Int. J. Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, Vol. 13, No.

3, 2019 209

Context-based interoperability of semantic web

services

Karima Mecheri*
LISCO Laboratory, Computer Science Department,
Badji Mokhtar University,
Annaba, Algeria
Email: mecherika@yahoo.fr
*Corresponding author

Mahmoud Boufaida
LIRE Laboratory,
Abdelhamid Mehri – Constantine 2 University,
Constantine, Algeria
Email: mahmoud.boufaida@univ-constantine2.dz

Djamel Meslati and

Labiba Souici-Meslati
LISCO Laboratory, Computer Science Department,
Badji Mokhtar University,
Annaba, Algeria
Email: meslati_djamel@yahoo.com
Email: souici_labiba@yahoo.fr

Abstract: Semantic mediation is a necessary mechanism to ensure interoperability of web

services. In this paper, we present a classification and comparison of works in this field. We
propose a semantic model to explicitly describe the heterogeneities of web services. This model
is the basis for the mediation automation. In particular, we describe the behavioural semantic sub-
model, for which we use the abstract state machine’s method and the notion of behavioural
context that we have defined. The mediation process we propose is implemented using web
services. The core of this implementation is situated in the semantic transformations module,
which is based on the mapping of ontologies and the reasoning about these mappings.

Keywords: SWS; semantic web services; interoperability; semantic model; abstract state
machine; behavioural context; mediation; ontologies.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mecheri, K., Boufaida, M., Meslati, D.
and Souici-Meslati, L. (2019) ‘Context-based interoperability of semantic web services’,
Int. J. Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp.209–226.

Biographical notes: Karima Mecheri is currently an Associate Professor in the Computer

Science Department of Badji Mokhtar University, Annaba, Algeria. She is affiliated to LISCO
Laboratory. She received her PhD degree in 2018 in the field of semantic web services and
interoperability of information systems.

Mahmoud Boufaida is a Full Professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of
Constantine 2, Algeria. He Heads the research group Information Systems and Knowledge Bases.
He has published several papers in international conferences and journals. He has managed and
initiated multiple national and international level projects including interoperability of
information systems and integration of applications in organisations. He has been program
committee member of several conferences. His research interests include cooperative information
systems, web databases and software engineering.

Djamel Meslati is a Full Professor in the Computer Science Department of Badji Mokhtar
University, Annaba, Algeria. He Heads the LISCO Laboratory. He published several papers in
international conferences and journals. He has been program committee member of several
conferences. His research interests include bio-inspired systems and software engineering.

Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

210 K. Mecheri et al.
Labiba Souici-Meslati is a Full Professor in the Computer Science Department of Badji Mokhtar
University, Annaba, Algeria. She Heads a research team in LISCO Laboratory. She has published
several papers in international conferences and journals. Her research interests include machine
learning, bio-inspired systems and application of artificial intelligence techniques in software
engineering.
1 Introduction
The advent of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) (Bonnet,
2005) and Web Services (WS) (Monfort and Goudeau, 2004)
paradigms is now considered a decisive asset for business
information systems cooperation. Indeed, these two
paradigms provide many advantages such as weak coupling,
simple and fast access functionalities, and rapid building of
new functionalities. However, they provide solutions for
interoperability of information systems at the technical and
syntactic levels only. This is a major drawback because the
interoperability problems appear not only at those low levels
but much more at the semantic ones. During the interaction
between two web services, conflicts may appear because
of semantic heterogeneities. In order to make a direct
communication, two services must have a compatible
semantics, which is rarely possible because each service is
created independently of the other one. Then, a semantic
mediation is necessary to ensure interoperability or
integration of web services.
In this paper, we first propose a classification and a
comparison of works on the interoperability of Semantic
Web Services (SWS). Then, we present a new approach to
deal with semantic mediation. Concretely, we define a
semantic model whose the role is to explicitly describe the
heterogeneities of web services. This model is the basis for
the mediation automation. In particular, we describe a
Behavioural Semantic Sub-Model (BSSM), for which we
use the Abstract State Machine (ASM) method (Börger and
Bernhard, 2008), and the notion of behavioural context that
we specify.
We also show that the semantic mediation is required at
all the levels and for each web service task. Indeed, the
mediation of functional and non-functional properties can
be used during the discovery and selection mechanisms.
However, the business process mediation and the data one
are used during execution (invocation).
We also describe a business process mediation that is
supported by a mediator called Web Service of Process
Mediation (WSPM) and that is implemented by a
choreography algorithm that manages the conversation
between two web services. This mediator uses BSSM of both
parts and transition rules. It calls the Web Services of Data
Mediation (WSDM) and a reasoner. In the core of this
mediator exists a semantic transformation module based on
the mappings of BSSM ontologies and the reasoning about
these mappings.
In the remainder of this paper, Section 2 provides a brief
description of web service heterogeneities and integration
approaches. Section 3 compares our approaches to related
works, while Section 4 describes our behavioural semantic
model. In Section 5, we propose the mediation levels for SWS
interoperability and Section 6 describes the business process
mediation level. Section 7 is dedicated to an illustrative
implementation of a case study. Finally, Section 8 concludes
the paper and enumerates some perspectives.
2 Web services integration
Web services composition is the process of aggregating
multiple services into a single service in order to perform more
complex functions (Sheng et al., 2014). There are two ways to
describe the sequence of activities that make up a business
process: service orchestration and service choreography.
A business process is a collection of activities designed to
produce a specific output for a particular customer, based
on a specific input (BPT, 2013). Fensel and Bussler (2002)
distinguished two types of process: private processes
(orchestration), which are carried out internally by an
organisation and are usually not visible to any other entity, and
public processes (choreography), which define the behaviour of
the organisation in collaboration with other entities.
The choreography defines the behaviour of a business
entity (endpoint) in collaboration with another endpoint. It is
usually expressed by exchange of messages. To establish
communication, each endpoint has to understand the behaviour
of the other one and their behaviours have to match (Cimpian
and Mocan, 2005). The choreography (also called global model
in Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) and multiparty
collaboration in ebXML) captures collaborative processes
involving multiple services where the interactions between
these services are seen from a global perspective (Tausan et al.,
2017). Behavioural interface (also called abstract process in
BPEL and collaboration protocol profile in ebXML) captures
the behavioural dependencies of the interactions in which a
given service is involved.
2.1 Web services heterogeneities
Since web services have been created independently,
heterogeneities occur at several levels affecting all their
properties and causing conflicts in their composition or
interoperability.
There are several classifications of heterogeneities in
the literature (Cimpian and Mocan, 2005; Bussler, 2003;
Cabral and Domingue, 2005; Mrissa, 2007; Fatih et al.,
2015). When one considers the characteristics of web
services, the following classification covers all their
heterogeneities that may occur:
 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services
Heterogeneities between non-functional properties: All
the properties that characterise a web service and that are
not directly linked to the functionality delivered by the
service, are considered non-functional. The non-functional
properties are not considered in the WSDL standard
language. Their heterogeneities include (Mrissa, 2007):
 The ACID transactional properties.
 The Quality of Service (QoS) (Pengcheng et al., 2018)
and performances of web services such as availability,
velocity, cost, reliability, and so on.
Heterogeneities between functional properties: They concern
the properties of the services usually described in a
WSDL document such as input/output parameters, service
functionality, exchange protocol used and encoding.
Heterogeneity of the exchanged data: Data exchanged
between web services can present heterogeneities that can
be classified in three levels:
 The syntactic level: it concerns the encoding of data. The
heterogeneities of this level are dealt with using XML.
 The structural level: it is relative to the different
representations of data to the level schema.
 The semantic level: it includes the significance conveyed
by data.
Heterogeneities between behavioural properties: The
communication between the WS requester and the WS
provider may take place only if their Message Exchange
Patterns (MEPs) match precisely. That is, when the first sends a
message, the second is able to receive it. Heterogeneity of
MEPs is very complex than that of data. Fensel and Bussler
(2002) identify three cases of mismatches which may appear
during message exchange (choreography): precise match,
resolvable message mismatch and irresolvable message
mismatch. The second case is related to:
 the presence of additional messages,
 the different order of messages,
 the need to splitting a message,
 the need to combining messages,
 and the lack of required messages.
Cimpian and Mocan (2005) identify five process mediation
patterns:
 stopping an unexpected message,
 inversing the order of messages,
 splitting a message,
 combining messages and
 generating a message.
In order to solve the problem of heterogeneities of web
services and to ensure their integration, we need firstly, a
semantic description of these services using ontologies,
which gives us SWS, and secondly, a mediation of these
services. Then, the mediation is dynamic and is achieved
due to the semantic description.
211
2.2 Semantic description of web services
We distinguish mainly two approaches for describing the
semantics of web services (Mrissa, 2007): (1) the approaches
exploiting semantic description languages (OWL-S (Martin
et al., 2004; Sikos, 2015), DE, DSD (Klein et al., 2005), as well
as the conceptual architecture WSMO (Arroyo and Stollberg,
2004)) and (2) The annotation-based approaches of existing
languages. These annotations may concern:
 Business processes such as SESMA (SEmantic Service
MArkup) (Peer, 2005).
 The registers UDDI and ebXML, using the languages
like DAML-S (Paolucci et al., 2002; Dogac et al., 2004)
and SAWSDL (Hausberger, 2009).
 The WSDL description language either by exploiting
the extensibility elements of the WSDL with the
WSDL-S (Sheth et al., 2008; Miller et al., 2004) or by
using the SAWSDL (Hausberger, 2009; Midouni et al.,
2016).
Semantically annotating web services is gaining lots of
attention as a significant area to support the machine-driven
matchmaking and composition of web services. Therefore,
the support of ontologies and tools for the semantic
annotation of web services is turning into a key concern to
assist the dissemination of SWS (Shridevi and Raju, 2018).
2.3 Integration approaches of web services
For the integration approaches of the web services, Mrissa
(2007) distinguished the following categories of approaches:
 Approaches based on adapters (Medjahed et al., 2004).
 Community-based approaches (Taher et al., 2006;
Metrouh and Mokhati, 2018).
 Approaches based on extended descriptions (Dumas
and Spork, 2006).
 Web services-based approaches: These approaches rely
on web services for publishing, invocation, mediation,
and execution.
The latter two approaches are more promising compared to
the former because they have the advantages of service-
oriented architectures (Izza et al., 2008; Domingue et al.,
2008; Haller et al., 2005; Cimpian and Mocan, 2005; Vitvar
et al., 2009; Khater et al., 2017).
2.4 Mediation of web services
The mediation is an aspect of composition for resolving the
conflicts caused by the heterogeneities that can appear
between web services, to ensure their interoperability.
In the literature, there are several categories of mediation
between web services, because it is possible to classify the
mediation tasks according to various perspectives.
Bussler (2003) distinguished two types of mediation: the
business event mediation and the business process one. The
first aims to resolve data heterogeneities while the second
aims to resolve behavioural ones.
212 K. Mecheri et al.
Cabral and Domingue (2005, 2012) proposed three levels:
data mediation, functionality mediation, and business
process one.
Mrissa (2007) proposed three mediation levels:
 Web services integration level: it aims to solve all the
heterogeneities between the web services, notably those
between the properties not described in the WSDL
documents (non-functional), as the properties concerning
the categorisation, the QoS, the sequences of exchange,
etc.
 Interface adaptation level: it aims to solve the
heterogeneities between the functional properties
described in the WSDL documents, as functionalities
offered by a web service, the protocols and the used
encoding (RPC, Literal Document.).
 Data mediation level: it aims to solve the heterogeneities
of the data exchanged between web services. This level is
a sub-level of the interface adaptation that is itself a sub-
level of the web services integration.
The three classifications do not deal with the different
aspects of web services as security, QoS, and so on. The
classification of Mrissa (2007) distinguished the functional
aspects and the non-functional ones of web services, but he
merges the behavioural aspect with the non-functional one.
Our approach provides a flexible solution to make
enterprise SWS interoperable at four levels: data, functional,
process, and non-functional. To this respect, our classification
of web service mediation is based on four levels corresponding
to the following characteristics:
Figure 1 Classification based on web service description approaches
Work on interoperability via SWS
Semantic languages based
Haller et al. (2005) (WSMX)
Domingue et al. (2008) (IRS-III)
Izza et al. (2008) (ODSOIA)
Arroyo and Sicilia (2010) (SOPHIE)
Gharzouli and Derdour (2014)
Fonou-Dombeu and Huisman (2015)
Khater et al. (2017)
 Data mediation level: solving data conflicts that can
occur between web services.
 Functional mediation level: establishing a correspondence
between the provided functionality and the requested one.
 Process mediation level: solving behavioural heterogeneities
that can occur between the two choreographies of web
services in interaction.
 Non-functional mediation level: establishing a
correspondence between the non-functional properties of
the web service provider and those of the web service
requester.
The most important parts of the interoperability process
are the semantic model and the mediation. They will be
described after classification of SWS interoperability works.
In a previous work, we have presented the data mediation
level (Mecheri et al., 2012). This paper is dedicated to the
business process mediation level.
3 Classification and comparison of SWS
interoperability works
In this section, we propose a classification and a comparison of
semantic interoperability works using web services based on
criteria we have selected (Mecheri and Souici-Meslati, 2010).
We distinguish two main types of work: those that are based on
semantic languages belonging to the semantic web, and those
that are oriented towards semantic annotations of web service’s
existing languages (see Figure 1).
Semantic annotations based
Mrissa (2007)
Kourtesis and Paraskakis (2008)
Sheth et al. (2008) (METEOR_S)
Bouras et al. (2010)
Dengping et al. (2011) (SAWSDL-
iMatcher)
Midouni et al. (2016) (SA4MaaS approach)
Context based interoperability of SWS.
(Our Work)
 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services
3.1 Approaches based on semantic languages
The semantic service oriented architecture Web Service
Modelling eXecution (WSMX) environment (Haller et al.,
2005; DERI and STI2, 2017) is an environment of web
services execution based on Web Services Modelling
Ontology (WSMO). This architecture allows the dynamic
discovery, the invocation and the composition of the SWS.
WSMX ensures the interoperability of the Business to
Business (B2B) systems. This architecture is used by Vitvar
et al. (2009) to present the DERI’s solution for solving SWS
challenge mediation scenario but these authors don’t give
semantics to the message interaction. So, their algorithm
fulfils only the pattern “stopping an unexpected message”
and “combining messages” proposed by Cimpian and
Mocan (2005) and given previously in page 2.
The IRS-III architecture (Internet Reasoning Service)
(Cabral and Domingue, 2005; Domingue et al., 2008;
Cabral and Domingue, 2012) is a framework permitting the
publication, the configuration and the execution of the
heterogeneous web services. It is also based on the WSMO
and contains the following components: Server, Publisher,
and Customer who communicate through the SOAP
protocol. IRS-III implements the data, the objective and the
process mediations (Sikos, 2015). A process mediator is
used to solve the communication conflicts exploiting a set
of logical rules. The IRS-III specification lacks a necessary
mechanism, techniques or an affiliation used to overcome
heterogeneity (Arroyo and Sicilia, 2010).
Izza et al. (2008) proposed a service oriented architecture
for integrating industrial information systems applications. This
architecture, named Ontology-Driven Service-Oriented
Integration Architecture (ODSOIA), is an intra-enterprise
solution that enlarges the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with
two architectural levels in addition to the service oriented
layer: the semantic level and the integration one. Different
mediations, several types of ontologies and mappings are
used. The authors don’t deal with the resolution of the data
heterogeneities. Also, with regard to the functional and
processes mediation, they consider it according to the
syntactic and semantic compatibility of connectivity and
don’t present any solution for heterogeneities related to the
different aspects of the SWS.
SOPHIE (Arroyo and Sicilia, 2010) is a conceptual
framework and architecture for a choreography service
realised as a SOA. The conceptual model describes the
structure, behaviour, operation and ontologies as separate
concerns. The behavioural model is defined as Finite State
Machines (FSMs). A set of algorithms are presented to
generate mediators for overcoming heterogeneity among the
MEPs of interacting parties. However, those algorithms are
not implemented yet and the MEP’s heterogeneities they
overcome are not mentioned.
Peer-to-Peer/Multi-Agent Systems (P2P/MAS) (Gharzouli
and Derdour, 2014) is a generic architecture for the SWS
discovery and composition. The authors show how P2P
networks can implement open-MAS architectures to build a
collaborative distributed system. For semantic description of
web services they use OWL-S and they present behaviours
213
as finite automata. However, the approach doesn’t deal with
heterogeneities.
Fonou-Dombeu and Huisman (2015) proposed an
infrastructure for e-government SWS integrating concepts of
Business Process Modelling (BPM) and of semantic
annotations as tools for modelling and technological aspects of
SWS engineering for non-automated government operations
and processes. The proposed infrastructure includes, among
others, three types of ontologies: domain, user, and service. It
operates the WSMO and can be implemented via IRS-III and
WSMX.
In the behaviour approach for composite OWL-S
services discovery (Khater, 2017), the authors consider the
matchmaking based only on service profile (inputs/outputs) not
sufficient in the case of composite services. To overcome
profile matching limitations, they propose an approach-based
sub-graph isomorphism to check the matching of process
structure between two OWL-S process models of composite
services and shortest path (OWLS-SP) to compute the score of
matching between nodes of service and those of query (atomic
services).
3.2 Approaches based on semantic annotations
Mrissa (2007) proposed a context oriented semantic
mediation architecture for the composition of web services.
It is an architecture containing a provider layer, a
composition layer and a description one. It deals with a data
mediation using a mediator web service inserted between
the sender web service and the receiver web service during
the composition execution. These services are previously
semantically described using the WSDL extensibility
elements and a domain ontology to which is associated the
contextual ontologies. However, the approach deals only
with data mediation.
Kourtesis and Paraskakis (2008) presented the
implementation of the FUSION semantic registry, a
semantically-enhanced service registry that builds on the
UDDI specification and enhances its service publication and
discovery. The authors combine the use of SAWSDL for
creating semantically annotated descriptions of service
interfaces and the use of OWL-DL for modelling service
capabilities and for performing matchmaking via DL
reasoning.
In the METEOR-S project (Sheth et al., 2008), four kinds
of semantics for web services are defined: data, functional,
non-functional, and execution. These kinds of semantics are
used during the complete lifecycle of semantic web processes.
The execution environment handles heterogeneities at protocol
and data level using proxies with data and protocol mediation
capabilities. For capturing interaction protocols, the UML
activity diagrams are called. The data mediation architecture
(Nagarajan et al., 2006) uses the extensibility features of
WSDL and the popular SOAP engine, Axis2. METEOR-S
focuses mainly on composition and data mediation.
Bouras et al. (2010) proposed a semantically-enriched
approach for dynamic data mediation in Enterprise Application
Integration (EAI) scenarios, focusing on the resolution of
message level heterogeneities between collaborative enterprise
214 K. Mecheri et al.

