CFP: Semantics4ws & BPM2.0 - Advances in Semantics for Web services (3rd edition)

[Ilona Zaremba]

*** Call for Papers ***

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SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 23 May 2008
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Advances in Semantics for Web services Workshop (semantics4ws'08)
http://www.knoesis.org/semantics4ws2008/
Theme: “BPM 2.0 - Semantic Web and Web 2.0 Meet BPM: Semantics
in Business and Scientific Processes”

at the Sixth International Conference on Business Process Management
(BPM 2008)
http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?idEvent=22

Milan, Italy, 1-4 September 2008
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GENERAL OVERVIEW
Web services have added a new level of functionality to the current
Web by taking a first step towards seamless integration of distributed
software components using Web standards. Current Web service 
technologies around SOAP, WSDL and UDDI operate at a syntactic level 
and, therefore, although they support interoperability (i.e. 
interoperability between the many diverse application development 
platforms that exist today) through common standards, they still require 
human interaction to a large extent.
For example, both the process of finding a relevant service or of 
mediating data that needs to be exchanged between the services require 
significant manual work. To address these and other limitations, a 
community of researchers have been working on Semantic Web Services 
(SWS) since 2001.
This research draws upon a variety of fields such as Semantic Web, 
knowledge representation, formal methods, software engineering, process 
modelling, workflow, and software agents. A key objective of SWS has 
been to automate Web services-related tasks, like discovery, 
publication, selection, composition, mediation, monitoring, invocation, 
and adaptation, whereby the use of semantics increases the degree of 
automation.  SWS community has been enriched by a number of large group 
projects and initiatives, like OWL-S, METEOR-S, WSMO, WSDL-S, IRS, has 
resulted in four submissions to W3C and the first W3C recommendation on 
semantics for Web services, Semantic Annotations for WSDL (SAWSDL). This 
is complemented by an increasing number of open source tools, use cases 
and prototypical applications.  At least 10 workshops related to SWS 
have been held at ICWS, BPM, ICSOC, WWW and other conferences. In
fact, this proposal is for the fifth workshop in a series.

This workshop will provide a forum in which to focus on selected core 
technical challenges for deployment of Semantic Web Services and SAWSDL 
and reach a better understanding of the relationships between commercial 
Web service standards, SAWSDL, current SWS research efforts, recent 
proposals of SA-REST and semantic policy descriptions, and the ultimate 
requirements for full-scale deployment of these technologies. More 
specifically, this workshop aims to tackle the research problems
(as well as recent practical experiences) around methods, concepts, 
models, languages and technology that enable semantics in the context of 
Web services, as well as discussing recent advances in semantics for Web 
services. Of particular interest are the architectural, technical, and 
developmental foundations of SWS, and showing how they combine 
synergistically to enable service automation on the scale required by 
today’s Internet-connected enterprises.

The workshop will in particular solicit work that elaborates on the use 
of collaborative approaches in the annotation or ranking of services or 
other usages of the Web 2.0 paradigm in the the BPM community. We assume 
that the very same approach that we know from Web 2.0 – to work 
collaboratively – could enhance the results of process modeling.

This proposed workshop aims to bring together researchers and industry 
practitioners (e.g. leading modellers, architects, system vendors, 
open-source projects, developers, and end-users) addressing many of 
these issues (including recent developments in tools and techniques, and 
real-world implementations of SWS applications), and promote and
foster a greater understanding of how semantics can assist automation in 
Web services, thus helping people develop and manage services more 
efficiently and effectively.


TOPICS

The following indicates the general focus of the workshop. However, related
contributions are welcome as well.

