This document discusses applying semantic web services to schedule medical tests. It proposes a prototype called the Virtual Laboratory Medical Analysis (VLMA) system that uses semantic descriptions to discover suitable medical laboratories for patients. The prototype is based on the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) framework for semantic web services. It describes WSMO's top-level elements of ontologies, goals, web services, and mediators, and how the VLMA system would allow patients to submit requests and receive suitable laboratory service options based on semantic searches of registered web services.

1. INTERNATIONALComputer Engineering and2,Technology ENGINEERING
International Journal of JOURNAL OF COMPUTER (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue March – April (2013), © IAEME
& TECHNOLOGY (IJCET)
ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print)
ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) IJCET
Volume 4, Issue 2, March – April (2013), pp. 108-113
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APPLYING SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES
Houda El Bouhissi1, Mimoun Malki2 and Djamila Berramdane3
1
(Department, EEDIS Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Technology,
Sidi-Bel-Abbes University, Algeria)
2
(Department, EEDIS Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Technology,
Sidi-Bel-Abbes University, Algeria)
3
(Department, EEDIS Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Technology,
Sidi-Bel-Abbes University, Algeria)
ABSTRACT
The In Medical Analysis field, patients often must visit a multitude of laboratories
related web sites in order to check availability, prices, result duration and find the nearest
laboratory. To overcome these limitations the Virtual Laboratory Medical Analysis (VLMA)
prototype system proposes applying Semantic Web Services for scheduling outpatient tests in
order to discover the suitable Laboratory. The proposal prototype is Web Service Modeling
Ontology (WSMO) based.
Keywords : Ontology, Semantic Web Services, web Services, Virtual laboratory Medical
Analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
Web Services are software components that are accessible via the Web. However,
their concomitant descriptive languages, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), do
not offer sufficient semantic richness that can be machine processable semantics. Human
intervention is often needed to interpret the meanings in order to discover, compose, and
invoke Web Services. This can be time consuming and error-prone.
The semantic web researchers have proposed to augment Web Services with a
semantic description of their functionality in order to facilitate their discovery and
integration. This technology, combination of Web Services with Semantic Web technology,
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2. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
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is referred as Semantic Web Services (SWS). SWS(s) have the potentiality to alter the
way knowledge and business services are provided and used on the web.
In our work, we are interested in discovery of Semantic Web Services taking into
account existing approaches. In our work, we are interested in discovery of Semantic
Web Services taking into account existing approaches. Our prototype system proposes
applying Semantic Web Services for scheduling outpatient tests (blood tests, urine …etc.)
in order to discover the suitable Laboratory. This paper presents a state of the art of
current enabling SWS technologies and describes the proposed prototype.
The paper is organized as follows: the reminder of Section 2 summarizes the main
approaches related to Semantic Web Services technology. Next, in Section 3, we propose
a prototype process according to medical analysis field using the WSMO ontology, the
prototype is explained in detail. In section 4; we conclude the paper and outline future
work.
II. SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES APPROACHES
Several approaches have already been suggested for adding semantic to Web
Services. Semantics can either be added to currently existing syntactic Web Service
standards like UDDI or WSDL. Or services can be described using some ontology based
description language. The Major initiatives in the area of (SWS)s are documented by
W3C member submissions: like OWL-S [1] and WSMO [2] and WSDL-S [3].
OWL-S (Ontology Web Language for Services); a description language that
semantically describes Web Services using OWL ontologies. OWL-S services are
mapped to WSDL operations, and inputs and outputs of OWL-S are mapped to WSDL
messages. WSDL-S is an evolutionary and backwards compatible extension of the
existing Web Services standards and descriptions language, which augments the
expressivity of WSDL with semantics in an arbitrary semantic representation language.
WSDL-S provides a means to supply semantic information, but actual semantic
functionality has to be provided by additional components, which are not part of the
WSDL-S initiative. The WSDL-S proposal was superseded by SAWSDL [4], a W3C
recommendation, which is a simple and generic mechanism for semantically annotating
Web Service descriptions. SAWSDL is a restricted and homogenized version of WSDL-S
in which annotations like preconditions and effects have not been explicitly contemplated.
The third approach, the Web Services Modeling Ontology, WSMO (review in
detail next), provides ontological specifications for the description of Semantic Web
Services. One of the main objectives of WSMO is to give a solution to application
integration problems for Web Services by providing a conceptual framework and a formal
language for semantically describing all relevant aspects of Web Services. WSMO is the
only initiative which has an explicit notion of mediation.
Furthermore, WSMO is the only standard for which there exist several
implementation environments which aim to support the complete standard. For these
reasons WSMO is used as our Semantic Web Services technology throughout the rest of
this paper.
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III. THE PROPOSED PROTOTYPE
Motivation
It’s clear that finding out the interested services, without using mechanize methods is
very difficult and time consumer. This issue is similar to search in web pages without using
browsers. Service consumer can be user, another service or a program. Thus using of
automated mechanisms to finding out services is very important.
Semantic Web Services technology can optimize several processes in the domain of e-
health, especially in Medical Analysis. These processes are mainly related with human
interactions and consequently, with the costs associated to them. Hence the main benefit of
applying SWS technology is that it could permit to develop and maintain e-health services
with lower costs.