services, with facilitating the automated data mediation during
execution by providing formal transformations of the output
and input messages to a common reference business data
model, that is, the ENterprise Interoperability Ontology
(ENIO).
Dengping et al. (2011) proposed SAWSDL-iMatcher, a
customised and efficient matchmaker of SWS based on
iXQuery, which extends XQuery with similarity joins. The
authors showed how iXQuery combines structured queries
with similarity joins to perform a matchmaking SAWSDL
service and how the users can easily customise their preferred
matching strategies in SAWSDL-iMatcher in order to discover
the right web services. The ontologies describing the
functionalities of these services are expressed with OWL.
Midouni et al. (2016) defined a full service approach,
called SA4MaaS, in order to compose Mobility as a service
(MaaS) services for multimedia data researching. This
approach is based on a four-phase process: description,
filtering, clustering and restitution. Several approaches have
been defined with the aim to semantically describe web
services. Authors propose a new approach, Semantic
Annotation for MaaS (SA4MaaS) services, as an extension of
the W3C recommendation on semantics for web services
(SAWSDL). They use two ontologies: a domain ontology,
in which the concepts define a semantics of the business domain,
and a multimedia ontology, in which the concepts define a set
of annotation properties for describing the multimedia content.
3.3 Discussion
In Table 1, we present a classification and a comparison of
some semantic interoperability works using web services based
on criteria we have defined. We begin by differentiating them
according to the semantic description and languages, the
integration approaches, the functions taken into account
(publication, discovery, invocation, etc.), the mediation level
(data, functions, processes) and to the composition method
(choreography / orchestration) (Sheng et al., 2014).

