummenacher1 Cluster UbiServ

1 temporary until Michael Jäger is joining DERI Austria

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Team Senior Researchers: - Junior Researchers: Omair Shafiq Reto Krummenacher Students: - And hopefully various other members that know the requirements per component/service better.


TSC: Triple Space Computing (TSC) FIT-IT http://tsc.deri.at Triple Space Communication (TripCom) EC STREP http://www.tripcom.org YARS: DERI Lión SFI http://lion.deri.ie dip EC IP http://dip.semanticweb.org

Current Status

There are currently two efforts pursued at DERI (Galway and Innsbruck) directly related with storage: YARS, as RDF Store and TSC, as persistent communication and coordination middleware. These efforts will be continued and improved. As mentioned in the mission statement, the current plan is to use TSC as storage infrastructure in SEE. Of particular interest is the use of TSC in combination with the Execution Management component. It is however subject to current investigations, if there is at all any use for a rather sophisticated Triple Space or, if a database (tailored to the needs of ontologies and SEE objects) would not rather do the job. TSC as project with the aim for a middleware for the Semantic Web and Web services is continued primarily independent of SEE and in parallel (also as part of the TSC project: D4.1) we will look at optimal solutions for the use of TSC within SEE. Current suggestions taken from the WSMX deliverable D21 (Fig.1) have to be reconsidered to pay tribute to the advantages of space-based computing: decoupling of processes/services and coordination of services.

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Figure 6.2.3.1. TSC and WSMX in WSMX D21 from June 2005.

In fact, the current proposition of having the coordination done by the Execution Manager (who communicates with the various components) and of using the space only for storage and in parallel to the components heavily contradicts the idea of space-based computing. We therefore rather suggest having the space reside between all the components linked together for a given WSMX, possibly residing on different physical entities.

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Future Steps A major tasks for the upcoming weeks it to determine what type of storage and in what way the storage should become part of SEE. It is hard to say how we could measure its success or even when we could be ready with parts or the whole of it. Moreover, as long we are continuing with the idea of having TSC as storage component of WSMX, we have to find the most reasonable and in consequence the right way to interlink WSMX components by use of the space infrastructure. As mentioned above we are reconsidering the ideas presented in the WSMX WG deliverable D21.v0.1 WSMX Triple-Space Computing to fully pay tribute to the advantages of space based computing. These ideas (Fig. 2) need however further discussion with all members of the SEE cluster.

Figure 6.2.3.1. Proposition for fully distribute TSC-WSMX integration

Publications YARS: Andreas Harth, Stefan Decker. Optimized Index Structures for Querying RDF from the Web. 3rd Latin American Web Congress, Buenos Aires - Argentina, October 31 - November 2 2005. Andreas Harth, Hannes Gassert. On Searching and Displaying RDF Data from the Web. Poster ESWC 2005. Andreas Harth, Matteo Magni, Stefan Decker. Scalable Distributed RDF Storage Infrastructure. DERI Líon Deliverable 1.02, 2005.

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TSC: Reto Krummenacher, Francisco Martin-Recuerda, Martin Murth, Johannes Riemer, Ying Ding, and Dieter Fensel: Triple Space Computing: A framework for the new communication paradigm. Poster Session of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conf. (ESWC 2006), Budva, Montenegro, 11-14 June, 2006 (forthcoming). Reto Krummenacher, Thomas Strang, and Dieter Fensel: Triple Spaces for an Ubiquitous Web of Services. W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web, Tokyo, Japan, March 9-10, 2006. Omair Shafiq, Ioan Toma, Reto Krummenacher, Thomas Strang, and Dieter Fensel: Using Triple Space Computing for communication and coordination in Semantic Grid. In Proc. of the 3rd Semantic Grid Workshop in conj. with the 16th Global Grid Forum, Athens, Greece, February 13-16, 2006. Brahmananda Sapkota, Edward Kilgarriff, and Christoph Bussler: Role of Triple Space Computing in Semantic Web Services. In Proc. of the 8th Asia Pacific Web Conf (APWEB 2006), Harbin, China, January 16-18, 2006. Reto Krummenacher, Martin Hepp, Axel Polleres, Christoph Bussler, and Dieter Fensel: WWW or What Is Wrong with Web Services. In Proc. of the 2005 IEEE European Conf on Web Services (ECOWS 2005), Växjö, Sweden, November 14-16, 2005. Reto Krummenacher, Jacek Kopecky, and Thomas Strang: Sharing Context Information with Semantic Spaces. Workshop on Context-Aware Mobile Systems (CAMS 2005), Ayia Napa, Cyprus, October 30-31, 2005. Reto Krummenacher, and Thomas Strang: Ubiquitous Semantic Spaces. In Conference Supplement to the 7th Int'l Conf on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005), Tokyo, Japan, September 11-14, 2005. Francisco Martin-Recuerda: Towards CSpaces: A new perspective for the Semantic Web. In Proc. of the 1st Int'l IFIP/WG12.5 Working Conf on Industrial Applications of Semantic Web (IASW 2005), Jyväskylä, Finland, August 25-27, 2005. Christoph Bussler: A Minimal Triple Space Computing Architecture. In Proc. of the 2nd WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), Innsbruck, Austria, June 6-7, 2005.

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Software releases

YARS @ DERI Galway • Conjunctive Queries • Keyword-based queries using LUCENE • Native Storage in Berkley DB (2-phase commits) • JDBC-like Java API • RESTful HTTP API (language independent) • Scoped negation queries • Recursive query processing • Remote context

TSC work in progress

• Implementation TSC API • Test platform for TSC conceptual models • Running over YARS

TSC project prototype

• Implementation starting now • Prototype required in early 2007


• GRISINO • SWING • TripCom

6.3.1. GRISINO

Name Grid Semantics and Intelligent Objects Acronym GRISINO Funding line FFG, FIT-IT Cluster UBISERV Leader Ioan Toma Objective Discovery, Adaptation Website http://grisino.salzburgresearch.at/ Team Senior Researchers:

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- Junior Researchers: Tobias Bürger Ioan Toma Omair Shafiq Students: Jürgen Umbrich

Mission The aim of GRISINO is to combine three leading edge technology strands which complement each other, for the definition of intelligent and dynamic business processes: • Semantic Web Services as the future standard for the declaration of web-based semantic processes. • Knowledge content objects as the unit of value which can be manipulated by semantic web services. • Grid Computing as a pervasive service distribution infrastructure for a future, ambient intelligence space.


Total 27 per month 1

Duration 24 months 03/06 – 02/08 Major tasks • WP1: Conceptual Analysis

• WP3: SWS & GRID • WP6: Dissemination

Deliverables • D1.1.1 State of the Art in SWS, GRID and "Intelligent" Objects - Can they meet? (Ioan)

• D1.2.1 Requirements and Design of a Common Infrastructure for GRID, SWS and Intelligent Objects. (Ioan)

• D2.3.1 Experimentation Testbed: Requirements, Design, Test cases, and Test results. (Ioan, Jürgen)

• D3.2.1 Design and Specification of Integrated Services (Ioan, Omair)

• D3.4.1 GCI Test Bed (prototype) with integrated services (Ioan, Jürgen)

• D4.1.1 Design and Specification of KCO-to-SWS Mapping (Ioan, Tobias)

• D4.3.1 GCI with access to KCOs via semantic web services (Ioan, Tobias)

• D5.2.1 Design Specification of the Semantic Search Application (Ioan)

• D.6.2.1 Research Papers (Ioan, Omair) • D.7.2.1Periodic project management report (Ioan with help of

Leonarda)

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6.3.2. SWING

Name Semantic Web Services Interoperability for Geospatial Decision MakingAcronym SWING Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster UBISERV Leader Dumitru Roman1 Objective Ontologies, Applications, Developer tools, Discovery, Composition Website http://www.swing-project.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Dumitru Roman Students: - + one more person needed to work part time

Mission The mission is to develop an open, easy-to-use Semantic Web Service framework of suitable ontologies and inference tools for annotation, discovery, composition, and invocation of geospatial web services; evaluate the appropriateness of this framework by developing a geospatial decision-making application that can dynamically find and provide interoperable semantic web services


Total 39,5 per month 1

Duration 36 months 03/06 – 02/09 Major tasks Technical coordinator of the project

• WP7 Dissemination and Exploitation (lead) • WP1 Application • WP2 Semantic Discovery and Execution • WP3 Geospatial Ontology • WP4 Semantic Annotation • WP6 Development Environment

Deliverables • D7.1 Public Web Site • D7.2 Workshop academic community


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• D7.3 Workshop user community • D7.4 Open Source • D7.5 Information dissemination plan

6.3.3. TripCom

Name Triple Space Communication Acronym TripCom Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster UBISERV Leader Reto Krummenacher1 Objective Storage Website http://www.tripcom.org/ Team Senior Researchers:

- Junior Researchers: Reto Krummenacher Omair Shafiq

Students: -

Mission The mission of TripCom is to take a significant move towards a new era of the Internet. TripCom aims at truly Web-enabled Web services that will communicate via persistent publication of information. Realizing this vision and a new technology is the mission of TripCom with the result of the integrating Tuple Space, Semantic Web (triple), and Web service technologies. To this end, we on the one hand plan to improve Tuple Space technology by adding semantics and means to structure and relate tuples in a scalable and linkable Triple Space architecture. On the other hand we plan to improve Web service technologies by adopting the flexible and powerful asynchronous communication model of Tuple Spaces. Furthermore we plan to improve business data exchange standards by use of our new technology and demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in several practical use cases. Finally, we plan to establish a proper security and trust model for the Triple Space to ensure safe communication and data handling, as


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well as distributed trust models. As the result of the project the combination of these building blocks could give ground to a novel Semantic Web service paradigm.


Total 111 Per months 3

Duration 36 months 04/06 – 03/09 Major tasks • WP 1 Storage

• WP 2 Triple Space Knowledge Representation • WP 3 Triple Space Interaction • WP 4 Triple Space and Semantic Web Services • WP 5 Security and Trust • WP 6 Triple Space Architecture and Component Integration • WP 8b Use case e-Health

Deliverables LFUI has the lead for the following deliverables: • D2.2 Specification of Triple Space ontology • D3.3 Semantic matching in distributed spaces • D4.2 TripCom Grounding for Semantic Web Services • D10.2 Periodic Progress Reports • D10.5 Continuous Risk Management Plan

The involvement in other deliverables is not clear, as the final distribution per deliverable per partner is not done yet. This decision is expected to be taken during or shortly after the kick off meeting on April 24/25, 2006.

6.4. Staff Here we discuss student, junior, and senior researchers of the UbiServ cluster. 6.4.1. Student Researchers No student researchers up to yet. 6.4.2. Junior Researchers Junior Researchers No Name Objective Cluster

12 Jacek Kopecky Grounding UbiServ 13 Reto Krummennacher Storage & Communication UbiServ 25 Ioan Toma Adaptation UbiServ

6.4.2.1. Jacek Kopecky

Name Jacek Kopecky Entry date May 2004 Cluster Ubiquitous Services Objective Adaptation, Grounding Projects current: DIP D2.4, versioning library implementation

upcoming: DIP D4.13, Aligning WSMO and WSMX with Existing Policy Specifications

Research topic Semantic Web Service Negotiation: After discovering a set of potentially useful services, a semantic user agent (e.g. WSMX) needs to check whether the services can actually fulfill the user's concrete goal and under what conditions. Those that cannot fulfill the goal are removed from the list of discovered services. This step is required as it is not feasible for a service to provide an exhaustive semantic description. Giving the Amazon bookstore service as an example, it is not feasible for Amazon to update the semantic description of their Web service every time a new book is available or an existing book is changed, therefore we must check that Amazon actually currently

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has a copy of the book requested by the user, and what the price is. So negotiation is the process of checking whether and under what conditions a service can fulfill a concrete Goal. Grounding our semantic technologies in Web and Web Service standards: Automation of the use of Web Services requires semantic descriptions. Currently deployed Web services, on the other hand, are generally described only on the level of syntax, using standard XML languages that capture only limited and unconnected models of some Web service aspects. Even with semantic descriptions, certain tasks require that semantic processors have access to the information in the syntactic descriptions; for example to invoke a discovered service, the client processor needs to know how to serialize the request message. Grounding defines the links between the semantic and the syntactic description levels.


