Welcome to SUPRIME

Our research within the field of Semantic Services is centered around the theme of the intelligent management and usage of Processes and Services. We are currently working on different research topics,which are illustrated in the figure below.

We classify the topics in two groups being orthogonal to each-other. The vertical topics represent areas where we conduct research work to deal with concrete challenges and offer solution to the actual problems.
Whereas, the topics with the horizontal orientation provide a broad, horizontal coverage of the conducted research, serving also as motivational problems.

The following Research Topics are addressed in our suprime Framework:

Discovery
The discovery of semantic Web service and process descriptions aims at identifying those descriptions, which satisfy the needs of a query. Our scalable discovery solution features high precision and recall of the discovered descriptions matching the query. We also plan to integrate the ranking phase into the discovery phase such that most valuable service descriptions are considered first for expensive matchmaking operations. more…

Ranking
The ranking component determines an ordering of the discovered service and process descriptions and considers user preferences on functional and non-functional properties. It enables automation of service related task (e.g., composition) by finding the most appropriate service or process for a given query. Therefore, the development of the ranking component comprises formalisms to specify preferences on properties and a scalable fuzzy logics based ranking algorithm. more…

Composition
Composition is an important mean for creating new services based on already existing ones. Therefore services are aggregated to form a new workflow, whose input and output parameters match those of the service requested by the user. In between those services, which compose the new workflow, there have to be matches between their parameters, i.e. preceeding services have to create those output parameters that are required by the following services. Not only is it important to find matching in- and output parametertypes but also such parameters that fulfill the purpose the user needs. Therefore, besides a technically matching, semantics have to be regarded considering the parameters and their use in the services. more…

Usage and Privacy Policies
Momentarily WS-Policy is used to regulate technical aspects of services with assertions defined by WS-* standards (e.g. encrypted communication). Our goal is to provide policies with formal semantics that regulate service behaviour.
In terms of Usage and Privacy Policies we are working towards the formal expression of usage policies, in order to automatically check permitted actions and required obligations for service executions.

Acquisition of Service Description
Provide automated methods to infer a formal model of the process behavior. Another goal is the semi-automated acquisition of processes in deep Web.

Processes can be edited and annotated in a visual manner by the process editor. Automatically acquired processes from the Web can be rectified and extended. Semantic descriptions are added to the descriptions of services and processes and are stored in the repository. more…

Language and Reasoning
In order to enable automatic method and tools, languages with formal semantics for describing services and processes as well for specifying constraints over services and processes are needed. Service and process description language should allow modeling of involved resources, competencies and credentials (non functional properties) and behavior (orchestration and choregraphy) including access control semantically and in a unified way. The language for specifying constraints on services and processes, e.g. for searching, ranking and composing the services and processes automatically, should allow specification of desired functionality (desired behavior and desired changes in the resources) and desired quality (e.g. preferences over the non functional properties).

Service Market Platforms and Negotiation
In contrast to the current situation where passive Web services are offered, our goal is to provide solutions for the autonomous and active engagement of services in economic activities. We intend to model the „intelligent” behavior of services, through Analytics methods for seamless monitoring and analysis of all relevant service activities.