Table 1 Comparative table of related works

Criteria Semantic Semantic Web service

Mediation Composition Behaviour
description description integration WS functions
Reference level method representation
approach language approach
Haller et al. 2005
(WSMX) Registration Process
Semantic
(Cimpian and discovery
description WSMO WS based Functions Choreography ASM
Mocan, 2005; DERI language invocation
and STI2, 2017; mediation Data
Vitvar et al. 2009)
Publication
Semantic Process
Dominge et al. Configuration Choreography
description WSMO WS based Goal ASM
(2008) (IRS_III) Mediation orchestration
language Data
Execution
Publication
Semantic Process
Izza et al. (2008) Discovery
description OWL_S+ WS based Functions Orchestration ____
(ODSOIA) Mediation
language Data
Execution
Arroyo and Sicilia Process
Ontologies Ontologies Service based Discovery Choreography FSMs
(2010) (SOPHIE) Data
Semantic Publication
Gharzouli and Finite
description OWL_S WS based Discovery Process Choreography
Derdour (2014) automata
language Execution
Registration
Semantic Process
Fonou-Dombeu and Discovery Choreography
description WSMO WS based Functions ASM
Huisman (2015) Invocation orchestration
language Data
Mediation
Semantic
Sub-graph
Khater et al. (2017) description OWLS_SP WS based Discovery Matchmaking _______
isomorphism
language
WS and
Annotation of
WSDL_S extended
Mrissa (2007) existing Mediation Data Orchestration ______
and Context description
languages
based
WS and
Annotation of Publication
Kourtesis and extended Matchmaking
existing SAWSDL ______ ______
Paraskakis (2008) description Discovery (Categorisation)
languages
based
 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services 215

Table 1 Comparative table of related works (continued)

Criteria Semantic Semantic Web service

Mediation Composition Behaviour
description description integration WS functions
Reference level method representation
approach language approach
Publication
Annotation of Extended Discovery
Sheth et al. (2008) UML activity
existing WSDL_S description Data protocols Orchestration
(METEOR_S) Mediation diagrams
languages based
Execution
Annotation of Extended
Bouras et al. (2010) existing SAWSDL description Mediation Data ______ ______
languages based
WS and
SAWSDL-iMatcher Annotation of
extended Matchmaking
Dengping et al. existing SAWSDL Discovery ______ ______
description functions
(2011) languages
based
WS and Publication
SA4MaaS approach Annotation of
extended
Midouni et al. existing SAWSDL Discovery ______ ______ ______
description
(2016) languages Execution
based
WS and Publication
Annotation of Discovery Process
SAWSDL extended Orchestration
Our work existing ASM
and Context description Mediation Data choreography
languages
based Execution

We distinguish two principal approaches, those based on the
semantic description language derived from the semantic
web (first seven works in Table 1), and those based on the
annotations of the web service descriptions, exploiting the
extensibility elements of the existing languages (last seven
works in Table 1). These annotations present more advantages
than the description languages since they exploit the web
services existing standards. Besides this, they are relatively
simple and bring more flexibility. Concerning the web
service integration, we notice that the works that combine
service oriented approaches and extended description-based
approaches are more interesting than the others since they
benefit from advantages of the web services using existing
languages and standards.
Let us notice that, except the works of Mrissa (2007), all
the others assume the local semantics adaptation of the web
services to the semantics of the shared ontology, to be able
to perform the mediation.
In our previous work (Mecheri et al., 2012), we have
given more details on the data mediation based on the
notion of context and SAWSDL.
Concerning our present work, we use the method of
Abstract State Machines (ASMs) like works of Domingue et al.
(2008), Cimpian and Mocan (2005), Cabral and Domingue
(2005) for the representation and the mediation of the business
processes. Cimpian and Mocan (2005) described the
behavioural aspect with the help of non-functional properties.
However, in this paper, we consider it using the notion of
behavioural context we have defined. This gives our model
power of expression and flexibility.
In summary, the semantic description languages of web
services are derived from the semantic web. They attempt to
replace existing web services languages to elevate them to
SWS. As a result, the approaches based on semantic
description languages (seven first works in Table 1) lose the
benefits of web services, such as flexibility and weak
coupling, unlike the approaches based on the annotations of
web service descriptions, that present more advantages. But,
contrary to our approach the last six works (as shown in
Table 1) did not deal with the mediation of processes.
Since we adopt the context oriented approach, our
conceptual model allows us to have a dynamic semantic
mediation because it offers the following advantages:
 There is not a unique information representation
(common ontology). So, the service providers are not
required to adapt their local semantics.
 The semantic heterogeneities are explicitly represented.
Then, they can be automatically interpreted and resolved.
 The reference model is linked to the description of the
web service concerned by the SAWSDL.
Our approach is service oriented and is based on extended
descriptions. So, it is flexible, which promotes reuse, thus
preserving the legacy systems thanks to its weak coupling.
4 Description of the semantic model
In Section 3, we have seen that to describe web services,
annotation-based approaches are the best. For this purpose,
we will propose a semantic model that serves as a reference
for the annotations of the WSDL documents of the web
services in interaction. This annotation will be supported by
SAWSDL. Our model is based on the ASM method and the
notion of behavioural context that we defined.
So, the role of this model is to capture the semantics
of interacting web services and, therefore, it explicitly
describes the heterogeneities at the origin of conflicts. This
allows automation of mediation to reconcile heterogeneous
216 K. Mecheri et al.
web services. One of the best methods to capture semantics
consists in the use of ontologies.
The semantic model is a very important part in our
architecture because it has four fold-focuses:
 To resolve semantic heterogeneities of data exchanged
between two WS by providing a reference model of
data semantics.
 To facilitate discovery process of WS through the
formal representation of the functionalities and the non-
functional properties offered by the WS.
 To resolve heterogeneities of message exchange
sequences through a formal behavioural model.
 To resolve heterogeneities of non-functional properties
of WS requester and WS provider.
All those objectives of our semantic model aim to support
semi-automated process of mediation and consequently the
interoperability of WS at the semantic level. To have a full
semantic description of web services, we must consider
their functional and non-functional properties as well as
their behavioural ones. Our conceptual architecture is built
according to the four levels of our mediation classification
(see Sub-section 2.3). It is inspired from a semantic model
and is composed of four sub-models (see Figure 2):
 Functional properties semantic sub-model (FSSM):
describes the semantics of the functional properties as
functionalities offered by the web service, the protocols
and the encoding (RPC, encoded, Document, and Literal).
 Non-functional properties semantic sub-model (NSSM):
specifies the semantics of the non-functional properties
of the web services as the properties concerning the
categorisation, the QoS, the temporal availability, and
so on.
 Behavioural semantic sub-model (BSSM): defines the
role semantics of the functionality of web service to be
achieved; in our case, it is handled by the behavioural
ontologies.
 Data semantic sub-model (DSSM): describes the semantics
of the data exchanged between two web services.
These sub-models will be used respectively in the mediation of:
behavioural, data, functional and non-functional properties.
Figure 2 Semantic sub-models
Semantic Model (SM)
Non functional properties
Semantic Sub Model
(NSSM)
Behavioural Semantic
Sub Model (BSSM)
The data semantic model has been described in a
previous work (Mecheri et al., 2012). In the following, we
will describe the behavioural semantic model. The others
sub-models are out of the scope of this article.
4.1 Behavioural Semantic Sub Model (BSSM)
To capture the behavioural properties semantically, we use the
ASM method to take advantages of its descriptive power and
it’s modelling based rules (Börger and Bernhard, 2008).
Therefore, our BSSM is designed according to the ASM
principles. First, it is state based, with the state being the
signature or vocabulary. Second, the change of state is
modelled by the transition rules that change the values of the
functions and relations defined by the signature. The state is
described by an ontology exploiting the notion of semantic
object and context. The functions and relations of the ASM are
represented in our model by the notion of semantic object. For
this, we adapt the definition of data context to define the notion
of behavioural context describing the category of the semantic
object.
Definition 1: The behavioural context includes the information
related to the interaction in which the web service is involved.
This information is necessary to the interpretation of the
communication actions.
Definition 2: A semantic object S is defined as a 5-tuple:
S = (c, v, t, DC, BC)
where:
c: is a concept of S that defines the ontologic family to
which data belongs, that is the abstract class of which the
data is an instance,
v: is a value of S, that is the data itself: it is an instance of
the type of the data,
t: is a type that defines the kind of content of the data
(simple / complex XML schema),
DC: is a data context of S that brings some precisions about
the interpretation of the data. It is a link to a data contextual
ontology.
BC: is a behavioural context of S that brings some
precisions about the interpretation of the behavioural aspect.
It is a link to a behaviour contextual ontology containing,
among other concepts, the following:
Functional properties
Semantic Sub Model
(FSSM)
Data Semantic Sub
Model (DSSM)
 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services
 Pattern P: describing the category of the semantic
object (data exchanged at semantic level). According to
the classification of ASM functions, the behavioural
context P (Pattern) can have one of the five following
values:
o Static: the semantic object S cannot be changed
during the execution.
o In (monitored): S cannot be changed by the
environment, and can be read by the machine.
o Out: S cannot be changed by the execution of the
transition rules, not read by the machine and can be
read by the environment.
o Shared: S can be changed by the machine and by
the environment.
o Controlled: S is only updated by the machine; it
cannot be read or updated by the environment.
 Order (Ord): its value is a number that gives the order
of the message (exchanged data).
 Acknowledgement (Ack): whose the value is true if an
acknowledgement message is required.
As shown in Figure 3, our BSSM contains two types of
ontologies: Behavioural Local Ontologies (BLO) and
Behavioural Contextual Ontologies (BCO). BLOs describe the
local semantics of the exchanged XML data (XML schema) to
the level of the web service provider. BCOs are associated to
the concepts of the local ontology. A contextual ontology
permits to describe the context of a local ontology concept.
Thus, to every local ontology concept is associated a contextual
ontology that allows one to clarify the behavioural semantic
heterogeneities and to solve the process conflicts related to the
user’s contexts at runtime.
Figure 3 Structure of the behavioural semantic sub-model
Ack
Ord
P
Behavioural Contextual
Ontology (BCO)
Ack
Behavioural Local P
Ord
ontology (BLO) Behavioural Contextual
Ontology (BCO)
Every provider describes the semantics of his own web
services. This allows a reliability of the annotations of the web
service description and the integration of the existing services
without need to any supplementary service description. The use
of the SAWSDL languages makes this solution compatible
with the WSDL, allowing, thus, the interoperability with the
217
existing architectures and the adherence of new providers. The
defined ontologies are expressed in OWL (Schreiber and Dean,
2004).
The transition rules express the changes of states by the
changes of the set of the instances. Each rule is expressed
by conditions and effects that are Description Logic (DL)
expressions. To express these rules, we use the Service Web
Rule Language (SWRL) (Horrocks et al., 2004).
4.2 Mechanisms of semantic annotation
In our approach, we use the annotation mechanisms of the
SAWSDL in order to semantically enrich both data, to achieve
automated data mediation, and message exchange sequences
and to achieve automated business process mediation.
In order to annotate semantically data, the SAWSDL
attributes (Lifting Schema Mapping and Lowering Schema
Mapping) are added to the source web service and target
web service descriptions (the XML schema.XSD). These
annotations make reference to the mapping definitions of
XML data from and to DSSM.
For the semantic annotation of behavioural aspects (i.e.
MEPs), our approach consists in adding the Model Reference
attributes to the operations level in the WSDL document. This
attribute make reference to the BSSM previously described.
The semantic model (the DSSM and the BSSM) is an
important part in the mediation of both data and business
processes.
5 Mediation levels for SWS interoperability
To interoperate SWS, we need tasks of dynamic discovery,
selection, and invocation. For each of these tasks, mediation
may be required at different levels: at the data level, at the
functional level, at the business process level, and at the
non-functional one.
In our approach, four levels of mediation are provided
by the four types of web services:
 WSDM: Web Service of Data Mediation,
 WSFM: Web Service of Functional Mediation,
 WSPM: Web Service of Process Mediation,
 WSNM: Web Service of Non-functional Mediation.
As shown in Figure 4, mediation is supported by the four
types of web services above by exploiting the ontologies of
the semantic model described in precedent section as
follows:
 Non-functional SWS mediation can be performed by
the WSNM using the NSSM.
 The adaptation of interfaces, i.e. the mediation of the
functional properties, can be carried out by the WSFM
using the FSSM. The WSFM can call the WSNM.
 The exchanged data can be interoperated using the
WSDM using the DSSM.
 Mediation of business processes can be done by WSPM
using BSSM. WSPM can call WSDM.
218 K. Mecheri et al.