My PhD dissertation should be on the topic of Semantic Web Service Negotiation. I plan to write and submit a paper defining the scope of my negotiation research based on what I know about the topic so far, and that paper should be written before end of June 2006.

Implementations Currently ongoing: 1) DIP Versioning library over WSMO4J, also in use in DOME and possibly WSMT 2) Processor for mapping WSDL documents into RDF (mostly for W3C) Planned: 1) Negotiation and grounding components in WSMX, to be defined

Publications Conference Papers: J. Kopecký, D. Roman, M. Moran, and D. Fensel: Semantic Web Services Grounding. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW'06), Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, February 23-25, 2006. Chapters in Books: D. Roman, J. de Bruijn, A. Mocan, I. Toma, H. Lausen, J. Kopecký, D. Fensel, J. Domingue, S. Galizia, and L. Cabral:Semantic Web Services - Approaches and Perspectives. In J. Davies, P. Warren, and R. Studer (eds.), Semantic Web Technologies, to appear, 2005. Workshops: R. Krummenacher, J. Kopecký, and T. Strang: Sharing Context Information with Semantic Spaces. In Proceedings of the Workshop

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on Context-Aware Mobile Systems (CAMS 2005), Ayia Napa, Cyprus, Greece, October 30-31, 2005. S. Arroyo, Ch. Bussler, J. Kopecký, R. Lara, A. Polleres, and M. Zaremba: Web Service Capabilities and Constraints in WSMO. In W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities for Web Services. Redwood Shores, CA, USA, October 12-13, 2004. Others: J. de Bruijn, Ch. Bussler, J. Domingue, D. Fensel, M. Hepp, U. Keller, M. Kifer, B. König-Ries, J. Kopecký, R. Lara, H. Lausen, E. Oren, A. Polleres, D. Roman, J. Scicluna, and M. Stollberg: Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO), W3C Member Submission, June 3, 2005.

6.4.2.2. Reto Krummenacher

Name Reto Krummenacher Entry Date October 2004 Cluster UbiServ Objective Storage & Communication Projects Project Deliverable/Task (P)ast, (C)urrent,

(F)uture TSC Interaction Model P Space/ Storage

Organisation P

Data Model P Semantic Matching/

Templates P

Query ENGINE (YARS) binding

C

QE implementation and validation

F

Project Coordination P C F TripCom Work planning for

DERI IBK P C

KR (TS Ontology) F Interaction Model F eHealth Use Case F

Research topic Ubiquitous Computing model, where technology recedes into the background of our lives is one of the most promising computing paradigms. However, the arrival of ubiquitous computing will call upon ‘many persons + many computers’ interactions. There will be an enormous peer-to-peer network of information and service providers and consumers. Taking away parts of the machine interaction from the users to let it recede into the background requires more complex interaction models on computer level. Many new challenges come along with this futuristic vision that are relevant for my research topic: adaptation strategies, client thickness (mobility), context awareness, balancing proactivity and transparency, and information flow across layers and services. The goal of the research will be to address these challenges from a Triple Space Computing research point of view and to combine it

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with existing technologies from the Ubiquitous Computing and Distributed Systems communities to provide a middleware for highly dynamic, mobile and complex systems of services. Research, wise this implies in consequence the definition and implementation of a space infrastructure as a whole and in particular of so-called TS Kernels residing on every participating node (Fig. 1).

Figure 6.4.2.2.1. TS Kernel architecture with Context Engine

The goal is to use context information in the space to process the information available, and thus to ensure at least local scalability, i.e. using the context information (e.g. user, device and service descriptions, preferences and needs) to coordinate, replicate and distribute the information proactively to the right peers within the network of involved nodes. This raises two core questions that have to be addressed: Q1. How to model context information? Q2. How to interpret and thus use the context information for the organisation and reasonable proactivity of the space? These are questions directly addressed by a TS kernel implementation containing a Context Engine that was added to Fig. 1 compared to its counterpart defined in the TSC project3. The Context Engine (Q2) is envisioned to make use of a reasoner binding, most likely in form of a rule reasoner that is able to process so called context rules (Q1). In consequence, context information would need to be encoded in form of rules, facts and queries that compose the Knowledge Base of the Context Engine. As mentioned in the beginning I see “disappearing computing” as the future of computer science with respect to human computer interaction and its co-existence. Therefore the communication and coordination infrastructure for machines has to be heavily improved, as more and more tasks will be performed by applications that reside

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in a tremendous network of small devices and services invisible for the human users. The Context Engine (Q2) is seen to be a tool to address some of these issues; in particular an answer to the proactivity problems based on Semantic Web and Triple Space technology.


The current focus of my research work and thus of my path toward a PhD is still restricted to the fundamental questions of Triple Space Computing [3]. This is on the one hand due to my involvement in TSC related projects and on the other of course, as the basics of semantically enriched communication and coordination spaces have to be defined prior to possible extensions. As basics I would consider the various conceptual models that were subject to recent and current project work: data model, data encoding, space organisation, and native interface layering (TS kernel) to name the most prominent. These technologies are part of TSC, as it is well known: technical facts are available in form of deliverables and minor publications (forthcoming) already. More precise ideas for my PhD thesis based on Triple Space Computing still consist of mostly conceptual ideas [1]. The current goal is thus to more and more address the questions in the previous section with respect to context-awareness and proactivity. This is necessary in order to bring forward a middleware that allows simple and flexible improvement of ubiquitous computing application as e.g. mentioned in [2] by considering available context information about and from all users (consumers and producers) of the space infrastructure. Furthermore it is a desire to increasingly consider (Mobile and Ubiquitous) Web technology to come up with a global web for machines as e.g. described in [4]. The context-aware middleware was named TSC (ubiquitous TSC) in [4] or Ubiquitous Semantic Spaces in [1] and is the extended version of TSC that is planned to result from my PhD. I could imagine that many of the TSC ideas will penetrate into the eHealth Use Case of the TripCom project (Work package 8b in which I will be involved) and vice-versa. Current topics that I have actively or more passively on my agenda are the definition of models for context rules (including or juxtaposed) to e.g. the modelling of so-called non-functional properties in WSMO. In consequence and possibly in parallel I have to look at how to bind the (rule) reasoning efforts from the WSML working group to the space infrastructure (through the Context Engine). The facts drawn from inferred data will be the core output from the Context Engine of the Coordination Layer (Fig. 2) and the necessary added value to improve the coordination and communication of services in ubiquitous computing environments. Obviously I focus here on the use of the Context Engine in the scope of the proposed TSC infrastructure. It should however be noted that

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similar technologies could also enter the SEE architecture at some point. The current discussions going on around non-functional properties show that there are additional issues relevant to decision-making in discovery, selection or composition than semantic descriptions of and reasoning with the functional and behavioural properties of services. In that sense my interest in context modelling, rules and reasoning for a space-based middleware could be generalized to improve the value of the Semantic Execution Environment. [1] R. Krummenacher, and Th. Strang: Ubiquitous Semantic Spaces. In Conference Supplement to the 7th Int-l Conf on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005), Tokyo, Japan, September 11-14, 2005. [2] R. Krummenacher, J. Kopecký, and Th. Strang: Sharing Context Information with Semantic Spaces. Workshop on Context Aware Mobile Systems (CAMS 2005), Ayia Napa, Cyprus, October 30 31, 2005. [3] R. Krummenacher, M. Hepp, A. Polleres, Ch. Bussler, and D. Fensel: WWW or What Is Wrong with Web Services. In Proc. of the 2005 IEEE European Conf on Web Services, Växjö, Sweden, November 14-16, 2005. [4] R. Krummenacher, Th. Strang, and D. Fensel: Triple Spaces for a Ubiquitous Web of Services. W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web, Tokyo, Japan, March 9-10, 2006.

Implementations Since my active contribution to wsmo4j, in particular in form of the Logical Expression API (wsmo4j extension), is finished, I have no more official DERI implementation output. The API was integrated into wsmo4j and therewith I finished my active participation in the wsmo4j project. Thereafter I recently did some prototype and test implementations for TSC and helped to improve and debug the latest versions of YARS. This tests and prototypes were used as primary proof of concept of the ideas in D1.3 and D2.1 of the TSC project and also to check the work of my bachelor students. Initial ideas that I got out of this are now used to drive forward the implementation of the TSC prototype officially due late this year.

Publications R. Krummenacher, and Th. Strang: Ubiquitous Semantic Spaces. In Conference Supplement to the 7th Int-l Conf on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005), Tokyo, Japan, September 11-14, 2005. R. Krummenacher, J. Kopecký, and Th. Strang: Sharing Context Information with Semantic Spaces. Workshop on Context-Aware Mobile Systems (CAMS 2005), Ayia Napa, Cyprus, October 30-31, 2005. R. Krummenacher, M. Hepp, A. Polleres, Ch. Bussler, and D. Fensel: WWW or What Is Wrong with Web Services. In Proc. of the 2005 IEEE European Conf on Web Services, Växjö, Sweden, November 14-16, 2005.

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R. Krummenacher, Th. Strang, and D. Fensel: Triple Spaces for a Ubiquitous Web of Services. W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web, Tokyo, Japan, March 9-10, 2006. R. Krummenacher, F. Martin-Recuerda, M. Murth, J. Riemer, Y. Ding, and D. Fensel: Triple Space Computing: A framework for the new communication paradigm. Poster Session of the 3rd European Semantic Web Conf. (ESWC 2006), Budva, Montenegro, 11-14 June, 2006 (forthcoming). O. Shafiq, I. Toma, R. Krummenacher, Th. Strang, and D. Fensel: Using Triple Space Computing for communication and coordination in Semantic Grid. In Proc. of the 3rd Semantic Grid Workshop in conj. With the 16th Global Grid Forum, Athens, Greece, February 13-16, 2006. S. Arroyo and R. Krummenacher: A Choreographed Approach to Ubiquitous and Pervasive Learning. In M. Lytras and A. Naeve (eds.): Ubiquitous and Pervasive Knowledge and Learning Management: Semantics, Social Networking and New Media to their full potential. Idea Group Publishing, 2007 (forthcoming).

6.4.2.3. Ioan Toma

Name Ioan Toma Entry date April 2004 Cluster Ubiquitous Services Objective Discovery and Adaption Projects GRISINO (Grid semantics and intelligent objects)

The aim of GRISINO is to combine three leading edge technology strands which complement each other, for the definition of intelligent and dynamic business processes: (1) Semantic Web Services as the future standard for the declaration of web-based semantic processes, (2)Knowledge content objects as the unit of value which can be manipulated by semantic web services. (3) Grid Computing as a pervasive service distribution infrastructure for a future, ambient intelligence space. In GRISINO I will mainly be involved in the following work packages: (1) WP1: Conceptual Analysis (2) WP3: SWS & GRID and (3) WP6: Dissemination. My interest is on WP3 where the task is to develop a detailed linkage between SWS and GRID based services. I will be involved in the following deliverables: - D1.1.1 State of the Art in SWS, GRID and "Intelligent" Objects -

Can they meet? - D1.2.1 Requirements and Design of a Common Infrastructure for

GRID, SWS and Intelligent Objects - D2.3.1 Experimentation Testbed: Requirements, Design, Test

cases, and Test results. - D3.2.1 Design and Specification of Integrated Services - D3.4.1 GCI Test Bed (prototype) with integrated services - D4.1.1 Design and Specification of KCO-to-SWS Mapping - D4.3.1 GCI with access to KCOs via semantic web services - D5.2.1 Design Specification of the Semantic Search Application - D.6.2.1 Research Papers

Research topic My general research interests are: Semantic Web Services and Semantic Grid. More precisely I am/was involved in the following research activities: - Non-functional properties for Web services: [4] This research is trigger by the following questions: (1) how to model

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non-functional aspects of services? (2) how to specify non-functional aspects of services? and (3) how to perform discovery, filtering and selection based on non-functional aspects? (discovery, filtering and selection as a use case) - Service Discovery: Reasoning support for discovery In the ASG project I was involved in the development of WSML reasoner based on Flora-2 system that supports discovery and composition of services in ASG. WSMX discovery As part of WSMX I was developing a keyword-based discovery mechanism that considers the non-functional descriptions of WSMO goals and services. Keywords provided by the requester in the non-functional descriptions of the goal or axioms used to formalize that goal are matched against the correspondent keywords in the descriptions of the services. Any non-functional property that takes a string value (e.g. dc:Subject etc.) can be consider when doing the matching. Two different kind of matching are supported: a total match and a partial match. Discovery for P2P, Grids and Web services In [5], [7], [2], [1] we have proposed different approaches for realizing service discovery in distributed environments like: P2P, Grids and Web services. The focus was in developing robust and scalable architectures for service discovery in distributed environments. - Applying semantic technologies to Grid Modeling services for Semantic Grid: Some initial ideas on how to apply Semantic Web Services solutions to semantically describe services in Grid environment were proposed in [6]. Resource ontology In [3] we have proposed a Grid resource ontology that can provide better support for resource matching in Grids.


