The paper gives an overview of a recently started research project addressing the question:Can context be exploited to add value to IT-services?Beyond today's way-finding services based on GPS and maps,we believe there is a new class of context-aware pervasive services making good use of a broad range of context information(e.g.identity,time of day,temperature,history as well as relative location of friends and belongings).Last but not least we believe one can find ways of adding value to IT-services by using disembodied conversational agents based on voice,sounds and visual signals integrated into the environment, instead of being guided by explicit directions shown on a display.The project aims at giving both new fundamental insight about the theory behind IT-services,their architecture and user interfaces and at building a number of prototypes demonstrating innovative context-aware pervasive IT-services.
Currently a large number of web services as well as other kinds of services such as EJBs,COM,and even Java Classes are made available to the general public.Facilitating the SOA based system development by leveraging such kinds of services becomes a challenge.A framework for service repository,ontology based service discovery and service composition is put forward.The service repository can maintain the web services,EJBs,and Java Classes with the functions such as service registration,publishing,discovery, matching,versioning,and monitoring.The details of service description are analyzed.A domain ontology for Procurement,Selling,and Inventory is also given.Based on the domain ontology and the service repository, the semantic enhanced service composition algorithm is discussed.
