1. Exploiting Semantics of Web Services in eBusiness Applications
Asuman Dogac
Middle East Technical University
06531 Ankara Turkey
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

2. Outline Why do we need the semantics of Web services?
Means of expressing semantics: Ontology and Ontology Description Languages
Semantic Support Available in UDDI Registries
Semantic Support Available in ebXML Registries
Two approaches to exploiting semantics: Querying and Reasoning
Describing the semantics of Web services in two domains
Healthcare
Tourism Industry
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

3. Why do we need the semantics of Web services?
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

4. Why do we need Web Service Semantics?
WSDL only gives the technical specification of the Web services
In order to exploit services in their full potential their properties must be defined:
The methods of charging and payment
The channels by which the service is requested and provided
Constraints on temporal and spatial aspects
Availability
Service quality
Security, trust and rights attached to a service
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

5. Why do we need Web Service Semantics?
To be able to define the Web service functionality semantics
To be able to describe service properties and later search for services according to their properties
This search needs to be done in a machine processable and interoperable manner
Defining Service Properties Through Ontology Languages
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

6. Ontology
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

7. What is an Ontology?
“An explicit formal specification of the terms in the domain and relations among them.”
- Noy and McGuinness, “Ontology Development 101”
The word ontology comes from the Greek ontos (being) and logos (word)
An ontology describes objects and concepts as classes
These classes are arranged in a hierarchy, and then class attributes and relationships are described with properties
Class
Subclass
properties
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

8. Why use an ontology? A common vocabulary
Ability to define relationships among classes, properties and instances
Automated Processing
Querying
Reasoning
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

9. Resource Description Framework (RDF)
A W3C recommendation
RDF fixes the syntax and structure of describing metadata through RDF Syntax
It allows meaning to be defined and associated with data through RDF Schema
RDF Schema facilities to define domain specific ontologies
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

10. Ontology Languages and OWL
DAML:Darpa Agent
Markup Language
OIL: Ontology Inference
Layer (European
Commission Project)
DAML+OIL
RDF (Resource
Description
Framework)
OWL: Web Ontology
Language (Being
Standardized by W3C)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

11. OWL Classes
Ministry of Interior has defined ontologies for their information in OWL
For example:
<owl:Class rdf:ID=“Crimes"> </owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=“Robbery">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Crimes"/>
</owl:Class> …
<owl:Class rdf:ID=“Terrorism">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Crimes"/>
</owl:Class>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

12. OWL Properties Crimes Literal Robbery Thief Speeding Speeder
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID=“description">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Crime"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource=“
</owl:DatatypeProperty >
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID=“suspect">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Robbery"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource=“#Thief>
</owl:ObjectProperty >
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID=“driver">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Speeding"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource=“#Speeder"/>
description
Crimes
Literal
suspect
Robbery
Thief
Speeding
Speeder
driver
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

13. An Example: eGovernment
Finger prints from a robbery scene identified John Smith as the suspect
Here is the police report on the robbery:
<Robbery rdf:ID="report xyz">
<description>...</description>
<suspect>
<Thief rdf:about=" </suspect>
</Robbery>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

14. An Example: eGovernment
Later in the day a police gives a person a ticket for speeding
The driver's license showed the name John Doe
Here is the police report on the speeder:
<Speeding rdf:ID="report abc">
<description>...</description>
<driver>
<Speeder rdf:about="
</driver>
</Speeding>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

15. Any Relationship between the Thief and the Speeder?
Ministry of Interior keeps the OWL descriptions of their files:
<Criminals rdf:about=" ">
<owl:sameAs rdf:resource=" "/>
</Criminals>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

16. How can this be achieved? owl:sameAs property helps!
Thief
Speeder
John Smith
John Doe
owl:sameAs
Inference: The Thief and the Speeder are one and
the same!
OWL provides a property (owl:sameAs) for indicating that two resources (e.g., two people) are the same
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

17. Semantic Support of Web Services in UDDI Registries
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

18. UDDI Registry APIs Publishers API Inquiry API Save Find Delete
save_business
save_service
save_binding
save_tModel
Delete
delete_business
delete_service
delete_binding
delete_tModel
Inquiry API
Find
find_business
find_service
find_binding
find_tModel
Get Details
get_businessDetail
get_serviceDetail
get_bindingDetail
get_tModelDetail
28 messages currently defined (pre taxonomy input/agreement)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

19. Defining Service Semantics in UDDI Registries
businessEntity
businessKey
name
URL
description
contacts
businessServices
identifierBag
categoryBag
Phone
Address
Contact
businessService
Key
Name
Description
BindingTemplates
serviceKey
tModelKey
keyedReference
keyName
keyValue
By using standard taxonomies
And by putting the corresponding tModel keys in the category bags of services
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