In my PhD I plan to provide a solution on how to model and how to specify non-functional properties of services based on semantic technologies. Non-functional properties are an important aspect of services with a similar importance as the other services aspect: functional and behavior. One could realize the importance of non-functional properties especially in the context of some critical service related tasks like: discovery, filtering, negotiation, selection and

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substitution. In the field of software components and networking different models for non-functional properties have been proposed. However applying them in service-based settings requires re-modelling especially when we consider the interaction, dynamic and context aspects when using a service. Moreover some other questions have to be answered: - What is the level of abstraction we use when we model non-functional properties; how detailed or specific they must be? - How dose dynamic nature of non-functional properties influence the way we model and describe them. - How to model non-functional properties such that conflicts and competition between them are captured as well? Having such a model developed a formal language for specifying non functional descriptions is required. Probably as part of WSML I plan to contribute to the development of language support based on logical formalisms to model NFPs and context information. As an exemplification of what can be done with semantic descriptions of services non-functional properties I plan to design and implement a discovery mechanism, that includes filtering and selection. Both syntactic and semantic solutions will be considered. The progress I done so far towards realizing the goals described above is limited. Currently I'm mainly trying to get more familiar with the area of non-functional properties ("reading phase"). With respect to discovery the implementation that I have done has to be further developed and adapted for non-functional properties. [1] Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, and

Ioan Toma. WWW or What is Wrong with Web service discovery. In Position paper at the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, Innsbruck, Austria, 6 2005.

[2] Brahmananda Sapkota, Laurentiu Vasiliu, Ioan Toma, Dumitru

Roman, and Chris Bussler. Peer-to-Peer Technology Usage in Web Service Discovery and Matchmaking. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, New York City, USA, 11 2005.

[3] Mumtaz Siddiqui, Thomas Fahringer, Jürgen Hofer, and Ioan

Toma. Grid Resource Ontology and Correlation. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Grid Services Engineering and Management, Erfurt, Germany, 9 2005.

[4] Ioan Toma and Douglas Foxvog. Non functional properties for

web services. Working draft, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), March 2004. Available from

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http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d28/d28.4/v0.1/. [5] Ioan Toma, Kashif Iqbal, Matthew Moran, Dumitru Roman,

Thomas Strang, and Dieter Fensel. An Evaluation of Discovery approaches in Grid and Web services Environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Grid Services Engineering and Management, Erfurt, Germany, 9 2005.

[6] Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Kashif Iqbal, Jürgen Hofer, Dieter

Fensel, and Stefan Decker. Towards Semantic Web Services in Grid Environments. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Semantic, Knowledge and Grid, Beijing, China, 11 2005.

[7] Ioan Toma, Brahmananda Sapkota, James Scicluna, Juan Miguel

Gomez, Dumitru Roman, and Dieter Fensel. A P2P Discovery mechanism for Web Service Execution Environment. In Proceedings of the 2nd International WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), Innsbruck, Austria, 6 2005.

Implementations WSMX keywords-based discovery WSML/Flora-2 reasoner

Publications Conference papers: Dieter Fensel, Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman: Towards a Semantically enabled Service Oriented Architecture. In Proceedings of the Semantic2005 Conference - Semantic Systems in the Knowledge Society - Challenges & Opportunities, Vienna, Austria, November 2005. Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Dieter Fensel: Modeling Semantic Web Services in ASG: The WSMO-based Approach. In Proceedings of the Semantic2005 Conference - Semantic Systems in the Knowledge Society - Challenges & Opportunities, Vienna, Austria, November 2005. Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Kashif Iqbal, Jürgen Hofer, Dieter Fensel, Stefan Decker: Towards Semantic Web Services in Grid Environment. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Semantic, Knowledge and Grid, Beijing, China, November 2005. Brahmananda Sapkota, Laurentiu Vasiliu, Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Chris Bussler: Peer-to-Peer Technology Usage in Web Service Discovery and Matchmaking. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, New York City, USA, November 2005.

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Ioan Toma, Kashif Iqbal, Matthew Moran, Dumitru Roman, Thomas Strang and Dieter Fensel: An Evaluation of Discovery approaches in Grid and Web services Environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Grid Services Engineering and Management, Erfurt, Germany, September 2005. Mumtaz Siddiqui, Thomas Fahringer, Jürgen Hofer, and Ioan Toma: Grid Resource Ontology and Correlation. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Grid Services Engineering and Management, Erfurt, Germany, September 2005. Michael Stollberg, Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma, Uwe Keller, Reinhold Herzog, Peter Zugmann, and Dieter Fensel: Semantic Web Fred - Automated Goal Resolution on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, January 2005. Ioan Alfred Letia and Ioan Toma: Using Neural Network ensemble based on genetic algorithms to optimise a Semantic Perceptron Net, CSCS-14 14th International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science Bucharest, Romania, July 2003 pg. 120-126 Toderean Gavril, Ioan Toma, Chira Gabriela, Vescan Radu, Jurca Cristian and Inclezan Alin: GPS Real-Time Car Navigation System, AQTR-THETA13, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, May 2002 pg.363-369 Workshop papers: Omair Shafiq, Ioan Toma, Reto Krummenacher, Thomas Strang, and Dieter Fensel: Using Triple Space Computing for communication and coordination in Semantic Grid. In Proc. of the 3rd Semantic Grid Workshop in conj. with the 16th Global Grid Forum, Athens, Greece, February 13-16, 2006 Axel Polleres, Ioan Toma and Dieter Fensel: Modeling services on the Semantic Grid}. In Proceedings of the Semantic Grid Dagsthul Seminar, Dagstuhl, Germany, June 2005. Ioan Toma, Brahmananda Sapkota, James Scicluna, Juan Miguel Gomez, Dumitru Roman, and Dieter Fensel: A P2P Discovery mechanism for Web Service Execution Environment. In Proceedings of the 2nd International WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005.

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Juan Miguel Gomez, Armin Haler, Ioan Toma, Brahmananda Sapkota and Christoph Bussler: B2B Conversations based on the WSMX architecture. WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW 2005), Innsbruck, Austria, June 2005. Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres and Ioan Toma: WWW or What is Wrong with Web service discovery. Position paper at the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services, June 9-10, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria. Poster papers: Ioan Toma, Kashif Iqbal and Dumitru Roman: Adaptive Services Grid. Poster paper at the 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2005), November 6-11, 2005, Galway, Ireland. Chapters in Books: Dumitru Roman, Jos de Bruijn, Adrian Mocan, Ioan Toma, Holger Lausen, Jacek Kopecky, Dieter Fensel, John Domingue, Stefania Galizia, and Liliana Cabral: Semantic Web Services - Approaches and Perspectives. In J. Davies, P. Warren, and R. Studer (eds.), Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems, June, 2006 (forthcoming). Standardization Documents: Christoph Bussler, Emilia Cimpian, Dieter Fensel, Juan Miguel Gomez, Armi Haller, Thomas Haselwanter, Mick Kerrigan, Adrian Mocan, Matthew Moran, Eyal Oren, Brahmanada Sapkota, Ioan Toma, Jana Viskova, Tomas Vitvar, Maciej Zaremba and Michal Zaremba: Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX). W3C Member Submission 4 April 2005. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Michael Kifer, Jacek Kopecký, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, Dumitru Roman, James Scicluna and Ioan Toma: Relationship of WSMO to Other Relevant Technologies. W3C Member Submission 3 June 2005. Technical Reports: Daniel Bachlechner, Katharina Siorpaes, Dieter Fensel and Ioan

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Toma: Web Service Discovery - A Reality Check, DERI, 2006 Deliverables: Ioan Toma, Adina Sirbu, Sven Groppe, Jürgen Umbrich and Jinghua Groppe. WSML reasoner engine implementation 1st release, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2006. Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma, Adina Sirbu, Sven Groppe, Sanaullah Nazir. Collection of semantic specifications for ASG services, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2006. Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma and Tomasz Kaczmarek. Requirements analysis on service specification language, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma and Tomasz Kaczmarek. Requirements analysis on service specification language, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Dumitru Roman and Ioan Toma. Requirements analysis on ASG interface, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Kashif Iqbal, Ioan Toma, Bernhard Tausch and Ville Tormala. Requirements analysis for Service and Resource Matchmaking, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Ioan Toma, Kashif Iqbal, Bernhard Tausch, Jarno Heikkila and Dumitru Roman. Evaluation of current effort in Service and Resource Matchmaking, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Jos de Bruijn, Dieter Fensel, Tomasz Kaczmarek, Marek Kowalkiewicz, Reto Krummenacher, Holger Lausen, Michael Kifer, Axel Polleres, Livia Predoiu, Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma. Service description language, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Tomasz Kaczmarek, Marek Kowalkiewicz, Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma, Karol Wieloch, Wojciech Zalech. Comparison of current Grid and Web service description efforts}, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Matthew Moran, Ioan Toma. Evaluation of current service interface efforts, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Jörg Barthold, Bernard Tausch, Pasi Tiitien, Ioan Toma, Dumitru

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Roman, Jarno Heikkilä, Sergiy Nikitin. Evaluation of existing approaches in registries, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Pasi Tiitien, Anton Naumenko, Sergiy Nikitin, Jörg Barthold, Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Bernard Tausch. Requirement Analysis on service registries}, ASG (Adaptive Services Grid), 2005. Sinuhe Arroyo, Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Christian Drumm, Marin Dimitrov, Murray Spork, Gabor Nagypal, John Domingue and Jan Henke. D3.1 Report on State of the Art and Requirements analysis, WP 3 – Service Ontologies and Service Description, DIP (Data, Information and Processes), 2004. Ioan Toma, Michael Stollberg, Jos de Bruijn, Axel Polleres, Ruben Lara. D2 SWF Language Evaluation and Comparison}, SWF (Semantic Web Fred), 2004. Michael Stollberg, Ioan Toma, Uwe Keller, Bernhard Keimel, Peter Zugmann. SWF Use Case, SWF (Semantic Web Fred), 2004. Michael Stollberg, Ioan Toma, Uwe Keller, Peter Zugmann, Bernhard Keimel. SWF Architecture, Tools and Mechanisms, SWF (Semantic Web Fred), 2004. Ioan Toma, Dumitru Roman, Kashif Iqbal. D25.1 WSMO and Grid, WSMO (Web Service Modeling Ontology), 2004. Ioan Toma. D28.4 Non-functional properties in Web services, WSML (Web Service Modeling Language), 2006. Uwe Keller, Rubén Lara, Axel Polleres, Ioan Toma, Michel Kifer, Dieter Fensel. D5.1 WSMO Web Service Discovery, WSML (Web Service Modeling Language), 2004. Rubén Lara, Walter Binder, Ion Constantinescu, Dieter Fensel, Uwe Keller, Jeff Pan, Elena Paslaru, Marco Pistore, Axel Polleres, Ioan Toma, Paulo Traverso, Michal Zaremba. D2.4.2 Semantics for Web Service Discovery and Composition, KnowledgeWeb, 2004. Uwe Keller, Rubén Lara, Holger Lausen, Axel Polleres, Livia Predoiu, Ioan Toma. D5.2 WSMO Discovery Engine, WSML (Web Service Modeling Language), 2004. Enrica Dente, Jacek Kopecky, Francisco Jose Martin-Recuerda Moyano, Dumitru Roman, Ioan Toma. Integrating WSMX with Tuple and Triple Space Computing, WSMX (Web Service Modeling

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Execution Environment), 2004. 6.4.3. Senior Researcher Senior Researchers No Name Topic

5 Dr. Michael Jäger 6 Dr. Axel Polleres 7 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Strang Reasoning

6.4.3.1. Michael Jäger Name Michael C. Jaeger Entry date October, 2006 (planned) Cluster SEE Objective Clarifying links between the ISO RM-ODP and state-of-the-art

distributed systems Projects Research topic Open Distributed Systems Progress towards PhD/Habil

PhD submission in progress, planned submission first week of Sept. planned defense until end of 2006.

