A partial solution to the Semantic Web Services Challenge problem using Swashup : The ruby on rails services mashup approach

Abstract

The Swashup approach to the Semantic Web Services Challenge is primarily a software engineering approach. In particular, our approach heavily leverages the Ruby language, it's Rails framework, and the ability to define languages within the language or domain-specific languages (DSL5). We start by modeling the RosettaNet Pip3A4 messages in such a way that the messages' XSD types directly map to Ruby classes annotated using a DSL. Secondly, we use Ruby to define process mediations that make use of the data elements as plain Ruby objects. Finally, we take advantage of the Rails framework to access SOAP services and to define network endpoints. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by showing how our solution to the level one of first mediation problem is achieved with a small amount of code. We also provide a brief comparison of our approach's main aspects with the other challenge's entries: WSMO/WSMX, WebML, and jABC.