Re: [regrep] [Fwd: SemPGRID04: Call for Paper (DATE CORRECTIONS!)]

["Carl Mattocks" <carlmattocks@checkmi.com>]

Matthew Dovey or I are hoping we will have the opportunity to present a
position paper based on the text below ..

Enabling Semantic Grid Computing with ebXML
Matthew J. Dovey1 and Carl Mattocks2
1 Oxford e-Science Centre, Oxford University Computing Services, 13
Banbury Road, Ox-ford OX2 6NN, UK
matthew.dovey@oucs.ox.ac.uk, http://e-science.ox.ac.uk
2 CHECKMi compendium, 225 emerson lane berkeley heights,
nj 07922 USA
carlmattocks@checkmi.com, http://www.checkmi.com
Abstract. ebXML is a suite of standards from the e-business community
ad-dressing the entire lifecycle for Service Oriented Architectures for
business to business and business to consumer activities. This position
paper outlines how the Semantic GRID can benefit from the use of ebXML
related standards (such as Business Process, Collaboration Protocol
Profiles and Agreements, Registry, Business Centric Methodology, Access
Control Policy Management).
Introduction
The Semantic GRID is about the autonomous discovery and assembly of
distributed remote resources including computational, informational,
storage or instrumentational. This autonomous discovery and assembly is
performed by agents acting towards achieving user specified goals, and
involve the interaction of independent resources from different domains
and owned by different entities. ebXML is a suite of [ISO/TS 15000]
standards from the e-business community addressing the entire lifecycle
re-quired for Service Oriented Architectures for business to business and
business to consumer activities. This position paper outlines the
relevance of ebXML technologies in enabling Semantic GRID computing. In a
similar manner to the emerging GRID standards, ebXML uses Web Service
standards as a foundation layer. ebXML builds upon these to define agreed
mechanisms for aspects such as the registration, descrip-tion and
discovery of services, and service contract (or quality of service)
negotiations in a generic manner (not dependent upon any particular
business context). The GRID also attempts to define generic standards for
the discovery of research oriented re-sources and the negotiation of their
use (including quality of service e.g. for moving and processing large
qualities of experimental data). At present, ebXML and GRID are tackling
these issues in different ways but a merger of technologies would benefit
both communities.
ebXML and Semantic Grid
All stakeholders in the Semantic Grid need to be able to publish and
discover re-sources, exposed as web or Grid services. Agents representing
the stakeholders would use ontologies to both assist the discovery process
and also to pull the services to-gether into a workflow. An example of
this would be  the semantically enriched web services planned for the
ARTEMIS project, which provides interoperability of medical information
systems [1]. In the worst case, service enablement would require a
coor-dinating agent to employ the ontologies of many different domains
declared using a differing formats (RDF, KIF, OWL, Topic Map). The worst
case scenario combined with the dynamic nature of the Grid, (e.g.
providers changing characteristics of service offering at will), agents
working to deliver a seemingly simple service are faced with major
semantic management challenges.
Federated ebXML knowledge management and SOA policy management offers an
infrastructure to meet that challenge. In particular, when following BCM
(Business-Centric Methodology) guidelines, SOA / ebXML service description
and discovery extends beyond classification and resource location towards
the support of activity negotiation. Specifically, when a service is
profiled within a federated ebXML regis-try, the meta-information
identifies both the SOA business conditions and the policy rules of access
per level of privilege. For instance, service procurement requires the
construction of a contract and workflow. The ebXML Business Process (ebXML
BP) standard defines metadata for describing the service capabilities
needed to support electronic business collaborations with default error
state resolution. An “e-contract” employing terms of workflow can be
structured using Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPPs) and Collaboration
Protocol Agreements (CPAs). ebXML BP also defines and describes activities
during service enactment for the transactions (including point-in-time
parameters) that have to be fulfilled according to the services’ usage
terms. When facilitated by an ebXML repository, workflows may be tracked
with a messaging audit trail. A future e-Notary option, would enable the
provision of self-proving electronic legal information [2].
ebXML management specifications explicitly addresses the semantic support
needed for the choreography of the web services. The Business Centric
Methodology improve the understanding of the semantics in the Conceptual
layer by aligning the terminology of the business with the operational
meaning of the services [3]. ebXML BP define the business process-rules,
semantics and syntax for collaborations.
The ebXML registry would contain the grid meta-information. It allows for
pub-lishers to retain ownership of their content and knowledge
classifications using locally or externally stored Taxonomies. Support for
OWL ontologies in the next evolution of the registry will lever ongoing
research as the Satine project [4]. ebXML Registry & Repository can be
federated for high scalability to handle huge content.
Conclusion
Many of the issues in co-ordinating Service Oriented e-business
transactions are similar to those facing Semantic Grid architectures. The
leverage of the ebXML stan-dards, which facilitate e-business processes,
would facilitate the development of the underlying Semantic Grid
architecture & allow for the sharing of tools & expertise between the two
different communities.
References
1. Artemis - A Semantic Web Service-based P2P Infrastructure for the
Interoperability of Medi-cal Information
http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/webpage/projects/artemis/
2. E-Notary a set of technical requirements to govern self-proving
electronic legal information
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/legalxml-enotary/charter.php
3. Business Centric Methodology
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/5931/BCM%20Executive%20Brochure.pdf
4. Satine - a secure semantic-based interoperability framework for
exploiting Web service platforms in conjunction with Peer-to-Peer networks
in tourism industry
http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/webpage/projects/satine/index.html

<quote who="Chiusano Joseph">
> Following up on this posting from January 2004: Is anyone attending this
> conference? Did we submit an abstract?
>
>>> ****************** CALL FOR PAPERS ************************
>>
>>                         2nd Workshop on
>>       Semantics in Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing (SemPGRID)
>>                               at the
>>         Thirteenth International World Wide Web Conference
>>                   17-18 May 2004, New York, USA
>>                      in cooperation with the
>>             GGF Semantic Grid Research Group (SEM-GRD)
>>         Workshop URL: http://www.isi.edu/~hongsuda/SemPGRID04
>>



-- 
Carl Mattocks

co-Chair OASIS (ISO/TS 15000) ebXMLRegistry Semantic Content SC
co-Chair OASIS Business Centric Methodology TC
CEO CHECKMi
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