Implementations Publications 6.4.3.2. Axel Polleres

Name Dr. Axel Polleres Entry date Oktober 2003 Cluster Ubiquitous Services Objective Integration of Rules and Ontologies, Rule Based/Logic Programming

based Description of Web Services, Answer Set Programming, Integration of SPARQL and Rules

Projects BIT (activity completed), TripCom, KWeb, W3C RIF WG (ongoing) ExpertFinder (not yet funded)

Research topic Ontologies, Rules, Semantic Web Service Description

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Progress towards PhD/Habil

On track towards Habil. Since PhD established recognized position in a for me completely new research community (SW/SWS) with numerous publications, gained teaching experience, community activities (organizing workshops, managed W3C member submissions, etc.) already. Habil planned within two years from now. Goals:

• Several journal articles (minimum 3, one of which solo author) since these are still too few,

• Successful completion of the TripCom project, where I plan to stay active.

• More progress with the RIF WG. • Joint project (e.g. FP7) of URJC and the DERI Innsbruck

RSWS cluster), probably based on the ExpertFinder initiative Open issue: Whether to do the Habilitation in Innsbruck or in Madrid (Mainly administrative issue)

Implementations The DLVK planning system, SPAR2QL (LP-based SPARQL Engine, ongoing)

Publications http://www.polleres.net/publications.html bibtex file upon request.

6.4.3.3. Thomas Strang

Name Thomas Strang Entry date October 2004 Cluster Ubiquitous Services Objective involved in

(5) Discovery, (6) Adaptation, (10) Grounding, (14) Storage and Communication via cluster members

Projects Teaching Research topics • Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Context-Awareness

• Service Discovery and Service Execution, Service Frameworks

• Web Services, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Services • Smart Mobile Devices • Short Range and Ad-hoc Networks • Distributed Systems, Distribution Platforms • Communications


So far, nothing really substantial beside the publications and some conference chairing has been done towards a habil. Simply no time! :( If there would be some time, I would focus towards something entitled "Service Discovery Techniques on different levels of abstractions".

Implementations Couldn't touch a compiler for about 1.5 years due to lack of time... (Well, in fact I started a compiler 3 times or so to check some code snippets for a lecture, but I assume that doesn't count...)

Publications Strang, Thomas; Meyer zu Hörste, Michael; Lemmer, Karsten (2006): The new European Satellite Navigation System Galileo as a kernel for a Railway Collision Avoidance System. In: Proceedings, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ortung und Navigation (DGON), International Symposium on Certification of GNSS Systems and Services (CERGAL 2006), Braunschweig, Germany, 2006-04-04 - 2006-04-05 Strang, Thomas; Meyer zu Hörste, Michael (2006): Galileo as a kernel for Railway Collision Avoidance System. In: Proceedings, NavAge 2006, Prague, Czech Republic, 2006-03-28 - 2006-03-29

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Krummenacher, Reto; Strang, Thomas; Fensel, Dieter (2006): Triple Spaces for a Ubiquitous Web of Services. In: Online Proceedings, W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web, Tokyo, Japan, 2006-03-09 - 2006-03-10 Shafiq, Omair; Toma, Ioan; Krummenacher, Reto; Strang, Thomas; Fensel, Dieter (2006): Using Triple-Space Computing for communication and coordination in Semantic Grid. In: Proceedings of 3rd Semantic Grid Workshop at the 16th Global Grid Forum, 3rd Semantic Grid Workshop at the 16th Global Grid Forum, Athens, Greece, 2006-02-13 - 2006-02-16 Strang, Thomas (2006): Geographische Authentifikation und Signatur. In: GI e.V. [Hrsg.]: Proceedings der 3. Jahrestagung Fachbereich Sicherheit in der Gesellschaft für Informatik (Sicherheit 2006), Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), P-77, S. 192 - 200, 3. Jahrestagung Fachbereich Sicherheit in der Gesellschaft für Informatik (Sicherheit 2006), Magdeburg, Deutschland, 2006-02-20 - 2006-02-22, ISBN 3-88579-171-4, ISSN 1617-5468 Strang, Thomas (2005): Invited Talk: Semantic Web - Grounding a Vision. CMS Day, Bolzano (Italy), 2005-11-11 Stollberg, Michael; Strang, Thomas (2005): Integrating Agents, Ontologies, and Semantic Web Services for Collaboration on the Semantic Web. In: Proceedings of the AAAI-FSS05, 1st International Symposium on Agents and the Semantic Web (AAAI-FSS05), 1st International Symposium on Agents and the Semantic Web (AAAI-FSS05), Arlington, Virginia, USA, November 3 - 6, 2005 Krummenacher, Reto; Kopecky, Jacek; Strang, Thomas (2005): Sharing Context Information with Semantic Spaces. In: Meersman, Robert; Tari, Zahir; Herrero, Pilar [Hrsg.]: Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 3762, Springer-Verlag, S. 229 - 232, Workshop on Context-Aware Mobile Systems (CAMS 2005) as part of OnTheMove Fedarated Conferences (OTM 2005), Agia Napa, Cyprus, 2005-10-30 - 2005-11-04, ISBN 3-540-29739-1, ISSN 0302-9743 Strang, Thomas; Meyer zu Hörste, Michael; Gu, Xiaogang (2005): Sicherer Schienenverkehr mit GALILEO. In: DLR-PD [Hrsg.]:, Verkehrstechnischer Tag, S. 51 - 58 2. Verkehrstechnischer Tag des DLR: Mobil sein - mobil bleiben, Berlin, Germany, 2005-09-28, ISSN 1861-552X

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Krummenacher, Reto; Strang, Thomas (2005): Ubiquitous Semantic Spaces. In: Adjunct Proceedings, 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005), Tokyo, Japan, 2005-09-11 - 2005-09-14 Zukunft, Detlef; Giszczak, Adam; Meyer zu Hörste, Michael; Noack, Thoralf; Strang, Thomas; Lenz, Barbara; Schäfer, Ralf-Peter; Schlingelhof, Marius (2005): Exposé GALILEO im Verkehr - Anwendungspotential und DLR-Expertisen. In: DLR Programmdirektion Verkehr [Hrsg.]: Exposé GALILEO im Verkehr - Anwendungspotential und DLR-Expertisen (2005): Location- and Context-Awareness. Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia [Hrsg.]:, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 3479, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 378 S., International Workshop on Location- and Context-Awareness (LoCA 2005), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, 2005-05-12 - 2005-05-13, ISBN 3-540-25896-5, ISSN 0302-9743 Strimpakou, Maria; Roussaki, Ioanna; Anagnostou, Miltos; Pils, Carsten; Angermann, Michael; Robertson, Patrick (2005): Context Modelling and Management in Ambient-aware Pervasive Environments. In: Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia [Hrsg.]: LoCA 2005: Int. workshop on Location- and Context-Awareness, LoCA 2005, Wessling, Deutschland, 2005-05-12 (2005): Advances in Pervasive Computing. Adjunct Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Pervasive Computing. Ferscha, Alois; Mayrhofer, Rene; Strang, Thomas; Dey, Anind; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia; Butz, Andreas; Schmidt, Albrecht [Hrsg.]:, Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft (OCG), 204 S., Pervasive 2005, Munich, Germany, 2005-05-08 - 2005-05-13, ISBN 3-85403-191-2 Angermann, Michael; Robertson, Patrick; Strang, Thomas (2005): Issues and Requirements for Bayesian Approaches in Context Aware Systems. In: Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia [Hrsg.]: LoCA 2005: Int. workshop on Location- and Context-Awareness, LoCA 2005, Wessling Deutschland, 2005-05-12 Dammann, Armin; Del Sorbo, Filomena; Plass, Simon; Raulefs, Ronald; Robertson, Patrick; Rosati, Laura; Sand, Stephan; Schnell, Michael; Strang, Thomas; Kaiser, Stefan (2005): Survey on EU Research Activities in Terrestrial Wireless and Mobile Satellite Communications. In: Kaiser, Stefan; Dammann, Armin [Hrsg.]:

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Strang, Thomas (2005): Invited Talk: To know where to go - Semantics in eTourism. ENTER 2005, Innsbruck/Austria, 26 - 28 January, 2005, Innsbruck/Austria Stollberg, Michael; Strang, Thomas; Fensel, Dieter (2005): Automated Collaboration on the Semantic Web. International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering, 17 (1) Strang, Thomas (2005): Invited Talk: Challenges of Designing Services for Smart Mobile Devices. IT Seminar, Sydney/Australia, 23. February 2005 Strang, Thomas (2005): Invited Talk: Context Modelling for Ubiquitous Computing. Basser Seminar, Sydney/Australia, 9. February 2005 Strang, Thomas (2005): Invited Talk: SoftLocations. Scientific Colloquium, Sydney/Australia, 17. February 2005 Toma, I.; Iqbal, K.; Moran, M.; Roman, D.; Strang, Thomas; Fensel, D. (2005): An Evaluation of Discovery approaches in Grid and Web services Environments. In: Tagungsband Net.ObjectDays, 2nd International Conference on Grid Service Engineering and Management (GSEM 2005), Erfurt, Germany, September 19-22, 2005, ISBN 3-9808628-4-4 Toma, Ioan; Iqbal, Kashif; Moran, Matthew; Roman, Dimitru; Strang, Thomas; Fensel, Dieter (2005): An Evaluation of Discovery approaches in Grid and Web services Environments. In: Proceedings of the Net.ObjectDays 2005, 2nd International Conference on Grid service Engineering and Management (GSEM 2005), Erfurt, Germany, 2005-09-19 - 2005-09-22, ISBN 3-9808628-4-4 Strang, Thomas (2004): Invited Talk: Are we already at the dead end of context modelling and retrieval? KI 2004 Workshop on Context Modelling and Retrieval (MRC 2004), Ulm, Germany, 2004-09-20 - 2004-09-21 Wendlandt, Kai; Robertson, Patrick; Angermann, Michael; Strang, Thomas; Kammann, Jens; Wasel, Christian; Dorsch, Thaddäus (2004): Experiences from Ramping Up an Environment for Mobile Information Access. In: University of Strathclyde [Hrsg.]: Proceedings Mobile and Ubiquitous Information Access Workshop (MUIA), MobileHCI04, Glasgow, Scotland, 2004-09-13 - 2004-09-16

