Experiences from Semantic Web Service Tutorials

Experiences from Semantic Web Service Tutorials

Michael Stollberg1, Matthew Moran2, John Domingue3
DERI Austria, University of Innsbruck, Austria
michael.stollberg@deri.org
DERI Ireland, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
matthew.moran@deri.org
Knowledge Media Institute KMI, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
j.b.domingue@open.ac.uk

Abstract. We have given around 20 tutorials on Semantic Web Services in international
events during the last two years. This position paper presents our
experiences and depicts central aspects relevant for education, dissemination
and exploitation of Semantic Web and Semantic Web service technologies in
academia and industry.

Introduction and Overview of Tutorials
The potential of the Semantic Web will only become tangible if it is widely used. The
pre-requisite therefore is that many people need to know what it is, how to do it, and
how to use it. In order to contribute to the education and dissemination challenge for
the next generation of Web technologies, we have given a series of tutorials on Semantic
Web services. This paper presents our experiences and exposes critical aspects
we have identified for a wide application of Semantic Web technology.

Centered on the Web Service Modeling Ontology WSMO [2] as the most comprehensive
framework for Semantic Web services, the aim of our tutorials is to provide a
thorough overview of the field. Most tutorials are given as full day events. The morning
session introduces the ideas and challenges, and explains the concepts and definitions
of prominent frameworks for Semantic Web services as well as the techniques
developed for semantically enabled discovery, composition, mediation, and execution
of Web services. The afternoon session introduces execution environments for Semantic
Web services as prototypes for semantically enabled service-oriented computing,
and concludes with a hands-on session wherein attendees practically apply the
presented technologies.

Starting in 2004, we have presented around 20 tutorials in international events [1].
The audience has been between 10 and 30 attendees, mainly comprised of students,
academic researchers, and industrial practioners. We observed the following ratio of
attendees with respect to previous knowledge on the field, naturally varying for particular
events: 40% newcomers, 50% researchers or developers that work with related
technologies, and merely 10% of experts in semantic technologies.

Critical Aspects for Education and Dissemination
Through the tutorials we depict certain aspects as critical for achieving the aspirated
proliferation of the Semantic Web and Semantic Web services. We list these and
expose recommendations that should be addressed by the Semantic Web community
in order to successfully proliferate and establish the Semantic Web.

• Ontologies are the backbone technology for the Semantic Web. Every data item
that is published, communicated, and interpreted by machines shall be based on
ontologies. The pre-requisite therefore is that a shared understanding of domains
is explicated in ontologies. However, we have experienced very limited abilities
in conceptualizing and formalizing for ontology creation
=> Ontology Engineering should become a central topic of academic education

• The central pillar of Semantic Web services are formal descriptions. These need
to be correct (conceptually and formally) – otherwise no mechanized Web service
technology works. We have experienced even less abilities in formal specifications
than for ontology creation

=> Formal Specification is central competence for Semantic Web engineers
• Most Semantic Web and Semantic Web service technologies rely on or extend
existing AI technologies (e.g. knowledge representation, planning, data integration,
process algebras, etc.). Especially for people working in the Semantic Web,
we have experienced fairly limited basic knowledge in related AI techniques
=> education in Artificial Intelligence is the basis for Semantic Web research

• In every tutorial, especially from industrial practioners but also from researchers,
questions were raised on the availability of software tools for modeling ontologies
and Web service descriptions, for reasoning, or for execution environments
=> Tool Provision is a pre-requisite for broad adoption of the Semantic Web

• Service-oriented computing is seen as the paradigm for the next generation of IT
systems, with Web services as the base technology. We have experienced very
limited real-world scenarios for the use of Semantic Web services in SOA.
=> practical SOA scenarios will drive the adoption of Semantic Web services

To conclude, an extensive set of technologies has been developed by the Semantic
Web service community. To demonstrate the attainable benefits, these need to be
applied in broad scale. In consequence, we successively enhance our tutorials and
broaden our activities on education (i.e. academic courses) and dissemination (i.e.
industrial training) of semantic technologies with respect to the identified aspects.