The main INFRAWEBS project focus and objective is the development of an application-oriented software toolset for creating, maintaining and executing WSMO-based Semantic Web Services (SWS) within their whole life cycle.

This next generation of tools and systems will enable software and service providers to build open and extensible development platforms for web service applications. These services will run on open standards and specifications, such as BPEL4WS, WSMO, WSMX, WSML, SPARQL, RDF, etc. In particular, they will be compliant with WSMO (Web Services Modelling Ontology), a W3C initiative in Semantic Web services.

The systems generated will consist of loosely-coupled and linked INFRAWEB units, with each unit providing tools and adaptable system components. Developers will be able to use these components to analyse, design and maintain WSMO-based Semantic Web services across the whole lifecycle.

These Semantic Web services offer a new dimension in collaborative work and service production, service provision and service maintenance in run-time environments.

In the first step, the INFRAWEB units are being used to establish an open development platform for SMEs and industrial vendors.

INFRAWEBS represents a novel approach to problem solving in the creation of SWS applications. It involves a tight integration of similarity-based (non-semantic) and logic-based (semantic) reasoning.

In the quest of competitive edge, companies in Europe are pressed to gain innovation, become faster and more flexible (i.e highly dynamic and adaptable), but also offer a wider range of stable and reliable services along with a personalized interaction with customers, clients and partners.

Undoubtedly, ICT supporting modern, dynamic, reconfigurable, and scalable technologies like the INFRAWEBS approach, do play an important role in tackling these challenges and implementing advanced semantically based knowledge domains.

INFRAWEBS is a flexible, interoperable and reconfigurable framework, enabling organisations to build up partnerships faster and in a more effectively way with respect to the service generation, execution and distribution process. By allowing peers to change their role - to be client, broker and service provider within one environment - INFRAWEBS ensures a highly dynamic and efficient service production process and workflow, and one which spans the whole service lifecycle.

The INFRAWEBS approach provides "intelligent" tools and systems for establishing, optimising and enhancing dynamic collaboration and development platforms for SW service analysis, design and maintenance. The framework will support different organisations in their organisational workflow, service integration, and sharing of resources - handling their services within the full web service life cycle - and applying a broad class of services.
It is designed as a flexible and reconfigurable platform, which enables the organisations to build faster and more effective partnerships with respect to the service generation, execution and distribution process.
It is one further step in the direction of implementing the European vision of "fast reaction and interchange in virtual enterprises and entities". Virtual enterprises could be established consisting of several building blocks, modules, products, and services which are interchanged, modified and optimised within collaboration and development platforms.
Being directly connected to business partners and having direct access to their services and products, advances the stimulation of innovation "through positive effects on the knowledge value chain".
The system immanent property, consisting in the fact that the platform partners have the ability to change their action role within the development platform - to be client, broker and service provider within the same environment - ensures a highly dynamic and efficient service production process and workflow.
With respect to competitiveness, nowadays it is absolutely necessary and indispensable to be - flexible - highly dynamic - and fast but at the same time - precise - profound - and stable in interactions with customers, clients and partners, especially in the business area. Modern dynamic, reconfigurable, and scalable platforms and frameworks like the Infrawebs support and contribute to the goal of "reinforcing competitiveness" especially in the European dimension.
Distributed decision support systems and tools open complex and impervious structures to the user and the customer. The user is to be guided unambiguously through complex procedures like SW service design, analysis and execution.
In this sense, such systems and frameworks increase the human effectiveness and capability to reinforce competitiveness.

From the technical point of view, one of the important innovation related aspects is the integration of semantic based structures and services in development platform oriented collaboration. The integration of such semantic related structures increases the communication capability of different heterogeneous systems and platforms. Using these methodologies and techniques makes the systems "understandable" to each other (optimised interoperability) - not only in sense of applying standards and formalisations, but due to the machine processability feature also in providing and enhancing automated and agent-based knowledge acquisition and collaboration facilities.
Due to the implementation of "intelligence" within the decision-making and supporting facilities, it serves in automating the processing of semantic structured knowledge and assists in building new products and value-added services. Due to this fact, no specialised developers or personnel are necessary to be involved in service and product configuration and composition. Furthermore, the integration of tools for handling and considering "experience" and "learning from the past" (Case-Based Reasoning - CBR) optimises the composition and generation of services.
The INFRAWEBS approach ensures the "co-evolution of technology and applications". Through this new basic entity, the specific services will be exploitable in combination with incorporated services provided by the business partners. Therefore, a precondition is given in establishing innovative products and services.
From the networking point of view, the innovation related aspects include the introduction of new highly dynamic collaboration structures within working environment of service providers and service users.