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Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia (2004): A Context Modeling Survey. In: Workshop Proceedings, First International Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling, Reasoning And Management at UbiComp 2004, Nottingham, England, September 7, 2004, Nottingham, UK Strang, Thomas (2004): Service-Interoperabilität in Ubiquitous Computing Umgebungen. Dissertation, S. 168, LMU München (Informatik), ISBN 3-8007-2823-0 Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia; Frank, Korbinian (2003): CoOL: A Context Ontology Language to enable Contextual Interoperability. In: Stefani, Jean-Bernard; Demeure, Isabelle; Hagimont, Daniel [Hrsg.]: Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 2893, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, S. 236 - 247, 4th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS 2003), Paris, France, 2003-11-17 - 2003-11-21, ISBN 3-540-20529-2, ISSN 0302-9743 Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia; Frank, Korbinian (2003): Integration Issues of an Ontology based Context Modelling Approach. In: Isaias, Pedro; Karmakar, Nitya [Hrsg.]: Proceedings of ICWI2003, S. 361 - 368, IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2003, Algarve, Portugal, 2003-11-05 - 2003-11-08, ISBN 972-98947-1-X Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia; Frank, Korbinian (2003): Applications of a Context Ontology Language. In: IEEE - COMSOC [Hrsg.]: Proceedings of SoftCOM 2003, S. 14 - 18, 11th International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM 2003), Split, Dubrovnik, Croatia and Ancona, Venice, Italy, 2003-10-07 - 2003-10-10, ISBN 953-6114-64-X Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia; Roeckl, Matthias (2003): Highlevel Service Handover through a Contextual Framework. In: Kaefer, Johannes; Zuendt, Maximilian [Hrsg.]: Proceedings of the 8th summit on Mobile Multimedia and Communications, Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), S. 405 - 410, 8th International Workshop on Mobile Multimedia Communications (MoMuC 2003), Munich, Germany, 2003-10-05 - 2003-10-08, ISBN 3-9808842-9-5 Strang, Thomas (2003): Invited Talk: Service Interoperabilität in Ubiquitous Computing Umgebungen. Wissenschaftliches Colloquium, Munich, Germany, 2003-07-24 Strang, Thomas; Steingaß, Alexander (2003): Einrichtung zur

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Navigation einer Person in unbekanntem Terrain, insbesondere in Gebäuden, unter Zuhilfenahme einer Karte. Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. DE 101 47 691 C 1 Strang, Thomas (2003): Invited Talk: Trends in Mobile Computing - From Mobile Phone to Context-Aware Service Platform. 38. DFN Betriebstagung, Berlin, Germany, 2003-03-04 - 2003-03-04 Strang, Thomas; Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia (2003): Service Interoperabilität auf Kontextebene (Contextual Service Interoperability). In: Proceedings of XMIDX2003, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), P-24, GI e.V., S. 95 - 102, Workshop XML-Technologien für Middleware / Middleware für XML-Anwendungen, Berlin/Germany, 2003-02-17 - 2003-02-18, ISBN 3-88579-353-9, ISSN 1617-5468Strang, Thomas (2003): Towards Autonomous Services for Smart Mobile Devices. In: Chen, Ming-Syan; Chrysanthis, Panos K.; Sloman, Morris; Zaslavsky, Arkady [Hrsg.]: Proceedings of MDM 2003, “Lecture Notes in Computer Science”, LNCS 2574, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, S. 279 - 293, 4th International Conference on Mobile Data Management, Melbourne, Australia, 2003-01-21 - 2003-01-24, ISBN 3-540-00393-2, ISSN 0302-9743 Strang, Thomas; Linnhof-Popien, Claudia (2003): Service Interoperability on Context Level in Ubiquitous Computing Environments. In: Proceedings, International Conference on Advances in Infrastructure for Electronic Business, Education, Science, Medicine, and Mobile Technologies on the Internet, L'Aquila, Italy, 2003-01-06 - 2003-01-12, ISBN 88-85280-75-7 Strang, Thomas (2003): Technischer Bericht IB 554-03/02: Vergleich von Wissensmodellen., IB 554-03/02 Sakarelis, Ioannis; Strang, Thomas; Dorsch, Thaddaeus; Robertson, Patrick (2002): Contract Based Late Security Binding. In: VDE [Hrsg.]: Proceedings of EURESCOM Summit 2002, EURESCOM Summit 2002, Heidelberg/Germany, 21 - 24 October 2002, Heidelberg/Germany Angermann, Michael; Kammann, Jens; Kühndel, Frank; Robertson, Patrick; Strang, Thomas; Wendlandt, Kai (2002): The Heywow System for Location Based Services: Combining Navigation, Distributed Services and Intelligent Mobile Devices., VDE VDE - Kongress Networlds, Dresden, Germany, 2002-10-01 Strang, Thomas (2002): Towards Autonomous Context-Aware Services for Smart Mobile Devices. Wissenschaftliches Colloquium,

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München, 2002-03-12 Angermann, Michael; Kammann, Jens; Kühndel, Frank; Robertson, Patrick; Strang, Thomas; Wendlandt, Kai (2002): Ortsbezogene mobile Dienste über heterogene Netze - Teil 1. Nachrichtentechnische Zeitschrift, 55 (4), NTZ Angermann, Michael; Kammann, Jens; Kühndel, Frank; Robertson, Patrick; Strang, Thomas; Wendlandt, Kai (2002): Ortsbezogene mobile Dienste über heterogene Netze - Teil 2. Nachrichtentechnische Zeitschrift, 55 (5), NTZ Strang, Thomas; Meyer, Melanie (2002): Agent-Environment for Small Mobile Devices. In: HPOVUA - HP OpenView University Association [Hrsg.]: HPOVUA: Electronic Proceedings, 9th HP OpenView University Association (HP-OVUA) Workshop, June 11-13, 2002 - via video conference, multiplace video conference Strang, Thomas (2001): Invited Talk: Heywow - Eine innovative Plattform für Mobile Dienste. Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium des DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, 2001-09-17 Wendlandt, Kai; Kammann, Jens; Strang, Thomas (2001): Mobile services over short range communication. In: Proceedings of Commercial Radio Sensor and Communication Technology Workshop, Universitätsverlag Rudolf Trauner (Linz), CRSCT01, Linz, Austria, 2001-08-23 Strang, Thomas (2001): Technical Report: Bluetooth integration into CLDC/MIDP., DLR-IB 554-01/06, 8 S. Angermann, Michael; Kammann, Jens; Robertson, Patrick; Steingaß, Alexander; Strang, Thomas (2001): Software Representation for Heterogeneous Data Sources Within A Probabilistic Framework. In: Proceedings LOCELLUS 2001, International Symposium on Location Based Services for Cellular Users, Munich/Germany, Feb. 2001, München Angermann, Michael; Kammann, Jens; Robertson, Patrick; Steingass, Alexander; Strang, Thomas (2001): Software Representation for Heterogeneous Location Data Sources Within A Probabilistic Framework. In: Proceedings, International Symposium on Location Based Services for Cellular Users, Munich, Germany, Feb 2001 Angermann, Michael; Kammann, Jens; Strang, Thomas (2001): Eine Plattform für den M-Commerce. Technik in Bayern, Januar 2001, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, S. 18

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Dorsch, Thaddaeus; Robertson, Patrick; Sakarelis, Ioannis; Strang, Thomas; Schiek, Ulrich (2001): Security Aspects of the Multimedia Car Platform. In: HHI [Hrsg.]: Workshop on Multiradio Multimedia Communications (MMC 2001), Workshop on Multiradio Multimedia Communications, Berlin, 22. - 23. November 2001, Berlin Strang, Thomas; Angermann, Michael (2000): Invited Talk: Heywow - A service platform for the needs of people on the move. 5th Jini Community Meeting, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2000-12-10 - 2000-12-11

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7. Beyond Research: Teaching, Business Development, and General Mangement The following section adds further activities of DERI beyond its focus on research. These activities are related to teaching, business development, and general management 7.1 Teaching 7.1.1. General Description DERI is incorporated in the faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics (MIP) as the counterpart of the Institute of Computer Science (IFI) since January 2006. According to the organizational structure of the University of Innsbruck, DERI is a Research Institute which implies a shift of the trichotomy of research, teaching and administration of a regular institute towards a focus on research. However, DERI commits itself to contribute to teaching for several reasons, including the fact that only a substantiated education will lead to qualified researchers in the future. Furthermore, teaching is a first class opportunity to effectively transfer the knowledge gained in academic research into the companies eventually hiring students when they reached their degrees, which is exactly the objective of the support programmes of the “Tiroler Zukunftstiftung” and TransIT. As of August 2006, the following DERI employees have teaching duties according to their contract who contribute on all levels of teaching (Bachelor Program, Master Program, PhD Program). Teaching Name Dieter Fensel Professor Thomas Strang Professor Michal Zaremba3 0.5 K1 Reto Krummenacher K2 Ioan Toma K2 Dumitru Roman K2 Francois Scharffe K2

On top of that, the following DERI employees offer or have recently offered lectures to UIBK students as freelancers which is awarded by the institute of computer science in particular because of their expertise in the field of their lectures.

3 contract to be given to Ying Ding with start of WS 2006/2007 in October 2006

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Freelancers Name Martin Hepp Ying Ding David O`Sullivan (DERI Galway) Jos de Bruijn Jacek Kopecky Cristina Feier

A recent development with strong impact to teaching will be the introduction of new curricula which are expected to become effective in WS 2007/2008. The Curriculum Committee, where DERI was also represented, has been taking this opportunity to completely revise the bachelor and master curricula. A few key points of the new curricula are

• a common first semester for all bachelor students in MIP • only one Bachelor thesis instead of two • Master program will be no longer organized in streams (one stream per

group), but in modules Beside the Bachelor and Master curricula, DERI is also involved in defining and establishing a new master course in Information Systems (“Wirtschaftsinformatik'”) at the Innsbruck University School of Management. Most of our PhD students and all of the PostDocs provide supervision of bachelor4 and master theses. Bachelor and Master Theses

Title Tutor Student Type Status

Web Data Extraction and Reconditioning

Holger Lausen Alex Stolz Bachelor Completed

Reasoning with Ontologies

Uwe Keller Doris Silbernagl Bachelor Completed

Semantic frameworks for Grid and Web Services

Ioan Toma Stefan Pröll Bachelor Completed

Reasoning with Ontologies

Uwe Keller Christoph Steinach

Bachelor Completed

Survey on Web Service Discovery

Uwe Keller Andreas Parschalk

Bachelor Completed

4 According to the current computer science curriculum, each student has to submit 2 Bachelor theses and 1 Master thesis

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WSMX Axel Polleres Thomas Haselwanter

Bachelor Completed

Wikis und Blogs Axel Polleres Manuela Weitlanter

Bachelor Completed

AI Planning and Web Services

Axel Polleres Hannes Tammerle

Bachelor Completed

AI Planning and Web Services

Axel Polleres Britta Tautermann

Bachelor Completed

Web Service Development

Holger Lausen Katharina Siorpaes

Bachelor Completed

A survey on Web Service Composition

Katharina Siorpaes

Bachelor Completed

A survey on Web Service Composition

Kathrin Prantner Bachelor Completed

Transactions and Flow in Web Services

Dumitru Roman Uzochukwu Ejike Bachelor Completed

Dynamic website and communication efforts

Axel Polleres Stefan Kirchmair Bachelor Completed

Comparison of Web Service Development Environments

Holger Lausen Stefan Brugger Bachelor Completed

Inferencing and Reasoning with Ontology Web Language (OWL)

Holger Lausen Michael Felderer Bachelor Completed

Web Service for XIMS

Holger Lausen Britta Tautermann

Bachelor Completed

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Ubiquitous Computing vs. Privatsphäre am Beispiel von Location Based Services

Thomas Strang Melanie Plattner Bachelor Completed

WSML-DL Reasoner

Holger Lausen Nathalie Steinmetz

Bachelor Completed

Combining First-Order Logic and Logic Programs

Jos de Bruijn Michael Felderer Master Completed

Semantic Web and e-Tourism: Investigating opportunities and downfalls of applying Semantic Web technology in e-tourism

