Adapting BPEL4WS for the Semantic Web: The Bottom-Up Approach to Web
Service Interoperation
Daniel J. Mandell and Sheila A. McIlraith
Dept. Computer Science,
Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University
Stanford, CA,
94305-9020, USA
{dmandell,sam}@ksl.stanford.edu
Abstract. Towards the ultimate goal of seamless interaction
among networked programs and devices, industry has developed orchestration
and process modeling languages such as XLANG, WSFL, and recently BPEL4WS.
Unfortunately, these efforts leave us a long way from seamless
interoperation. Researchers in the Semantic Web community have taken up
this challenge proposing top-down approaches to achieve aspects of Web
Service interoperation. Unfortunately, many of these efforts have been
disconnected from emerging industry standards, particularly in process
modeling. In this paper we take a bottom-up approach to integrating
Semantic Web technology into Web services. Building on BPEL4WS, we present
integrated Semantic Web technology for automating customized, dynamic
binding of Web services together with interoperation through semantic
translation. We discuss the value of semantically enriched service
interoperation and demonstrate how our framework accounts for user-defined
constraints while gaining potentially successful execution pathways in a
practically motivated example. Finally, we provide an analysis of the
forward-looking limitations of frameworks like BPEL4WS, and suggest how
such specifications might embrace semantic technology at a fundamental
level to work towards fully automated Web service interoperation.