added-value at European level is implicitly given in the proposed framework structure. Applying an ontology and semantics based framework comprises normalisation and formalisation demands on a European level. The normalisation effect of the ontologies provides a national independent effect on communication on European level.
The establishment of national (regional) independent knowledge domains and spaces provides a kind of super ordinate community building effect. The European states and nations will achieve an increased interoperability on at least a systems level. Furthermore, in case of business organisations, the European wide collaboration of business enterprises will increase the effectiveness to build and generate European specific value-added products and services.
Due to the fact that the proposed system framework is semantically based and capable of handling and maintaining "experience" patterns, it should be applied to areas that directly reflect the European dimension - for example, environmental related problem and tasks.

In order to satisfy the requirements determined by the given types of users, the INFRAWEBS Conceptual Model (Fig. 1) has been designed. It is based on the basic approaches of the INFRAWEWBS framework and is a conclusive evolution of the formerly defined global design.

Fig. 1: The INFRAWEBS Conceptual Model

The project work takes into consideration different dimensions and connects comprehensively the different INFRAWEBS components. The INFRAWEBS Conceptual Model consists of two main elements: the INFRAWEBS Semantic Web Unit and INFRAWEBS Environment.

The INFRAWEBS Semantic Web Unit provides users with:

• Information structures for effective discovering, storing and retrieving both semantic and non-semantic information needed for creating and maintaining Semantic Web Services.
  
  
• Tools for creating and maintaining Semantic Web Services and SWS Applications.
  
  
• Library of Methods used for creating and maintaining Semantic Web Services.
  

The INFRAWEBS Environment provides means for communicating with different kinds of INFRAWEBS users and other INFRAWEBS Semantic Web Units as well as for executing SWS considering security and privacy issues of these operations.
All SWU components are organized in two directions:

• Problem solving based on semantic information (or Logic-based problem solving) versus problem solving based on non-semantic information (similarity-based problem solving).
  
  
• Different types of information needed for both kinds of problem solving.
  

From this point of view the SWU proposes:

• Information structures for storing and retrieving semantic and non-semantic data that are DSWS-R (Repository) and Similarity-based OM.
  
  
• DSWS-R is aimed at effective storing and retrieving all elements of Semantic Web Services according to the WSMO Framework: Goals, Ontologies, SWS and Mediators written on WSML language.
  
  
• a Similarity-based OM contains non-logical representation of the same (or some of the) elements (so called "knowledge objects") as well as other data e.g. graphical models of SWS and "natural language" templates for WSMO Goals.
  

Tools for creating and maintaining both semantic and non-semantic data:

• CBR based Service Designer is aimed at designing a WSMO-based Semantic Web service from an existing non-semantic Web service.
  
  
• CBR based Service Composer is aimed at creating a Semantic Web service through composition of existing WSMO-based semantic Web services.
  
  
• CBR based Goal Editor is aimed at creating predefined WSMO-based goals and their "natural language" templates needed for designing SWS-based applications.
  
  
• CBR based Recommender tool is a similarity-based tool facilitating operation of all INFRAWEBS "semantic-based" tools by utilizing "past experience". Non-semantic data stored in OM is used as the problem description for determining the most similar solution (SWS or its graphical model) to the current problem.
  
  

Methods used during problem-solving

• Logic-based discovery
  
  
• Application-specific decision-support methods used for service composition, compensation, monitoring etc.
  
  
• Ontology keywords based discovery
  
  
• Several methods for calculating similarity and/or assignments - structural, linguistic, statistic etc.
  
  

Semantic and non-semantic components of INFRAWEBS are interconnected by the Semantic Information Router (SIR), which is responsible for:

• Locating all resources needed for problem solving either in the local SWU or outside.
  
  
• Creation of non-semantic content (knowledge objects) by means of the semantic content stored in the DSWS-R.
  
  
• Creating an effective system of indexes allowing fast communication between semantic and non-semantic modules of the SWU.
  
  

[ link ] News & Events

[ link ] Project Management Platform FHBO

[ link ] Project Dissemination FHBO & FUTUREtec

[ link ] Open Source Platform & Demo-Applications

[ link ] Open Forum

[ link ] General Presentations

[ link ] Infrawebs Scientific Publications

[ link ] Web Service Modelling Ontology - Initiative & WSMO Specifications

project acronym:

INFRAWEBS

project title:

Intelligent Framework for Generating Open (Adaptable) Development Platforms for Web-Service Enabled Applications Using Semantic Web Technologies, Distributed Decision Support Units and Multi-Agent-Systems

project duration: 30 months

project start: 1st August 2004

Web services are used in a wide range of applications, but their usefulness is limited by a lack of effective means for different types of web services to work together.
Existing software tools and systems are mostly incoherent and "static", usually due to proprietary aspects or features that prevent information from being exchanged effectively. As a result, existing development and networking platforms are missing important features such as reconfigurability, adaptability and self-organisation. This step from static to dynamic web services requires the use of semantic technologies, so as to structure information sources and domains in a way that can be processed by machines. This, in turn, requires a bridging between web service and Semantic Web (SW) technologies in order to implement semantically-rich service descriptions.