The use of Semantic Web Services technology can optimize this manual process by
allowing search in available registries, so that the new Web Services that have been deployed
can be discovered.
Fig.1 presents two scenarios that motivated us to develop this prototype. In the first
scenario, for an outpatient test (blood test, urine test, …etc.), the patient often must visit a
multitude of laboratories related web sites in order to check availability, prices, result
duration and also to find the nearest laboratory. Using phone directories is also needed if
some web site laboratory is not available. The patient should contact each laboratory by
phone or email to get the necessary information like, address, distance from home, price,
possible results, etc. This method is very difficult and time consumer, especially when the
number of laboratories is very important.
In the second scenario, to overcome these limitations, the Virtual laboratory Medical
Analysis (VLMA) prototype system proposes applying Semantic Web Services for
scheduling outpatient tests (blood tests, urine tests, etc.) in order to discover the suitable
Laboratory. Our proposal is Web service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) based process.
As shown in the figure, the patient sends a request to the portal with patient
preferences. We search suitable Web Services in the WSMX server where all the Web
Services are stored. At last, the patient receives one or more Web Services according to his
request. We will explain in detail the main architecture of the prototype.
Fig. 1 Motivation Scenario
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The WSMO Framework
WSMO is a formal ontology and language and identifies four main top-elements:
Ontologies that provide the terminology used by other elements; Goals that state the
intentions that should be solved by Web Services; Web Services descriptions which describe
various aspects of a service; Mediators: to resolve interoperability problems.
Each of these WSMO Top Level Elements can be described with non-functional
properties like creator, creation date, format, language, owner, rights, source, type, etc.
WSMO comes along with a modeling language (WSML) and a reference implementation
(WSMX).
WSML (Web Service Modeling Language) is a formalization of the WSMO ontology,
providing a language within which the properties of Semantic Web Services can be
described.
WSMX (Web Service eXecution Environment) provides an architecture including
discovery, mediation, selection, and invocation and has been designed including all required
supporting components enabling an exchange of messages between requesters and the
providers of services.
Architecture of the Prototype
Fig.2 presents the architecture of the prototype. The patient communicates with the
VLMA portal via the HTTPS protocol, which provides a secure communication channel.
Fig. 2 Architecture of the prototype
The essential functionalities of our prototype process applying to Medial Analysis
field handling as shown in Figure 2 are: Provide a friendly interface for patient interaction
and discover suitable Web Services according to patient preferences (availability, distance,
price,…etc.,).
Our prototype consists of three Web services, in which Web service is described by
some WSDL file. All the WSDL files are submitted to the REWS tool [5] for wrapping the
main Web Service WSMO elements, which are expressed in WSML language and will be
stored in the WSMX Server. All semantic descriptions are provided on top of existing
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provider's syntactic services, making providers unaware of this semantic layer. No changes
are involved in providers' services and native data formats are preserved. The WSMX server
is a computer where the WSMX is installed and configured, it acts as a transparent,
intermediary layer between interacting parties for mapping and discovery. Patient's desires
are expressed via web forms that are mapped to appropriate Goal expressed in WSML
language. Once a WSMO Goal with actual values is created, it can be sent to WSMX, where
provider matching this Goal is discovered and according to Goal and Web service
choreography communication is carried out. At last, one or more Web Services are returned
to the patient.
This scenario is very simple, and the use of a Semantic Web Service is needed in this
case. The reason for choosing this scenario is to keep the implementation within the scope of
the project and because it uses the most important and basic parts of WSMX. To be able to
fulfill this scenario, WSMO ontology Elements must be created to provide a shared
vocabulary for the different interactions.
Process Phases
This section describes in detail the different phases of the process.
• Creating WSMO Web Services Elements. Provider's Web Services has to be
semantically described, which includes lifting arbitrary XML messages in WSDL
document to the semantic level by the ontology conceptualization. In this phase, we
use the REWS tool to create WSMO Web Services elements. These elements will be
stored on the WSMX server for further using.
• Creating WSMO Goals. The requirements and behavior of the client has to express as
WSMO Goal. The system allows the expression of patient’s goals using web forms
that in turn are mapped to WSMO Goals which allows them to be executed by
WSMX. Patient does not have to visit multiple web sites, but can use only the friendly
interface provided by the portal that aggregates multiple Medical analysis services and
can be extended with new ones. In our prototype, Goals are based on a template
approach where the Goal structure is defined but actual input values can be provided
during the run-time by the client. The web application provides forms where user can
specify his requirements and input values.
• Matching Web Service to Goal. The Goal is submitted to WSMX, where provider
matching this Goal is discovered and according to Goal and Web service
choreography communication is carried out. WSMX takes a semi-automatic approach
to this problem.
The human's role is to ensure accuracy of these mappings and to adjust them if necessary.
IV. CONCLUSION
Semantic Web Services are a very powerful paradigm to transform the current
syntactic Web into a dynamic and semantic to automate the use of the Web Services.
This paper describes a prototype of a Virtual laboratory Medical Analysis application
demonstrating how the application of Semantic Web service technology makes it possible for
individual patients to find the suitable laboratory for scheduling outpatient tests. In our future
work, we try to extend our prototype to taxi transport Web Service.
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