Figure 4 Multi-level mediation for multiple tasks

FSSM NSSM BSSM DSSM

WSFM WSNM WSPM WSDM

Mediation used for discovery and selection Mediation used during execution

Figure 5 Mediation during execution

Process Mediation Request

- Abstraction (Extraction of semantic annotations),

- Call for data mediation.

Descriptions after data

Data Mediation Request * Mediation**

Behaviourist correspondence and conflict resolution (use of rules

and semantic model)

No
Resolved conflicts? Failure

Yes

Sending the message to the appropriate receiver (eg WS broker)

Description after mediation

Data Mediation Request *

‐ Abstraction (Extraction of semantic annotations),

‐ Syntactic‐semantic transformation (Lifting Schema
mapping). ‐ Data matching.

No
Conflicts?

Yes

Conflict resolution: - Conversions; - semantic-syntactic

transformation (Lowering Schema Mapping)

No
Resolved conflicts? Failure

Yes

Sending the message to the appropriate receiver (eg WS broker)

Description after data mediation **

 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services
5.1 Mediation steps
Mediation can be used during discovery and selection as
well as execution (invocation). The following organigrams
(see Figure 5) illustrate the different levels of mediation
during the execution. To perform the process mediation we
must call the data mediation.
In the remainder of this paper, we give more details of
the process mediation. The data mediation was already
described in previous works (Mecheri et al., 2012). It makes
it possible to reconcile the SWS and to permit their
interoperability during the execution task.
6 Business process mediation
In order to make two web services communicate directly,
we must have compatible message exchange sequences
which are usually not possible. This is due to the fact that
each one is created independently. As a consequence, the
use of an external mediation system is necessary. The role
of this system is to transform the requester’s messages
and/or the provider’s messages, in order to allow the
communication between the two parts.
In this paper, we are focused on the resolution of the
conflicts between web services that are caused by the
heterogeneities of the message exchange sequences such as:
different order of messages, presence of supplementary
messages, and lack of required ones.
Figure 6 Conceptual architecture of WSPM
BSSMr
Annotated WSDLr WSPM
WS requestor
Figure 7 WSPM description
WSPM interface
WSDL reader
BSSM
BSSM
219
6.1 Conceptual architecture of the process
mediation
Our approach of solving conflicts of the message exchange
sequences emitted by the web services relies on WSPM.
These last can solve the conflicts by inversing the order
of messages, stopping an unexpected message, splitting a
message and combining several messages. The WSPM
mediators use a set of rules to identify equivalences between
different BSSMs. These rules and models are created and
stored during the designing phase and used during the
execution phase.
Since the behaviour properties don’t appear in the WSDL
document, we enhance this last to add supplementary
information concerning the message exchange sequences and
we use the model reference attribute to join the extended
description to the reference model (BSSM).
WSPM is inserted between the web service requester
and the web service provider (see Figure 6). It intercepts
these messages and proceeds to eventual transformations by
exploiting the semantic models (BSSMr, BSSMp), the rules
and by executing the business process mediation algorithm.
6.2 WSPM description
WSPM is implemented using an algorithm of choreography
mediation that manages the conversation between the
two web services (see Figure 7). It uses the behavioural
ontologies of the two parts (BSSM) and the Transition
Rules (TR). It calls WSDM and the Reasoner.
BSSMp
Annotated WSDLp
WS provider
Inference
Mediator Engine
(Reasoner)
Knowledge
WSDM
Base
220 K. Mecheri et al.

The communication action of the WSPM via its interface is add(ci, BSSM2) /* add ci C of BSSM1
a set of messages corresponding to: to BSSM2 according to context information
(ord) */
 Receiving a request of the WS requester. endif;
 Sending this request to the WS provider. endfor;
3 semantic- syntactic transformations
 Receiving an answer of the WS provider.
send(msg, WS2)
 Sending this answer to the WS requester. {for all c C of BSSM2 do
msg= lowringSchemaMapping(c);
The WSPM can perform, with using its capacity of mediation, the
send msg to WS2);
transformations of these messages to ensure the communication
between the web services requester and provider. endfor;
The process mediation algorithm is described in Listing 1. }

