Integrating data and services through functional semantic service descriptions
Ruben Verborgh, Thomas Steiner, Davy Van Deursen, Sam Coppens, Erik Mannens, Rik Van de Walle, Joaquim Gabarró · Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) · 2011
Without any exaggeration, the Linked Data movement has significantly changed the Semantic Web world. Meanwhile, intelligent services—the other pillar of the initial Semantic Web vision—have not undergone a similar revolution. Although several important steps were taken and significant milestones were reached, we are far from our envisioned destination. What makes the Web so difficult for machines? So far, we have only seen successful clients for specific purposes, mostly tailored to the API of a certain site or service. This contrasts with human behavior: we surf the Web for several different purposes on a variety of websites. The discrepancy originates in two related aspects: semantics and hyperlinks. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Linked Data effort help to overcome the problem of data semantics by providing machine-interpretable data with linked concepts. On the other hand, services tend not to provide semantics or links, neither to internal pages nor to external sites. As a consequence, in order to consume a Web service, automated agents currently must have an implementation of the API and know how to construct URIs. In contrast, humans do not need a manual to browse a website, because they can interpret text and follow links. Summarizing, if we want automated agents to consume the Web, services should provide: