What are Web services / Semantic Web services?
According to the definition of the W3C, “a Web service is a software system identified by a URI, whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by internet protocols.” While in “traditional”, non-semantic, Web services, service interfaces are only described on a syntactic level, Semantic Web services provide and extend formal description of their interfaces through annotation of Web service interfaces with concepts from application domains [2], enabling, e.g., automated service discovery based on interface semantics rather than a syntactic representation.
