Enhancing Web Service descriptions with context functions

Abstract

Web Service reuse is embraced both by the industry and the academia. Especially in the field of context-awareness, where Web Services are usually employed as building blocks for larger applications, the existence of adequate service descriptions is vital. The semantic Web technologies have assisted in providing richer descriptions of resources However, elaborated constructs that allow the potential user to understand the behaviour and relation of the Web Service to context information are missing. In the current paper context-related information that should form part of the service description is presented in three categories: context dependencies, context offering and context special handling. The categories are analyzed to their ingredient elements and incorporated in service descriptions as en extension to the OWL-S ontology for Web Services demonstrating the preliminary use of the proposed approach.