Information Retrieval Emerging from Semantic Web Services

This paper presents the Web Service (WS)-Talk interface Layer, a structured natural language interface for Information Retrieval (IR) Web Services that extends service virtualization to strengthen consumer self-service. In a growing proliferation of Web Service networks the representation of context becomes more and more an issue for both service providers and service consumers. While information providers will concentrate more on the technical levels of activation and communication within a service network, the users, i.e. the information consumers, will form ad-hoc collaborations between the offered services at the semantic level that suit their own specific needs. The aim is an IR service network that can be implemented by both the service designers and the service consumers. Through a semantic layer, WS-Talk creates an abstraction layer that enables views on services expressed in natural language. Whilst the objective of bringing together the service providers with relevant task-competent end-users in the architectural design of Web Service applications is, on the one hand, to build interconnected and interoperable applications, on the other hand, the WS-Talk Layer enables service consumers and providers to design and implement ad-hoc new services for information retrieval purposes or fine-tune existing ones.