- tools, middleware, case studies and applications involving or 
supporting SWS ontologies, modelling and descriptions of quality of 
services (QoS), services level agreements (SLAs), and non-functional 
properties (NFPs) of Web services, policies, agreements and contracts 
related to SWS
- formal languages for describing SWS and related aspects including QoS, 
SLAs, and NFPs
- Web 2.0 techniques related to BPM
- reasoning tasks and their complexity in SWS
- validation and verification for Web services,
- advertising, discovery, matchmaking, selection, brokering and 
data/process/protocol mediation in SWS and processes
- composition, planning, and re-planning with SWS
- execution and lifecycle management of SWS
- monitoring, adaptability, and recovery strategies for SWS
- semantics for Grid services and e-Services



WORKSHOP FORMAT AND ATTENDANCE

The program will occupy a full day, and will include presentations of
papers selected from the full papers category (see 'submissions' below).

Please note that at least one author of each accepted submission must
attend the workshop. The BPM 2008 conference formalities are applied
for fees and respective organizational aspects. Submission of a paper
is not required for attendance at the workshop. However, in the event
that the workshop cannot accommodate all who would like to participate,
those who have submitted a paper (in any category) will be given
priority for registration.


SUBMISSIONS

The workshop invites different types of contributions:

   * Papers
   * Demos
   * Posters / Position papers

Papers: The papers should not exceed 12 pages and should
have the Springer Lecture Notes of Computer Science (LNCS)
layout.

Demos: Detailed description plus sufficient number of screenshots
or a video of the demo are required. For paper-based submissions,
please follow the Springer LNCS layout. Please note that at the
workshop itself no technical support is provided except possibly
Internet connection and power (to be confirmed).

Posters/Position papers: The posters/position papers should not
exceed 5 pages and should have the Springer LNCS layout.

All contributions will be peer reviewed by a program committee
that will incorporate well recognized experts in the area of semantic
technologies and Web services.

All submissions should be formatted in Springer's LNCS style,
should be submitted in electronic format using the link:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=Semantics4WS.

All accepted full papers and all position papers of attendees will
be published in the proceedings of the workshop. Workshop
proceedings will be published with Springer LNCS and will be
available at the workshop.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: 23 May 2008
Notification of acceptance: 27 June 2008
Camera ready: 6 July 2008 (strict deadline)


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Workshop Co-chairs:
- Steven Battle (Hewlett-Packard Labs, UK),
- John Domingue (The Open University, UK),
- Martin Hepp (University of the German Federal Armed Forces, Germany)
- Dumitru Roman (STI Innsbruck, Austria)

Steering Committee:
- Witold Abramowicz (Poznan University of Economics, Poland)
- David Martin (SRI International, USA)
- Amit Sheth (Wright State University, USA) - chair

Workshop Proceedings Chair:
- Agata Filipowska (Poznan University of Economics, Poland)

Publicity Chair:
- Ajith Ranabahu (Wright State University, USA)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE (to be extended)

- Rama Akkiraju, IBM, USA
- Jorge Cardoso, University Mediera, Portugal
- Sanjay Chaudhary, DA-IICT, India
- Emilia Cimpian, STI Innsbruck, Austria
- Marin Dimitrov, Ontotext, Bulgaria
- Dieter Fensel, STI, Austria
- Karthik Gomadam, Wright State University, USA
- Juan Miguel Gómez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
- Michael Gruninger, University of Toronto, Canada
- Sung-Kook Han, Won Kwang University, South Korea
- Jacek Kopecky, STI Innsbruck, Austria
- Michael Maximilien, IBM, USA
- Brahim Medjahed, University of Michigan, USA
- Adrian Mocan, STI Innsbruck, Austria
- Massimo Paolucci, DoCoMo Euro-Labs, Germany
- Marc Richardson, BT, UK
- Brahmananda Sapkota, DERI Galway, Ireland
- Tony Shan, Bank of America, USA
- Monika Solanki, De Montfort University, UK
- Ioan Toma, STI Innsbruck, Austria
- Stuart Williams, HP Bristol, UK
- ...

Previous Workshops of the Series
- http://events.deri.at/semantics4ws2007/
- http://events.deri.at/semantics4ws2006/