Mathematics on the (Semantic) NET

摘要

Although web service technology is becoming more prevalent the mechanisms for advertising and discovering web services are still at a rudimentary stage. WSDL provides information about service name and parameters for the purpose of invocation. UDDI provides a set of WSDL documents matching keywords in a query. The aim of the Mathematics On the NET (MONET) project is to deliver a proof-of-concept demonstration of a framework for mathematical web services which uses semantic web technologies to broker between user requirements and deployed services. This requires mechanisms for describing mathematical objects and properties so that a piece of software can evaluate the applicability of a particular service to a given problem. Thus we describe our Mathematical Service Description Language (MSDL), with its ontological grounding in OpenMath and outline its role in service brokerage and service composition within MONET. We believe similar issues arise in many other (scientific) domains, and the leverage obtained here, through the formal background of mathematics, suggests a road-map for the development of similar domain-specific service description languages.