Semantic Web Services architecture with lightweight descriptions of services

Abstract The goal of semantic Web services research and development is to introduce semantics for service descriptions and to enable an automation for various tasks of a service integration process. Recent developments in semantic Web services aim to introduce bottom‐up approach to service modeling allowing to build incremental layers on top of existing service descriptions while at the same time enhance existing SOA technologies. An important step in this direction has been made in the W3C by the SAWSDL WG proposing a framework for annotating WSDL services with arbitrary semantic descriptions. In this chapter, we show how lightweight semantic service model called WSMO‐Lite can build on top of SAWSDL and how such service model can be used for various tasks within the service integration process in a semantic Web services architecture and its service technology. Ultimately, our goal is to allow incremental steps on top of existing service descriptions, enhancing existing SOA capabilities with intelligent and automated integration.