Towards a semantic framework for service description

The inexpensive and global connectivity provided by the Internet has triggered a wave of interest in providing service-oriented electronic access to commercial activities. This pressure has led, in turn, to a need for accurate service description, so that we may advertise, locate, analyse and compare services. In this paper, we classify services by the context in which they are used. Next, we characterise both conventional and electronic services according to a range of domain independent attributes including price, payment method and availability. We examine possible representations for each of these service dimensions. By integrating these representations into a unified service description language, we hope to provide a means to lubricate the electronic services marketplace.