Extending UDDI with context-aware features based on semantic service descriptions

The web has evolved from the HTML-based repositories of text and images towards the current web services and semantic web developments. Web services are believed to help the integration of diverse applications while the semantic web promises to increase the "intelligence" of the web, enabling richer discovery, data integration, navigation and automation of tasks. A natural next step would be the combination of these developments, resulting in semantic web services. Another trend we observe is the development of next generation networks, such as GPRS and UMTS, which provide a richer environment as they will have access to information about the user's, location, preferences and changing environment. With the aid of this information, service providers will be able to develop services that adapt to the user's context. However, current web services technologies, based on WSDL and UDDI, do not provide a means for context-aware service discovery. In this paper we present the design and implementation of an enhanced UDDI server, capable of storage, matching and retrieval of semantically rich service profiles that contain contextual information. We also present a tool that facilitates the creation, publication and discovery of such service profiles.