Apparatus and Method of Semantic Service Correlation System

• US 20100010974A1
• Filed: 07/09/2008
• Published: 01/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/09/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Maplebear Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Zeng, Liangzhao, Chieu, Trieu C., Xie, Guo Tong, Lei, Hui
• Granted Patent: US 8,560,563 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2453 Query optimisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/60 of audio data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5038 considering the execution order of a plurality of tasks, e.g. taking priority or time dependency constraints into consideration scheduling strategies G06F9/4881 and subgroups
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1016 IP multimedia subsystem [IMS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services

Abstract

A correlation-based service mediator consists of Semantic Query Generator, Service Query Manager, Service Invocation Flow Generator, Service Invocation Manager, Expression Interpreter and Service Invocation Result Cache. The Semantic Query Generator handles service requests. It generates Semantic Query statements. Basically, the generator converts service request to Semantic Query based on input/output parameters in the service request. The Service Query Manager interfaces with an Ontology Engine, in order to execute the semantic queries. It will pass the query results to Service Invocation Flow Generator. The Service Invocation Flow Generator creates service invocation flow definition based on query results passed from Service Query Manager. The Service Invocation Manager executes the flow definitions. It also manages a service invocation result cache, so that invocation results can be saved and reused for later service request. When the execution results are not available in cache, the Service Invocation Manager invokes service according to flow definition. It should be noted that when attribute dependent functions are invoked Expression Interpreter compute the execution results. The service mediator possesses two major functionalities: service matching and service invocation.

Claims

1. A service correlation system comprising:

service providers which publish service interface descriptions to service mediators and persist in service repository, wherein said service interface description indicates which ontology is used to document the description and includes both input parameters and output parameters;

service requestors which request services from service mediator;

a service mediator which receives service interface descriptions from service providers and persist them in service repository, receives service requests from service requestors, generates semantic queries and forward semantic queries to ontology engine, receives semantic query results from ontology engine, creates correlation service interface sets that can satisfy service request, generates microflows from correlation service interface set, and executes microflows to satisfy service requests;

an ontology engine which executes semantic queries from service mediator; and

a service repository which persists service interface descriptions, wherein said service repository includes four tables, namely Classes, Parameters, Services and InterfaceType;

2. A correlation-based service mediator comprising:

a semantic query generator which handles service requests from service consumers by generating semantic query statements based on input/output parameters in a service request;

a service query manager interfaced with an ontology engine in order to execute semantic queries received from the semantic query generator and generate query results;

a service invocation flow generator which creates service invocation flow definitions based on query results passed from the service query manager; and

a service invocation manager that executes the flow definitions created by the service invocation flow generator and manages a service invocation result cache, so that invocation results can be saved and reused for later service requests, wherein when execution results are not available in the service invocation cache, the service invocation manager invokes service according to flow definitions from the service invocation flow generator.

3. The system claim of 2, wherein semantic query generator generates semantic queries based on service request, by considering four kinds of service correlation notions, namely key-based correlation, parameter-based correlation, key-based attribute-dependence based correlation, or attribute-dependence based correlation.

4. A computer implemented method of service correlation, comprising the steps of:

publishing service interface description into service repository using ontology, said service interface description includes input/output parameters, said service repository consists of four tables, namely Classes, Parameters, Services and InterfaceType;

translating service requests to semantic queries;

executing semantic queries to locating candidate service provider for the service requesting;

indentifying correlation interface set based on either key-based correlation, parameter-based correlation, key-based attribute-dependence based correlation, or attribute-dependence based correlation among the candidate services;

said service interfaces in key-based correlation service interface set are correlatable for the key object, wherein said service interfaces in parameter-based correlation interface set are correlatable for any common input parameters, said service interface in key-based attribute-dependence correlation service set are correlatable for the key object, and said service interfaces in attribute-dependence correlation interface set are correlatable for any common input parameters;

generating microflows from correlation interface sets; and

executing microflow to invoke services to satisfy service requests.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 4, wherein the key-based correlation further comprises the step of locating service interface sets that satisfy the following criteria:

inputs for all the service interfaces in a set can be provided by the service request'"'"'s input;

service interfaces in a set can provide all the outputs expected by service request;

service interfaces are correlatable for the key object; and

any individual service interface in a set contributes a unique output expected by the service request.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 4, wherein the parameter-based correlation further comprises the step of locating service interface sets that satisfy the following criteria:

inputs for all the service interfaces in a set can be provided by service request'"'"'s input;

service interfaces in a set can provide all the output expected by the service request;

any outputs in the service interfaces of a set are correlatable; and

any individual service interface in a set contributes a unique output expected by the service request.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 4, wherein the key-based attribute-dependence correlation further comprise step of locating service interface sets that satisfy the following criteria:

inputs for all the service interfaces in a set can be provided by the service request;

for any outputs expected by the service request, either a service interface in a set can provide a semantic compatible output;

or outputs of service interfaces in a set contain a complete dependence set for the output required by the service request;

any outputs in the service interfaces of a set are correlatable; and

any individual service interface in a set contributes a unique output expected by the service request or dependence set.

8. The computer implemented method of claim 4, wherein the key-based attribute-dependence correlation further comprises the step of locating service interface sets that satisfies the following criteria:

inputs for all the service interfaces in a set can be provided by the service request;

for any outputs expected by the service request, either a service interface in a set can provide a semantic compatible output;

or outputs of service interfaces in a set contain a complete dependence set for the output required by the service request;

any outputs in the service interfaces of a set are correlatable; and

any individual service interface in a set contributes a unique output expected by the service request or dependence set.

9. The computer implemented method of claim 4, wherein the attribute-dependence correlation further comprises the step of locating service interface sets that satisfies the criteria:

inputs for all the service interfaces in a set can be provided by can be provided by the service request;

for any outputs expected by the service request, either a service interface in a set can provide a semantic compatible output;

or outputs of service interfaces in a set contain a complete dependence set for the output required by the service request;

any outputs in the service interfaces of a set are correlatable; and

any individual service interface in a set contributes a unique output expected by the service request or dependence set.