Service-Based Semantic Collaboration in Networked Systems: A Conceptual Perspective

In a peer-to-peer (P2P) scenario, modern collaborative systems are characterized by networked independent partners that dynamically cooperate by sharing available resources, both data and services. Partners may join and leave the P2P network at any moment; in fact, they loosely connect one to another, looking for parties that can provide relevant knowledge with respect to a given target. They cooperate without any a-priori knowledge about each other. Furthermore, there is no single, shared, global view of the available, distributed resources. In this scenario, to support effective collaboration by resource sharing, new advanced tools are required for semantic representation and discovery of distributed resources. In this paper, we focus on service-oriented collaborative systems and propose a conceptual framework to enable the construction of a semantic overlay for dynamic service discovery and sharing, built on the top of a P2P network.