The main INFRAWEBS project focus and objective is the development of an application-oriented software toolset for creating, maintaining and executing WSMO-based Semantic Web Services (SWS) within their whole life cycle.

This next generation of tools and systems will enable software and service providers to build open and extensible development platforms for web service applications. These services will run on open standards and specifications, such as BPEL4WS, WSMO, WSMX, WSML, SPARQL, RDF, etc. In particular, they will be compliant with WSMO (Web Services Modelling Ontology), a W3C initiative in Semantic Web services.

The systems generated will consist of loosely-coupled and linked INFRAWEB units, with each unit providing tools and adaptable system components. Developers will be able to use these components to analyse, design and maintain WSMO-based Semantic Web services across the whole lifecycle.

These Semantic Web services offer a new dimension in collaborative work and service production, service provision and service maintenance in run-time environments.

In the first step, the INFRAWEB units are being used to establish an open development platform for SMEs and industrial vendors.

The essential results will be software modules within an integrated framework. Several functionalities will be provided for the usage in design-time as well as in run-time (by service providers, service designers or service brokers). For the design-time phase they are:

• a SWS Designer
  
  
• an Organizational Memory (CBR based Recommender)
  
  
• the "SIR" (Semantic Information Router)
  
  
• the SWS Composer
  
  

The run-time modules (for service consumers, service providers, service brokers) are given by:

• the Distributed Repository
  
  
• the Service Access Middleware
  
  
• the SWS Executor
  
  
• the QoS (Quality of Service) Broker
  
  
• the Security and Privacy Enabler
  
  

- Administrative Coordination (Contact Person to EC)

Prof Dr Ing F Pautzke, [ University of Applied Sciences ], Bochum, Germany

- Scientific Coordination

Dr Ing H Joachim Nern, [ Aspasia Knowledge Systems ], Duesseldorf, Germany

1 - FHBO - Project Management (Project Coordinator)
Prof Dr Ing F Pautzke
[ Electrical Engineering and Information Sciences ] ; University of Applied Sciences, Bochum, Germany

2 - UIBK - Next Web Generation, QoS-Brokering
Univ Prof Dr rer nat D Fensel, James Scicluna, Dr Axel Polleres
[ Digital Enterprise Research Institute ] ; University of Innsbruck, UIBK, Innsbruck, Austria

3 - IIT - CBR in SW Service Design & Composition
Prof Dr Tanja Atanasova, Prof Dr G Agre
[ IIT - Institute of Information Technology ] ; Bulg. Academy of Science - BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria

4 - SZTAKI - SAM - Service Access Middleware
Dr L Kovacs, Dr A Micsik
[ SZTAKI - Department of Distributed Systems ] ; Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest, Hungary

5 - ICCS - Security & Privacy
Dr Elpida Tzafestas
[ Institute of Communication and Computer Sciences ] ; National Technical University of Athens - NTUA, Athens, Greece

6 - Profium - Semantic Information Routing
Dr Janne Saarela
[ Profium SA ] ; Espoo, Finland

7 - SAI - Distributed Registries
Atanas Kiryakov
[ OntoText Laboratory ] ; Sirma SAI, Sofia, Bulgaria

8 - FUTUREtec Dissemination and Exploitaion, IPRs Issues, Validation.
Responsible: Dr C Rehm-Berbenni and Ing. Andrei Druta
[ FUTUREtec-GmbH ] ; Gesellschaft für angewandte Informatik mbH, Bergisch-Gladbach, Germany

9 - ATOS - Requirement-Profiles & Test-Scenarios
Ozelin Lopez
[ STREAM ] ; Technology Center - Atos Origin, Madrid, Spain

10 - Best-HP - Test-Scenarios & Requirement-Profiles
Marco Di Girolamo, Ettore Riceputi
[ BEST-EIC ] ; Hewlett Packard, Italia

11 - big&Aspa - Organisational Memory - Scientific Coordination
Dr H Joachim Nern, Georg Jesdinski, Michael Kronenberg
[ big7.net GmbH & Aspasia Knowledge Systems ] ; Duesseldorf, Germany

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