Ying Ding Katharina Siorpaes

Master Completed

Location-based Authentication for Mobile Devices

Thomas Strang Matthias Pressnig Bachelor Assigned

Social Network Analyzer

Thomas Stang Daniel Bachlechner

Bachelor Assigned

Visualizing WSML using an UML Profile

Holger Lausen Martin Tanler Bachelor Assigned

Online Evaluation System

Thomas Strang Benedikt Pfurtscheller

Bachelor Assigned

Online Evaluation System

Thomas Strang Pire Dejaco Bachelor Assigned

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The role of Non-Functional Properties in Service descriptions

Ioan Toma Philip Kahle Bachelor Assigned

Distributed Discovery for Web Services

Ioan Toma Stefan Pröll Bachelor Assigned

Distributed Discovery for Web Services

Ioan Toma Thomas Berger Bachelor Assigned

Integrated user tool for creation, registration and invocation of Semantic Services (implementation)

Ioan Toma Manuel Brunner Bachelor Assigned

Parsing and Serialization of WSML

Reto Krummenacher Hannes Innerhofer

Bachelor Assigned

Survey on Goal driven Architectures

Michael Stollberg Bachelor

Testbed for Mobile TSC

Reto Krummenacher David Hellekalek Bachelor Assigned

Java API for Mobile TSC/YARS

Reto Krummenacher Matthias Farwick Bachelor Assigned

TSC Implementation for Mobile Devices

Reto Krummenacher Mark Mattern Bachelor Assigned

Car2Car Application Model

Thomas Stang Manuel Pigneter Bachelor Assigend

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7.2 Business Development In the following we describe the business development unit in general terms, in terms of the project it takes care, and in terms of its members. 7.2.1. General Description Name Business Development Acronym BD Web site http://www.deri.at/about/business-development/ Leader Sigurd Harand (0,4) Team Senior Researchers:

Sigurd Harand Junior Researchers: Michael Stollberg (0,4) (BD Delivery and Implementation) Students: Melanie Plattner (0,2) (Administration) Vedrana Celikovic (0,1) (Business Plan)

Projects DERIBusinessDevelopment Mission Though leading research people especially in Europe and a very large

“semantic” community is working on SWS, the software and industry market outside those groups is not understanding or recognizing the expected benefits of these technologies. They are pursuing conventional methodologies for IT solutions or, if the latter ones become to expensive, are trying to outsource them to low salary countries, destroying thereby opportunities both for local academia and IT industry. The Mission of DERI Business Development is therefore

- to make the need, importance and added value of the SWS research activities understandable and visible for the IT industry

- to establish in DERI and academia awareness of industry requirements and needs and

- to act as a catalyst for applied research activities and cooperative projects.

By fulfilling this mission therefore DERI will create substantial added value for the IT environment in Tyrol and Austria and sustain there subject opportunities.


Seminars, training and education activities SWS Key note presentations to provide a non-technical audience (participants of IT conferences, User-group meetings, CIOs, IT-decision makers) with a State-of-the art overview of SWS, and to make them aware of SWS research activities and their impact to IT. CIOs and decision

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makers should understand why their organizations have to invest now in these new technologies, the added value they gain and the risks they face otherwise. “Awareness Workshops” to make the industry aware of SWS research activities and their impact to IT. CIOs and decision makers should understand why their organizations have to invest now in these new technologies, the added value they gain and the risks they face otherwise. An effective lobbying strategy will be used to accomplish proper participation of the target audience. Academic Seminars “Applied Research” to create in academia a subject mind setting, i.e. for the industrial requirements for SWS, ontologies, tools, etc. The researchers should also understand the impact of research to the industry as well as resulting business opportunities. A prototype seminar has been held in Spring 2006, (“Applied Ontologies” Martin Hepp) Customer training and education activities based on the Tutorials on WSMO, Semantic Web and Semantic Web Service, which have been proven quite successfully since about 18 months. The existing training material will be subject of enhancement and extension. Cooperative Research / Development projects Feasibility studies to demonstrate in a specific customer environment the added value of SWS technology show its feasibility and provide information for further steps. DERI researcher will gain in-depth knowledge of industry requirements. Customized ontology engineering to apply or develop together with customer development teams specific IT solutions based on ontologies. Individual “Applied Research” activities at a specific customer environment on a fee base. These activities include also publications of Master thesis’s academic papers, etc. Product / Tools offerings There is a series of “academic prototypes” at the disposal of DERI, which can be upgraded to a level of quality which allows also external usage. These tools will be marketed as prototypes or pre-products in BD projects.

7.2.2. Projects Here we have the following projects:

• DERIBusinessDevelopment

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7.2.2.1. DERIBusinessDevelopment Name DERIBusinessDevelopment Acronym DERIBusinessDevelopment Funding line TransIT Cluster BD Leader Sigurd Harand Objective Applications Website http://www.deri.at/about/business-development/ Team Senior Researchers:

Sigurd Harand Junior Researchers: Michael Stollberg (0,4) (BD Delivery and Implementation) Holger Lausen Students: Melanie Plattner (0,2) (Administration) Vedrana Celikovic (0,1) (Business Plan)

Mission Business Development: Disseminate DERI expertise and IPR into business applications and foster high-tech start-ups based on semantic technology in Tyrol and elsewhere


Total 60 per months 1,6

Duration 36 months 01/05 – 12/07 Major tasks Cooperative Research / Development projects

Applied research sponsored by industrial partners Feasibility studies Customized Ontology Engineering

Training and education activities „Awareness“ Workshops

Technical Tutorials Product / Tools offerings upgrade assets available in DERI into marketable quality assured components or pre-products

Deliverables • 3.1.4 eTourism research project • 3.1.6 M24 Review of Professional Development Plans • 3.1.7 M36 Review of Professional Development Plans • 4.1.10 Sponsoring concept and implementation • 4.1.11 Business Plan Award concept and implementation • 4.1.12 Start-Up workshop concept and implementation (Holger,

Michael) • 4.1.13 Start-Up consulting concept (Holger, Michael) • 4.1.14 USP development master plan (SH) • 4.1.15 Requirements for product packages A & B (SH)

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• 4.1.16 Prototype of core functions for product package A • 4.1.17 Deployment announcement white paper • 4.1.18 Delivery product package A • 4.1.19 Partner agreements • 4.1.20 Prototype of core functions of product package B • 4.1.21 Requirements for product package C • 4.1.22 Prototype of core function of product package C • 4.1.23 Delivery product package B • 4.1.24 SWS Deployment Channels Setup strategy • 4.1.25 Delivery product package C • 5.1.2 Select candidates and define goals for each candidate • 5.1.5 M24 Revision of the program

7.3. Central Management Unit In the following we describe some projects that are taken care by the central management unit:

• DERIExchange • DERISustainability • Knowledge Web Network

7.3.1. DERIExchange Name DERIExchange Acronym TransIT Funding line Entwicklungs- und Transfercenter University Innsbruck Cluster CMU Leader Alice Carpentier Objective n/a Website n/a Team n/a Mission • Student Exchange: Strengthen worldwide DERI‘s attractiveness

for top PhD candidates by well established exchange tracks leading Universities e.g. Stanford, USA.


Total 0 Per month 0

Duration 36 months 01/05 – 12/07 Major tasks Student exchange program

Establish an well flourishing student exchange program between select Countries to achieve synergy and to increase UIBK’s attractiveness for PhD students Enable transfers Provide logistics and framework

Deliverables • 5.1.2 Select candidates and define goals for each candidate • 5.1.5 M24 Revision of the program

7.3.2. DERISustainability Name DERISustainability Acronym TransIT Funding line Entwicklungs- und Transfercenter University Innsbruck Cluster CMU Leader Christian Mayer Objective n/a Website n/a

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Team n/a Mission • Sustainability and Management Support: Make DERI @UIBK a

lasting asset Budget (in terms of m*m)

Total 45 per months 1,25

Duration 36 months 01/05 – 12/07 Major tasks Sustainability

Develop, implement and sustain career paths for senior researchers Deliverables 12/05: Develop career paths for senior researchers

12/05: Review and update of career plans 24/05: Review of Professional Development Plans 36/05: Review of Professional Development Plans

7.3.3. Knowledge Web Network Name Knowledge Web: Realizing the Semantic Web Network Acronym KnowledgeWeb Network Funding line IST-FP6 Cluster CMU Leader Alice Carpentier Objective n/a Website n/a Team n/a Mission Ensuring the financing of overall network activities


Total 0 per months 0

Duration 48 months 01/04 – 12/07 Major tasks Provision of € 85K to ensure the financing of overall network activities Deliverables n/a

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Service-Oriented Architecture, International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2005), 12-15 July, 2005, Orlando, Florida, USA

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Sep, 2004, Frankfurt, Germany [15] L. Vasiliu, M. Zaremba, M. Moran, C. Bussler ; Web-Service Semantic Enabled

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[16] M. Zaremba, M. Moran. Enabling Execution of Semantic Web Services: WSMX

Core Platform, In Proceedings of the 1st WSMO Implementation Workshop (WIW2004).Frankfurt,Germany,2004.

[17] M. Zaremba, M. Moran, M. Zaremba, A. Haller: Enabling execution of Semantic

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Capabilities and Constraints in WSMO. W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities for Web Services. Redwood Shores, CA, USA, 2004.

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[23] A. Mocan, M. Zaremba; Mediation in Web Service Modeling Execution

Environment (WSMX), Information Integration on the Web Workshop (iiWeb2004), Conference on Very Large Data Bases VLDB2004, August 2004.

[24] C. Bussler, E. Cimpian, D. Fensel, J. M. Gomez, A. Haller, T. Haselwanter, M.

Kerrigan, A. Mocan, M. Moran, E. Oren, B. Sapkota, I. Toma, J. Viskova, T. Vitvar, M. Zaremba, M. Zaremba: Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX). W3C Member Submission 4 April 2005

[25] M. Zaremba, M. Moran, T. Haselwanter: Semantic Web Services Architecture and

Information Model, OASIS Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) Technical Committee, Working Draft, March 2006 (in progress).

[26] J. Domingue, B. Norton, O. Shafiq, M. Zaremba: Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) Execution Semantics, OASIS Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) Technical Committee Working Draft, March 2006 (in progress).

[27] A. Haller, M. Zaremba, Mission Statement - WSMX, D7.3v1.0 WSMX Working Draft January 2005

[28] E. Cimpian, M. Moran, E. Oren, T. Vitvar, M. Zaremba: D13.0 Overview and Scope of WSMX.

[29] E. Cimpian, A. Mocan, M. Moran, E. Oren, M. zaremba: D13.1. Web Service Execution Environment - Conceptual Model (WSMX_O).

[30] A. Mocan, E. Cimpian: D13.3 WSMX Data Mediation.

[31] E. Cimpian, A. Mocan: D13.7 Process Mediation in WSMX.

[32] Michal Zaremba, Matthew Moran, Thomas Haselwanter, WSMX Architecture, D13.4v0.2 WSMX Working Draft

[33] Matthew Moran, Adrian Mocan, Michal Zaremba, Integration of WSMX with other SWS Systems, D13.8v0.1 - WSMX Final Draft 14-06-2005

[34] D. Aiken, M. Zaremba: WSMX Documentation, D22.0v0.2 WSMO Working Draft, February 2005

[35] Mick Kerrigan: D9.3v0.1 WSMX Monitor, WSMX Working Draft, January 2005

[36] Mick Kerrigan: D9.4v0.1 WSMX Invoker, WSMX Working Draft, June 2005

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[37] A. Haller: D13.6v0.1 WSMX Use Cases, WSMX Working Draft, December 2004

[38] A. Haller, J. Scicluna, T. Haselwanter: D13.9v0.1 WSMX Choreography, WSMX

Working Draft, June 2005

[39] E. Kilgarriff: D13.12v0.1 WSMX Discovery Component, WSMX Draft November 2005

[40] J. Kopecký, D. Roman: D24.1v0.1 Aligning WSMO and WSMX with existing Web Services specifications, WSMO Working Draft January 2005

[41] C. Bussler, E. Kilgarriff, R. Krummenacher, F. Martin-Recuerda, I. Toma, B. Sapkota: D21.v0.1 WSMX Triple-Space Computing, WSMO Working Draft June 2005

[42] D07.02: The Web Service Execution Environment: Moran, M., Zaremba, Michal, Haselwanter, T., Zaremba, Maciej, Oren, E., 2005.

