Collaborative design of web service networks in a multilingual user community

Abstract

This paper presents the WS–Talk (Web Service−Talk) interface layer, which is a structured natural language interface for the inter-service communication that extends the “find, bind, and execute” paradigm of web service interaction. This “open building block” can be implemented by both the service designers who, as providers, are more concerned with the architecture of the underlying service model and the service requesters who, as users, will seek to specify web services as solutions to specific problems. Through a semantic layer, WS–Talk transforms service descriptions or requests that have been expressed in natural language into task-specific web-serviced specifications. 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 connected interoperable applications, on the other hand, the WS–Talk layer enables service requesters and providers to design and implement new ad hoc services or fine-tune existing ones.