Listing 1. WSPM Algorithm

The steps of this algorithm are:
Inputs: msg, URI of wsdl1 (WS1), URI of  First, download annotated WSDL files from both
wsdl2 (WS2) requester and provider web services (WS1 and WS2);
Uses: BSSM1,BSSM2, TR1,TR2, ModelReference, Extract operation and data annotations (modelReference,
lifting and lowring mappings
lifting and lowringSchemaMappings attributes) using the
SAWSDL4J API (Hausberger, 2009). These annotations
Outputs: msg after mediation
refer to the concepts of ontologies of BSSMs (BLO, BCO)
1 Message reception and syntactic-
and mappings; Load copies of these into memory.
semantic transformations
Repeat  When receiving messages, syntactic to semantic
transformations are performed using the SAWSDL lifting
c =receiveMessage(msg, WS1)
SchemaMappings attribute and calling the WSDM to
{cm = liftingSchemaapping(msg;
transform the context instances of the source WS into the
c = dataMediation(cm); context of the target WS. This conceptual data is saved in
return c;} memory (C).
Add c to C;
 Using the attributes of the BCO (‘P’, ‘ord’, ‘Ack’) and
Until no message;
the transition rules, the WSPM performs semantic
2 Semantic-Semantic transformations transformations: message generation, reordering messages,
(reasoning) combining multiple messages into a single message and
For All c C of BSSM1 do splitting a message.
Check contextual information (P, Ord,
 In order to send conceptual data (C) the algorithm performs
Ack);
the semantic to syntactic transformation using the lowring
Evaluate TR; // Transition Rules SchemaMapping to obtain the xml data (msg). Then, the
if Ack=True then algorithm sends the msg to WS using modelReference.
Generate (dummyAck);
send (dummyAck,WS1); 6.3 Different steps of business processes mediation
endif;
The mediation process includes the following three major
if extraMessageMismatch then steps (see Figure 8):
if c is expected now /*(P=in
according BSSM2 and TR)*/ then  Abstraction step: allows one to associate an annotated
source / target XML message, in one or more concepts
add (c,BSSM2); /*add c to BSSM2*/
belonging to the semantic model BSSM. These are the
endif;
syntactic-semantic transformations.
endif
if MergMismatch then
 Semantic transformation step: allows to semantically
transforming the concept (s) of the source ontology and
merging(ci,c); /*merging ci from C of
those of the target ontology. This transformation is realised
BSSM1 in c */
thanks to the semantic mappings and exploits the
Add(c,BSSM2) ; /* Add c to BSSM2 */ ontologies of the BSSM using the mediation algorithm
endif; and an inference engine. These are semantic-semantic
If splitMismatch (c is composed of ci) then transformations.
Generate(ci); /* generate ci
 Syntactic concretisation step: allows the transformation
from C of BSSM1*/ the ontological concepts resulting from the BSSM
Add(ci,BSSM2); /* Add ci to BSSM2*/ belonging to the target semantic level to the target XML
endif; message format of the service concerned. These are
if orderingMismatch then semantic-syntactic transformations.
 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services
Figure 8 Business process mediation steps
2’
Semantic
Description (OWL):
3 1
1
Annotated syntactic description
of the source Web service
It should be noted that our main objective is to design
and realise these mediation steps by creating the three
transformation modules, namely:
 The Semantic-Semantic Transformation (SST) module:
responsible for the semantic to semantic transformations
(arrows 2 and 2ʹ in Figure 8) based on the ontologies
mappings of the BSSMs.
 The Syntactic-Semantic Transformation (SynSem)
module: responsible for the syntactic to semantic
transformations (arrows 1 and 1' in Figure 8).
 The Semantic-Syntactic Transformation (SemSynT)
module: responsible for the semantic to syntactic
transformations (arrows 3 and 3ʹ in Figure 8).
6.4 Conversion and transformation functions
According to the principle of our mediation of the business
processes several types of transformations are defined
namely:
 Semantic-syntactic transformations: using SAWSDL
“liftingSchemaMapping” annotations associating an
XML schema type or element with a mapping to the
semantic model, defining how an instance of the XML
document is transformed to one or more concepts of the
semantic model. These are transformations of the data
conveyed by the messages. For messages, the SAWSDL
annotations “ModelReference” are used, associating the
WSDL message with its concept in the BSSM.
 Syntactic-semantic transformations: they concern
the data, using the SAWSDL annotations
“loweringSchemaMapping” associating a concept of
the semantic model with a mapping to a data of the
XML document (using the SPARQL followed by the
XSLT), defining how a semantic concept is transformed
Into an XML data item. It also involves transformations of
the data conveyed by the messages.
 Semantic-semantic transformations:
o First, for the data in addition to the classical mappings
of ontologies, we use conversion functions of the
221
Semantic
Description (OWL):
3
Annotated syntactic description
of the target Web service
values. These mappings are supported by the WSDM
(Mecheri et al., 2012).
o Then, for the messages, these mappings are supported
by the WSPM precisely by the SST module, with the
mediation algorithm exploiting the ontologies of the
BSSM its contextual information as well as the
predefined transition rules. The WSPM calls the
WSDM for data mappings.
In the following, we describe the SST module. However, it
should be noted that these modules work together to
perform the semantic mediation of business processes (and
data) as shown by the algorithm (see Listing 1).
6.5 Structure and role of the SST module
Our approach to designing the SST module is based on
the notion of mapping BSSM ontologies and the reasoning
on these mappings. It can be summarised as follows
(see Figure 9):
 Use the BSSM ontologies (BLO and BCO) capturing
the semantics of the two interacting heterogeneous web
services (at the process level).
 Create mappings between these two ontologies:
o Fusion of the two ontologies to have the SST
ontology.
o Creation of the mapping rules between the
concepts of SST ontology.
o Use the reasoning technique on these mappings:
execution of rules by an inference engine to make
interoperate these two ontologies and consequently
to resolve the semantic conflicts.
Figure 9 illustrates the architecture diagram of the SST
module that follows from this approach:
It should be noted that the ontologies of the BSSM must
be syntactically and terminologically compatible, but they
will be heterogeneous at the conceptual (semantic) level.
The used approach is the multi-ontologies approach.
222 K. Mecheri et al.
Figure 9 Architecture of the SST module
Transition
SST Ontology Rules (swrl)
BSSM
1
BSSM2
Inference
engine
BSSM1 BSSM2
(BLO2+BCOs2)
(BLO1+BCOs1)
WSDL1 WSDL2
WS2
WS1
6.5.1 Transition rules
In our case, the rules make it possible to instantiate concepts
of an ontology with the instances of the concepts of another
ontology, we can have five cases whose first three lead to
transitions that is to say change of state:
 A concept (with P = out) of ontology1 instantiates a
concept (with P = in) of ontology2 (identical concepts).
 A concept (with P = out) of ontology1 instantiates two
concepts (with P = in) of ontology2 (split), that is to say
a concept of ontology1 equivalent to two concepts of
Ontology2.
 Two concepts of ontology1 (with P = out) instantiate a
concept (with P = in) of ontology2 (merge), i.e. two
concepts of ontology1 equivalent to one concept of
Ontology2.
 If a concept of ontology1 with P = out which does not
instantiate any concept of ontology2, that is, this concept
of ontology1 is not equivalent to any concept of
ontology2, the mediator does nothing for this concept.
 A concept among the first three cases of ontology1 has
its contextual information for Ack = True, i.e. it needs
an acknowledgment, which will be generated by the
mediator.
7 Some implementation aspects and a case study
7.1 Case study
The main objective of our research is to make interoperate
the information system applications of SETA (Technical
Studies Society of Annaba) between them and with those of
its environment. It is about intra-enterprise and inter-
enterprises interoperability (Mecheri and Souici-Meslati, 2010;
Mecheri et al., 2010, 2012).
The SETA is an economic and autonomous public
company, whose head office is fixed in Annaba (East of
Algeria). It is organised as departments and antennas
distributed on the East of the national territory.
The activity of the enterprise is essentially characterised by
the control, the expertise, the geometric studies and structural
conception of the roads, railways, airports and so on.
The SETA develops multiple relations with outside
organisms as the analysis laboratories, national and
international suppliers, the banks, and so on.
For its work on construction sites SETA buys topographic
and surveyors equipment’s from international suppliers.
The Information System (IS) of SETA is service-oriented.
We assume that the SETA partners make this transition to
SOA, and they also offer business services (Mecheri et al.,
2010).
The business services implemented by the semantic web
services are exposed to the partners of the SETA, on the other
hand, these last will benefit from the services offered by its
partners. It is therefore a cooperation of information systems.
To evaluate how our approach overcomes the
heterogeneities between SWS at behavioural level, we use two
web services:
 Requester web service (of SETA IS), asking for a quote
concerning some products (topographic equipment) and
send the order.
 Provider web service (of supplier) that answers by a
quote of the requested products and invoice.
The message exchange sequences between these two web
services in interaction are described in Figure 10.
According to the choreography given in this figure the
behavioural interfaces of the two web services are given in
Table 2.
7.2 Implementation and tools
For implementing the semantic model (ontologies), we
chose the following:
 Protégé 3.4.1 for ontology’s creation and edition
(Protégé, 2017), with the
 SWRLTab plugin for SWRL rules edition (Horrocks
et al., 2004),
 Protégé-OWL API for access to ontologies by program
(Schreiber and Dean, 2004),
 Pellet (2017) as inference engine and
 Jess (2017) for rules execution .
These choices are justified by the need to use some custom
SWRL built-ins only available in the Pellet Protégé 3.4 and
Jess. We use Pellet for the other reasoning tasks (coherence
verification or classification). The access to Pellet and to
Jess from Protégé-OWL API is based available specific
bridges.
 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services 223