[43] D14.02: WSMX Interoperability with Related Semantic Web Service Systems: Moran, M., Zaremba, Michal, Mocan, A., 2005.

[44] D07.01a: Version 1 of the Web Service Design Environment: Moran M., Kilgarriff

E.,HallerA.,June2004.Availableat:http://lion.deri.ie/PDFdeliverables/D07.01a_v0.01.html.

[45] D07.03a v0.1: Web Service Execution Environment, Moran M., Zaremba M., Oren E.,MocanA.,CimpianE.June2004.Availableat:http://lion.deri.ie/PDFdeliverables/D07.03a_v0.01.html.

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June 2004. Available at: http://lion.deri.ie/PDFdeliverables/D07.09a_v0.01.html.

[47] A. Mocan, E. Cimpian: D13.3v0.2. WSMX Data Mediation, WSMX, 2005

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[53] E, Cimpian, A. Mocan: D5.1b Process Mediation - Concepts, Architecture and Implementation in WSMX, June 2005.

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Implementation in WSMX, June 2005. [55] A. Mocan, E, Cimpian: D5.01a Initial Report on Web Service Mediation

Framework, June 204. [56] WP6 Interoperability & Architecture, D6.5 DIP Revised Architecture: Zaremba

Michal, Moran, M., Haselwanter, T., Zaremba, Maciej, Oren, E, 2005.

[57] WP6 Interoperability & Architecture, D6.2 DIP Architecture: Hauswirth M., Schmidt R., Altenhofen M., Drumm C., Bussler C., Moran M., Zaremba M., Vasiliu L., Quantz J., Henocque L., Haller A., Sapkota B., Kilgarriff E., Petkov S., Aiken D., Oren E., Ohlendorf M., Mocan A. December2004. Availableat:http://dip.semanticweb.org/documents/D6.2-DIP-Architecture.pdf.

[58] E. Cimpian, M. Zaremba, B. Sapkota, J. Domingue, L. Cabral: D5.5 Business Data and Process-Level Mediation Module Prototype v2, January 2006

[59] E. Cimpian, J. Lemcke, A. Mocan, M. Schumacher: D5.3a Business Process-level Mediation Module Specification, June 2005.

[60] S. Arroyo, E. Cimpian, M. Dimitrov, J. Domingue, G. Nagypal, M. Spork, L.

Vasiliu: D3.2 Service Description Framework, June 2004. [61] E. Cimpian, C. Drumm, M. Stollberg, I. Constantinescu, L. Cabral, J. Domingue, F.

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[62] O. Shafiq, R. Krummenacher, Y. Ding, B. Draxler: D4.1 Integration of WSMX and

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Research. MIS Quaterly, 28(1):75–105, 2004.

Appendix Not yet assigned components: Nr 6 Title Composition Mission statement

Develop methods to do web service composition (WSC), starting from web service descriptions at various levels of abstraction, specifically, the functional level and process level components of WSMO. Implement such methods as tools in the relevant contexts, in particular WSMX. Find potential applications of WSC technology, model them using WSMO/WSML, and run case studies with the developed tools, ultimately resulting in technology export.

Web site Leader Jörg Hoffmann Cluster Team Senior Researchers:

Jörg Hoffmann

Junior Researchers: -

Students: -


Current Status

Since the working group has yet to be started -- in Sep'06 – the current status mainly comes down to the previous work done by Jörg Hoffmann. The relevant work was done in the area of AI Planning, in particular in Planning under uncertainty. The plan for the first year of the working group is: 1. Sept'06 - Dec'06: Build on Jörg Hoffmann's previous work to obtain a prototype doing functional level composition. 22. October 06 – August 07: Contact DERI collaborators from the industry to solicit potential applications of WSC technology. Model the applications in WSMO/WSML, and run case studies with the developed technology. 3. January 07-August 08: Turn the prototype into a useable and reasonably functional WSMX tool.

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4. January 07-August 08: Start to develop methods for process level composition, in close collaboration with IRST Trento. A preliminary step towards 1. is currently being undertaken, in collaboration with IRST Trento, in the context of the KnowledgeWeb WSC prototype deliverable due end Jun'06. In what follows, we briefly sketch Jörg Hoffmann's relevant previous work, and the work done for the KnowledgeWeb prototype. We then fill in a few more details on steps 1. - 4. In AI Planning, "actions" must be composed into "plans". The formal framework are declarative transition systems: given a vector of state variables, a set of transition rules (the actions), a start state (value assignment), and a target condition, find a sequence of transitions (a plan) that leads from the start state to a state that satisfies the goal. Actions are described in terms of their precondition and effects, both of which are -- simple, mostly -- formulas over the state variables. At an abstract level, this is quite similar to WSMO functional level service descriptions; more below. Jörg Hoffmann developed the "FF" planning system, that revolutionized AI Planning when it excelled in the international planning competitions 2000 and 2002 [Hoffmann&Nebel JAIR'01, Hoffmann ECAI'02, Hoffmann JAIR'03]. More recently, FF variants "Conformant-FF" [Brafman&Hoffmann ICAPS'04, Hoffmann&Brafman AI'06], "Contingent-FF" [Hoffmann&Brafman ICAPS'05], and "Probabilistic-FF" [Domshlak&Hoffmann ICAPS'06] have been developed, dealing with "conformant", "contingent", and "probabilistic" planning, respectively. In conformant planning, instead of a start state one has a description -- in the form of a formula -- of a set of possible start states, where the plan must work for every possible start state. Contingent planning extends this with special observation actions that correspond to "if" statements to be carried out at plan execution time, so that a plan is now a tree -- no longer a sequence -- of actions. In probabilistic planning, finally, the "start state" is a probability distribution -- in the form of a Bayesian network -- over states, and the plan must achieve the goal with a probability greater than a given threshold. In WSC, there are various sources of uncertainty -- for example, about what kind of instance an input will be instantiated with, see below -- and it is reasonable to assume that (some of) the techniques used in Conformant-FF and Contingent-FF will help to deal with this uncertainty. Other work of Jörg Hoffmann that is likely to become Relevant for WSC (see also Future Steps below) is, e.g., his work on problem structure [Hoffmann AIPS'02, Hoffmann JAIR'05, Hoffmann et al ICAPS'06a], abstraction [Hoffmann et al ICAPS'06b], heuristic

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functions in model checking [Kupferschmid et al SPIN'06, Hoffmann et al, MoChArt'06], problem decomposition [Köhler&Hoffmann JAIR'00, Porteous et al ECP'01, Hoffmann et al JAIR'04], and creating realistic benchmarks for planning [Hoffmann&Edelkamp JAIR'05, Hoffmann et al JAIR'06]. In the context of the KnowledgeWeb WSC prototype deliverable due end Jun'06, Conformant-FF is used as the functional level composition component. Since WSMO functional level web service descriptions, like planning actions, are also composed of "preconditions" and "effects", plus "assumptions" and "postconditions", a high-level correspondence is obvious. There are, however, large gaps between the respective formalisms behind these keywords: most strikingly, in planning there is no notion of "inputs" and "outputs", and thus, naturally, no notion of ontology at all. Instead, as said above planning is formalized, based on the notion of state variables changing their values. Since this is a quite fundamental difference, it is our point of view that state-based techniques will be useful as a source of inspiration for WSC, but will not serve to replace targeted methods for WSC. One can, however, identify a correspondence between initial state uncertainty and "instance typing" to implement a first tool addressing a very simple form of ontologies, where the concept hierarchy has only two levels, and each "high-level" concept instance will be a member of exactly one "low-level" concept. In a nutshell, this is translated into initial state uncertainty by specifying, for each input x, of high-level concept y, of a web service, a clause saying (y_1(x) or .. or y_k(x)) where y_1 .. y_k are the sub-concepts of y. By doing so, we express that the precise form of the inputs is unknown and may be any of the given list, and that the composed web service should work for all possibilities. Conformant-FF then finds a plan corresponding to such a web service (taking the form of a sequence of atomic services). This framework is already extended to "composite" concepts containing other concepts ("name" etc) as their fields. In working step 1 of the working group, a prototype shall be implemented, probably exploiting some of FF's techniques. The input to the prototype will be a -- probably in certain ways restricted -- ontology, a set of WSMO web services in functional level description, and a certain kind of target formula -- like the existence of an instance of a given concept, satisfying various constraints. The output will be a composed service, taking the form of a sequence of the input web services, satisfying the target formula. By moving the development out of the planning (state variable based) context and into the web service (ontology based) context, we expect to be able to deal with more complex ontologies than the KnowledgeWeb prototype sketched above. In working step 2 of the working group, DERI's project partners, particularly those involved in the SUPER project, shall be contacted to

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try to come up with first ideas on where WSC could be usefully applied. A few first WSMO models are expected within half a year. In working step 3, the WSC prototype shall be integrated with WSMX, in a clean re-implementation tailored for efficiency and usability. In working step 4, first steps shall be taken to design process level composition technology, possibly based on (an extension of) the process level composition part of the KnowledgeWeb prototype, and on the outcome of step 1.

Future Steps In the future, we expect the Composition group's work to revolve around the following topics: 1. Language subset/capability extensions. We intend to deal with as large as possible subsets of WSMO/WSML. Naturally, the developed technology will start with restricted language subsets, and will incrementally move on to richer subsets. This is a process that may well take several years. If new features/scenarios become relevant on the side of WSMO/WSML, these will become new targets for WSC. This sort of work is, in its nature, very similar to the development the FF system has undergone between 1999 and 2006, moving to ever more complex input languages [Hoffmann&Nebel JAIR'01, Hoffmann ECAI'02, Hoffmann JAIR'03, Brafman&Hoffmann ICAPS'04, Hoffmann&Brafman ICAPS'05, Hoffmann&Brafman AI'06, Domshlak&Hoffmann ICAPS'06]. 2. Applications, case studies, benchmarking, technology export. A vital ingredient to WSC research will be to stay as close as possible to the envisioned fields of commercial/industrial application. We intend to use and strengthen DERI's contacts in this respect. Possible areas of application shall be identified, and increasingly realistic scenarios shall be modelled. These models play a crucial role in evaluating the developed WSC techniques, and thus guiding the research into which kinds of methods will work and which will not. The case studies may eventually lead to fostered collaborations and, ultimately, to technology export. Work in this direction -- modelling applications and benchmarking systems -- has been done by Jörg Hoffmann in the context of the international planning competition 2004 [Hoffmann&Edelkamp JAIR'05, Hoffmann et al JAIR'06]. 3. Addressing efficiency problems. Since WSC is a notoriously hard problem -- even AI Planning in very simple formalisms is PSPACE-complete -- it is essential to develop heuristic techniques that have the potential to scale satisfyingly in practical instances of the WSC problem. From Jörg Hoffmann's previous work, there is a wide range of techniques to draw upon, ranging from the techniques used in FF, over abstraction techniques [Hoffmann et al ICAPS'06b], and heuristic functions developed in the context of model checking [Kupferschmid et

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al SPIN'06, Hoffmann et al, MoChArt'06], to problem decomposition methods [Köhler&Hoffmann JAIR'00, Porteous et al ECP'99, Hoffmann et al JAIR'04]. Investigations of problem structure, like [Hoffmann AIPS'02, Hoffmann JAIR'05, Hoffmann et al ICAPS'06a], can give, insights on what characterizes the instances where the search techniques work well, ultimately enabling the WSC tool to automatically configure itself in a suitable way. 4. We expect that, eventually, notions of optimality will become relevant for WSC: What is the "best" service satisfying the composition task, and how can we compose that service? We intend to contribute to both the development of such notions and to their algorithmic treatment.

