A Description and Retrieval Model for Web Services Including Extended Semantic and Commercial Attributes

Commercially available web services pose certain challenges to the customer. Whereas the technical service description is usually well defined and published, the semantic and especially the commercial description does often not reach the necessary depth. Therefore, identifying the most suitable web service from a technical, semantic and commercial perspective is often a difficult quest. This research develops a holistic web service description language integrating the semantic and commercial perspective and based on XML. The newly defined description rules for web services enable a requestor to identify the most suitable web services according to a given set of parameters. The model is tested with a prototype and the proof-of-concept shows that it is a fully functional description. Applying this model on a broad scale would lead to better decisions in web service selection, especially if non-technical staff is involved.