Working Draft of Semantic Annotations for WSDL Released
Tuesday 04 July 2006The Semantic Annotations for Web Services Description Language (SAWSDL) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Semantic Annotations for WSDL.
Semantic Annotations in WSDL Version 1.0 (SAWSDL) defines how to add semantic annotations to WSDL 2.0 components. The specification defines extension attributes that can be applied to both WSDL elements and XML Schema elements to annotate input and output messages defined in a WSDL 2.0 interface.
Semantic annotations are references from an element within a WSDL or XML Schema document to a concept in an ontology. This specification defines annotation mechanisms for relating WSDL inputs and outputs to concepts defined in an outside ontology. Similarly, it defines how to annotate WSDL operations and how to categorize WSDL interfaces. Further, it defines an annotation mechanism for specifying the structural mapping of XML Schema types to and from an ontology. The annotation mechanism is independent of the ontology expression language and this specification requires no particular ontology language.
The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) specifies a way to describe the abstract functionalities of a service and concretely how and where to invoke it. The WSDL 2.0 specification does not include semantics in the description, thus two services can have similar descriptions while totally different meanings.
The objective of the Semantic Annotations for WSDL Working Group is to develop a mechanism to enable annotation of Web services descriptions. This mechanism will take advantage of the WSDL 2.0 extension mechanisms to build a simple and generic support for semantics in Web services.