Representing service information in a collaborative KDD environment

The development of descriptive languages for resource characterization is one of the most active research field in distributed computer science. It is mainly considered in the so called Semantic Web scenario, where the availability of self-describing resources is seen to leverage integration, sharing and reuse. The semantic web vision can be applied to the Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) field as well, when collaboration among distributed resources has to be taken into account. The present paper takes this perspective, proposing a descriptive language for the characterization of KDD services, tools and algorithms. In order to do so, first a systematization of the bulk of information about services, tools and algorithms is given. Finally, the paper discusses how the language relates to existing standards and how it can be exploited to give support to users of a collaborative distributed environment.