Semantic Web Services: description requirements and current technologies

Semantic Web Services aim at providing a new level of functionality on top of the current Web and current services, by enabling automatic discovery, composition, invocation and interoperation of Web Services. Different efforts are addressing some of the requirements to enable such next generation services, with different degree of success. Nevertheless, to achieve the main goals addressed by Semantic Web Services, an appropriate semantic description, supporting automation of discovery, composition, invocation and interoperation, must be defined. In this paper, a set of requirements on the information a Semantic Web Service must expose in order to fulfill these major objectives is presented. These requirements are related to the different initiatives in the area, and proposals for useful extensions and combinations of these efforts are discussed.