Figure 10 Quote request choreography

QuoteReqProductId

QuoteRequest
QuoteReqProduct

QuoteId
QuoteResponse

WS WS
QuotePrice
requester provider
WSPM
Order Order

Ack

InvoicePrice InvoiceId

InvoiceId InvoicePrice

Table2 Message exchange sequences with heterogeneities

WS requester behavioural WS provider behavioural Heterogeneities

ReceiveRequest(QuoteReqId)
SendRequest(QuoteRequest) Split message
ReceiveRequest(QuoteReqProduct
SendAnswer(QuoteId)
ReceiveAnswer(QuoteResponse) Combining messages
SendAnswer(QuotePrice)
SendRequest(Order) ReceiveRequest(Order) _____
ReceiveAnswer(Ack) _____ Generate message
ReceiveRequest(InvoicePrice) SendAnswer(InvoiceId)
Inversing order
ReceiveRequest(InvoiceId) SendAnswer(InvoicePrice)

7.2.1 Build of behavioural semantic sub models data conflicts (names, types, and so on). These are the
(BSSMs) transitions rules used in our case study.

To build the two BSSMs of WS requester and WS provider,
we use Protégé to create Behavioural Local Ontologies
(BLOs). For each concept of BLO, we add its Behavioural
Contextual Ontology (BCO) (see Figure 11).
7.2.2 Creation of SST ontology and mapping rules
To perform the mediation between the ontologies (BLO
Requester and BLO Provider) of the two Behaviourist
Models (BSSMs), we create the ‘SST Ontology’ by merging
the first two. Here, we used OWL: import function to import
the two ontologies: ‘BLO Requester’ and ‘BLO Provider’ in
‘SST Ontology’. This allows us to manipulate both at the
same time; using SWRL mapping rules that we created and
then successfully executed.
We have integrated the JESS rule engine with the SWRL
language editor in Protege to execute these rules. In order to
keep the presentation simple, we assume that there are no
 Transition rules of WS requester corresponding to BLO
Requester (p1):
o Rule 1: the WS requester creates an instance of
‘quoteRequest’ from the instances for which it has
‘quoteReqId’ and ‘quoteReqProduct’. This instance
of ‘quoteRequest’ is sent to WSPM:
quoteReqId (?QRId)  quoteReqProduct (?QRP)
quoteRequest(?x[?QRId, ?QRP])
 Transition rules of WS provider corresponding to BLO
Provider (p2):
o Rule 2, Rule 3: The WS provider creates a ‘quoteId’
instance and a ‘quotePrice’ instance after
having received a ‘quoteReqId’ instance and a
‘quoteReqProduct’ instance from WSPM. The
created instances are sent to WSPM:
224 K. Mecheri et al.

quoteReqId (?QRId)  quoteReqProduct (?QRP)  quoteId p2:QuoteId(?X)^p2: QuotePrice(?Y)^ ?R= swrl :concat
(?x) ( ?X ?Y) → p1 :QuteResponse( ?R).
quoteReqId (?QRId)  quoteReqProduct (?QRP)  This rule combines the two concepts ‘QuoteId’ and
quotePrice (?x) ‘QuotePrice’ of the BLO Provider prefixed by p2 to send
them to the BLO Requester prefixed by p1 in the concept
As example of an alignment rule, WSPM combines the ‘QuoteResponse’ (see Figure 12). That is, both the
outputs of WS provider and sends it to WS requester, in ‘QuoteId’ and ‘QuotePrice’ concepts of p2 are equivalent to
order to obtain a quote response: a single ‘QuoteResponse’ concept of p1.
Figure 11 BSSMs of WS Requester and WS Provider

Figure 12 Result of the rule execution

 Context-based interoperability of semantic web services
7.2.3 SST Module
This module is implemented in Java on the NetBeans IDE. It
allows one to load the ontologies (BSSMs) of the two web
services, the SST ontology, to extract the concepts, the
properties and to execute the rules of SWRL mappings by a
rule based inference engine (Pellet and Jena) to execute the
algorithm of listing1.
8 Conclusion and perspectives
In this paper, we presented a comparative study of works
concerning the semantic web services interoperability and
the mediation problems, then, we proposed our approach of
WS semantic mediation.
The global architecture for the information systems
interoperability via semantic web services contains several
components. We are interested in two important parts of this
architecture, which are the mediation infrastructure of the
web services at the level of the exchange sequences and the
semantic model to describe them.
Our model is split into four sub-models. We presented the
semantic sub-model of BSSM, which includes for each web
service a BLO and BCOs associated with the concepts of this
ontology (BLO). BSSM offers many advantages because:
 it is based on the ASM method which makes it a state-
based model and rules.
 these rules are expressed with the SWRL language.
 It uses the context notion to describe behaviourist
properties.
 the reference model is linked to the description of the
web service concerned by the SAWSDL.
In our approach, the reconciliation of web services message
exchange sequences is supported by WSPM. It is implemented
with a choreography mediation algorithm that manages the
conversation between the two web services. It uses the
behavioural models (BSSM) of both parts and transition rules.
It uses WSDM and a reasoner. The core of this mediator is the
SST that is a module based on the notion of BSSM ontology’s
mapping and the reasoning on these mappings. It also includes
modules for syntactic-semantic and semantic-syntactic
transformations.
In a future work, we will take into account an extending of
the semantic model representing the functional properties and
non-functional ones needed during the semantic discovery and
selection, an improvement of the process mediation and the
data mediation infrastructures by linking them through the call
from the first to the second. We also envisage completing the
mediation infrastructure through functional and non-functional
semantic mediation.
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