ABSTRACT
Abstract Semanti Web Servi es (SWS) enable the automati dis overy of distributed Web servi es based on omprehensive semanti representations.
However, although SWS te hnology supports the automati allo ation of Web
servi es for a given well-dened task, it does not entail their dis overy a or-
ding to a given situational ontext. Whereas tasks are highly dependent on
the situational ontext in whi h they o ur, SWS te hnology does not expli -
itly en ourage the representation of domain situations. Moreover, des ribing
the omplex notion of a spe i situation in all its fa ets is a ostly task and
may never rea h su ient semanti expressiveness. Parti ularly, following
the symboli SWS approa h leads to ambiguity issues and does not entail
semanti meaningfulness. Apart from that, not any real-world situation om-
pletely equals another, but has to be mat hed to a nite set of semanti ally
dened parameter des riptions to enable ontext-adaptability. To over ome
these issues, we propose Con eptual Situation Spa es (CSS) that are aligned
to established SWS standards. CSS enable the des ription of situation har-
a teristi s as members in geometri al ve tor spa es following the idea of Con-
eptual Spa es. Semanti similarity between situations is al ulated in terms
of their Eu lidean distan e within a CSS. Extending merely symboli SWS
des riptions with ontext information through CSS enables similarity-based
mat hmaking between real-world situation hara teristi s and predened re-
sour e representations as part of SWS des riptions. To prove its feasibility, we
apply our approa h to the E-Learning and E-Business domains and provide a
proof-of-on ept prototype.
