On constructing environment ontology for semantic Web services

This paper proposes constructing an environment ontology to represent domain knowledge about Web services. The capability of a Web service is considered in terms of the effects it imposes on the environment during execution. Thus, more fundamental and precise semantic specification for service capability than conventional interface-based description language can be obtained. Basic concepts of the ontology include resources residing in the environment. For each environment resource, there is a corresponding hierarchical state machine specifying its dynamic characteristics. Thus, the influence of a machine on its environments can be modelled with the state machines of the environment resources. Rules and algorithms to construct an environment ontology on the basis of generic domain ontology are introduced. And then guidelines for specifying Web service capability semantically based on the constructed environment ontology are given.