Publications J. Köhler and J. Hoffmann, On Reasonable and Forced Goal Orderings and their Use in an Agenda-Driven Planning Algorithm, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 12: 338--386, 2000. J. Hoffmann and B. Nebel, The FF Planning System: Fast Plan Generation Through Heuristic Search, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 14: 253--302, 2001. J. Porteous, L. Sebastia, and J. Hoffmann, On the Extraction, Ordering, and Usage of Landmarks in Planning, Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Planning (ECP'01), Toledo, Spain, September 2001. J. Hoffmann, Local Search Topology in Planning Benchmarks: A Theoretical Analysis, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS'02), Toulouse, France, April 2002. J. Hoffmann, Extending FF to Numerical State Variables, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'02), Lyon, France, July 2002. J. Hoffmann, The Metric-FF Planning System: Translating ``Ignoring Delete Lists'' to Numeric State Variables, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 20: 291--341, 2003. J. Hoffmann, J. Porteous, and L. Sebastia, Ordered Landmarks in Planning, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 22: 215--278, 2004. R. Brafman and J. Hoffmann, Conformant Planning via Heuristic Forward Search: A New Approach, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'04), Whistler, Canada, June 2004.

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J. Hoffmann, Where Ignoring Delete Lists Works: Local Search Topology in Planning Benchmarks, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 24: 685--758, 2005. J. Hoffmann and S. Edelkamp, The Deterministic Part of IPC-4: An Overview, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 24: 519--579, 2005. J. Hoffmann and R. Brafman, Contingent Planning via Heuristic Forward Search with Implicit Belief States, Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'05), Monterey, CA, USA, June 2005. J. Hoffmann and R. Brafman, Conformant Planning via Heuristic Forward Search: A New Approach, Artificial Intelligence, 170 (6-7), pages 507 - 541, 2006. J. Hoffmann, S. Edelkamp, S. Thiebaux, R. Englert, F. Liporace, and S. Trueg, Engineering Benchmarks for Planning: the Domains Used in the Deterministic Part of IPC-4, accepted for: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. C. Domshlak and J. Hoffmann, Fast Probabilistic Planning Through Weighted Model Counting, accepted for: 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'06). J. Hoffmann, C. Gomes, and B. Selman, Structure and Problem Hardness: Goal Asymmetry and DPLL Proofs in SAT-based Planning, accepted for: 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'06). J. Hoffmann, A. Sabharwal, and C. Domshlak, Friends or Foes? An AI Planning Perspective on Abstraction and Search, accepted for: 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'06). J. Hoffmann, J. Smaus, A. Rybalchenko, S. Kupferschmid, and A. Podelski, Using Predicate Abstraction to Generate Heuristic Functions in UPPAAL, accepted for: Post-Proceedings of 4th Workshop on Model Checking and Artificial Intelligence (MoChArt'06). S. Kupferschmid, J. Hoffmann, H. Dierks, and G. Behrmann, Adapting an AI Planning Heuristic for Directed Model Checking, 13th International SPIN Workshop on Model Checking of Software (SPIN'06).

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Software releases

FFv2.3: Basic version of FF, available at: http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~hoffmann/ff.html Metric-FF: Version of FF dealing with numeric state variables, available at: http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~hoffmann/metric-ff.html Conformant-FF: Version of FF dealing with initial state uncertainty, available at: http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~hoffmann/cff.html Contingent-FF: Version of FF dealing with initial state uncertainty and observation actions, available at: http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~hoffmann/cff.html

Not yet assigned researchers: Name Joerg Hoffmann Entry date September 2006 Cluster Objective SWS Composition Projects Research topic I will be working on the automatic composition of web services from

smaller components. Based on the description languages defined by WSML, services will be composed both on the functional level and on the process level. To accomplish this, I will draw on methods from AI, precisely from Automated Planning, in which field I have been working since 1999. Key methods for functional level composition will be the definition of language hierarchies, the identification of maximal tractable fragments, and heuristic search. Regarding process level composition, I will work in close collaboration with ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy, who have already established a set of preliminary tools for this purpose, based on Binary Decision Diagrams.


Since I completed my PhD in 2002, I have published 7 articles in JAIR and AI, the two leading top-quality journals in Artificial Intelligence. Further articles are pending. I plan to complete a Habil within the next 2 years.

Implementations I have implemented a large number of systems for Automated Planning, and for Model Checking. The most important ones are:

1. IPP (1997-1999). Based on heuristic search. Returns optimal plans for a propositional planning language. Won a 1st prize at the 1998 international planning competition (IPC).

2. FF (1999-2000). Based on heuristic search. Treats a propositional planning language. Brought about a major breakthrough in scalability of planning systems, in particular outperforming all other systems at the 2000 IPC.

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3. Metric-FF (2001). Extension to handle numeric language constructs. Top performer at 2002 IPC.

4. Conformant-FF, Contingent-FF (2003-2005). Extensions to handle uncertainty and observations. Best paper award for Conformant-FF at ICAPS 2004, top performer in 2006 IPC.

5. Probabilistic-FF (2006). Extension to handle probability distributions.

6. Heuristic UPPAAL (2004-2006). Modification of the state-of-the-art Model Checker UPPAAL to use automatically generated heuristic functions. Two versions implemented, one based on ideas from FF, another based on an abstraction method from Model Checking.

7. SATPLAN (2004-2006). Based on satisfiability testing. Returns optimal plans for a propositional planning language. Won the tracks for optimal planners at the 2004 and 2006 IPCs.

Publications Book (peer-reviewed) J. Hoffmann: Utilizing Problem Structure in Planning: A Local Search Approach, LNCS 2854, Springer-Verlag, 2003. Journal Papers (all peer-reviewed) J. Hoffmann, S. Edelkamp, S. Thiebaux, R. Englert, F. Liporace, and S. Trüg: Engineering Benchmarks for Planning: the Domains Used in the Deterministic Part of IPC-4, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 26, 2006, pages 453 - 541. J. Hoffmann and R. Brafman: Conformant Planning via Heuristic Forward Search: A New Approach, in: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Volume 170 (6-7), 2006, pages 507 - 541. J. Hoffmann: Where Ignoring Delete Lists Works: Local Search Topology in Planning Benchmarks, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 24, 2005, pages 685 – 758. J. Hoffmann and S. Edelkamp: The Deterministic Part of IPC-4: An Overview, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 24, 2005, pages 519 – 579. S. Thiebaux, J. Hoffmann, and B. Nebel: In Defense of PDDL Axioms, in: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Volume 168 (1-2), 2005, pages 38 - 69.

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J. Hoffmann, J. Porteous, L. Sebastia: Ordered Landmarks in Planning, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 22, 2004, pages 215 – 278. J. Hoffmann: The Metric-FF Planning System: Translating ``Ignoring Delete Lists'' to Numeric State Variables, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 20, 2003, pages 291 - 341. J. Hoffmann and B. Nebel: The FF Planning System: Fast Plan Generation Through Heuristic Search, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 14, 2001, pages 253 - 302. Recipient of the 2005 IJCAII-JAIR best paper prize. J. Rintanen and J. Hoffmann: An Overview of Recent Algorithms for AI Planning, in: Künstliche Intelligenz, Volume 2/01, 2001, pages 5 – 11. J. Koehler and J. Hoffmann: On Reasonable and Forced Goal Orderings and their Use in an Agenda-Driven Planning Algorithm, in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Volume 12, 2000, pages 338 – 386. Conference Papers (all peer-reviewed) J. Hoffmann, J. Smaus, A. Rybalchenko, S. Kupferschmid, and A. Podelski: Using Predicate Abstraction to Generate Heuristic Functions in UPPAAL, in: Post-Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Model Checking and Artificial Intelligence (MoChArt'06). J. Hoffmann, A. Sabharwal, and C. Domshlak: Friends or Foes? An AI Planning Perspective on Abstraction and Search, in: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'06). J. Hoffmann, C. Gomes, and B. Selman: Structure and Problem Hardness: Goal Asymmetry and DPLL Proofs in SAT-based Planning, in: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'06). C. Domshlak and J. Hoffmann: Fast Probabilistic Planning Through Weighted Model Counting, in: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'06).

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S. Kupferschmid, J. Hoffmann, H. Dierks, and G. Behrmann: Adapting an AI Planning Heuristic for Directed Model Checking, in: Proceedings of the 13th International SPIN Workshop on Model Checking of Software (SPIN'06). J. Hoffmann and S. Kupferschmid: A Covering Problem for Hypercubes, in: Poster Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'05). J. Hoffmann and R. Brafman: Contingent Planning via Heuristic Forward Search with Implicit Belief States, in: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'05). S. Trueg, J. Hoffmann, and B. Nebel: Applying Automatic Planning Techniques to Airport Ground-Traffic Control: A Feasibility Study, in: Proceedings of the 27th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI'04). R. Brafman and J. Hoffmann: Conformant Planning via Heuristic Forward Search: A New Approach, in: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'04). Recipient of the best paper award. S. Thiebaux, J. Hoffmann, and B. Nebel: In Defense of PDDL Axioms, in: Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'03). J. Hoffmann and H. Geffner: Branching Matters: Alternative Branching in Graphplan, in: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'03). J. Hoffmann: Extending FF to Numerical State Variables, in: Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'02). J. Hoffmann: Local Search Topology in Planning Benchmarks: A Theoretical Analysis, in: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS'02). J. Hoffmann and B. Nebel: RIFO Revisited: Detecting Relaxed Irrelevance, in: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Planning (ECP'01).

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J. Posteous, L. Sebastia, and J. Hoffmann: On the Extraction, Ordering, and Usage of Landmarks in Planning, in: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Planning (ECP'01). J. Hoffmann: Local Search Topology in Planning Benchmarks: An Empirical Analysis, in: Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'01). J. Hoffmann, A Heuristic for Domain Independent Planning and its Use in an Enforced Hill-climbing Algorithm, in: Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems (ISMIS'00). J. Hoffmann and J. Koehler: A new Method to Index and Query Sets, in: Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'99). J. Koehler, B. Nebel, J. Hoffmann, and Y. Dimopolous: Extending Planning Graphs to an ADL Subset, in: Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Planning (ECP'97). Workshop Papers (all peer-reviewed) J. Hoffmann, C. Gomes, and B. Selman, Structure and Problem Hardness: Asymmetry and DPLL Proofs in SAT-Based Planning, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on Constraint Propagation and Implementation at CP'05. B. Becker, M. Behle, F. Eisenbrand, M. Fraenzle, M. Herbstritt, C. Herde, J. Hoffmann, D. Kroening, B. Nebel, I. Polian, and R. Wimmer: Bounded Model Checking and Inductive Verification of Hybrid Discrete-continuous Systems, in: Proceedings of the Workshop ''Methoden und Beschreibungssprachen zur Modellierung und Verifikation von Schaltungen und Systemen''. R. Brafman and J. Hoffmann: Conformant Planning via Heuristic Forward Search, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on Planning under Uncertainty and Incomplete Information at ICAPS'03. S. Edelkamp and J. Hoffmann: Quo Vadis, IPC-4? -- Proposals for the Classical Part of the 4th International Planning Competition, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on the Competition at ICAPS'03.

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S. Thiebaux, J. Hoffmann, and B. Nebel: In Defense of PDDL Axioms, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on the Competition at ICAPS'03. J. Hoffmann and B. Nebel: What Makes the Difference Between HSP and FF?, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on Empirical Methods in AI at IJCAI'01. J. Hoffmann and B. Nebel: Towards Thorough Empirical Methods for AI Planning, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on Empirical Methods in AI at IJCAI'01. J. Koehler and J. Hoffmann: On the Instantiation of ADL Operators Involving Arbitrary First-Order Formulas, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on New Results in Planning, Scheduling and Design (PuK2000) at ECAI 2000. J. Hoffmann: A Heuristic for Domain Independent Planning and its Use in an Enforced Hill-climbing Algorithm, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on New Results in Planning, Scheduling and Design (PuK2000) at ECAI 2000. J. Koehler and J. Hoffmann: Planning with Goal Agendas, in: Proceedings des 13. Workshop Planen und Konfigurieren auf der 10. Tagung Expertensysteme (XPS-99).

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