20. Business categories in UDDI
Three standard taxonomies in V1
Industry: NAICS - North American Industrial Classification Scheme (Industry codes - US Govt.)
Product/Services: UN/SPSC - Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (ECMA)
Location: ISO 3166 Geographical taxonomy
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

21. ISO 3166 Codes (Countries) (http://www. iso
Country A2 A3
Number
ITALY IT
ITA
380
TURKEY TR
TUR
792 …
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

22. North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

23. United Nations Standard Products & Services Code® (UNSPSC)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

24. How can we find a service through its semantics in UDDI Registries?
Looking for a service to buy a Computer
If a service puts the tModel key corresponding to [ ] Workstations or desktop computers –commodity in its category bag
THEN
We know that this service is related with computers
BUT: Is this service really selling computers? If so how about the properties of the product? Payment method? Memory, Speed?
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

25. Taxonomies Define Only Class/Subclass Relationship: An Example Taxonomy: UNSPSC
UDDI uses
taxonomies to describe
the semantic of Web
services by relating them
to tModels
Communications and Computer
Equipment and Peripherals and
Components and Supplies
Business Transaction and Personal
Business Software
Tax Preparation Software
Through taxonomies:
It is not possible to define properties of services
It is not possible to relate service classes with one another
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

26. Semantic Support of Web Services in ebXML Registries
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

27. Where to store the generic semantics of the services?
An ebXML registry allows to define semantics basically through two mechanisms:
It allows properties of registry objects to be defined through “slots” and,
Metadata can be stored in the registry through a “classification” mechanism
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

28. ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM)
RegistryObject
ClassificationNode
Classification
RegistryEntry
Association
ClassificationScheme
RegistryPackage
ExtrinsicObject
Service
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

29. Exploiting semantics
TravelService
Transportation
Service
Accommodation
Service
Entertainment
Service
AirTransportation ?
In relating the semantics with the services advertised in service registries, there are two key issues:
Where to store the generic semantics of the services: In ebXML, metadata is stored in the registry
How to relate the services advertised in the registry with the semantic defined through an ontology: In ebXML through Classification objects
ReserveAFlight
BuyATicket
originatingFrom
destinationTo
paymentMethod
ReserveAFlight
originatingFrom
destinationTo
paymentMethod ?
MyService
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

30. Relating a Web service Advertised with Service Ontology in ebXML
MyService:
Registry Entry
ReserveAFlight:
ClassificationNode
ServiceToIndustryClassification:
Classification
classsifiedObject
classificationNode
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

31. How to relate services advertised with the generic ontology classes?
By relating a service advertised with a node in classification hierarchy, we make the service an explicit member of this node
The service also inherits the well-defined meaning associated with this node as well as the generic properties defined for this node
When we associate “MyService” with “ReserveAFlightService”, its meaning becomes clear; that this service is a flight reservation service
Assuming that the “ReserveAFlightService” service has the generic properties such as “originatingFrom”, “destinationTo” and “paymentMethod”, “MyService” also inherits these properties
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

32. Querying vs. Reasoning
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

33. Some Observations
Ontologies can play two major roles in the Web services area:
One is to provide a source of shared and precisely defined terms which can be used to dynamically discover, compose and monitor services
The other is to reason about the ontologies
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

34. Some Observations
The fact is that we do not have industrial strength reasoners yet!
Semantic can also be taken advantage of through querying
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

35. Exploiting Semantics through Querying
Once semantics is associated with Web services in ebXML registries, it can be used to discover services simply through queries
Examples:
It is possible to find the properties of a Web service class
It is possible to find all the advertised instances of a Web service class in the ontology
It is possible to obtain the content files (WSDL and OWL)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

36. Querying ebXML Registry through Query Templates
This can be achieved through predefined query templates which yields into automation:
A query template is used to obtain the properties of a generic class
A query template is used for locating service instances of a given generic class node in the class hierarchy
A template is a content retrieval query to obtain the original OWL and WSDL files through the identifiers of the OWL and WSDL files in the SpecificationLinks
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

37. Get Datatype Properties
A query template to obtain the properties of a generic class
TravelService
Entertainment
Service
Accommodation
ReserveAFlight
BuyATicket
AirTransportation
Transportation
originatingFrom
destinationTo
paymentMethod
promotion
ebXML Registry
DatatypeProperty
ObjectProperty 1
ebXML Query
Get Datatype Properties 1
ebXML Query
Get Object Properties 2
ebXML Query Result
originatingFrom
destinationTo 2
ebXML Query Result
paymentMethod
promotion
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

38. An Example Query Retrieving all the Associations of Type “DatatypeProperty” for “ReserveAClassFlightService”
<AdhocQueryRequest xmlns =
"urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:query:xsd:2.0" xmlns:xsi =
" xsi:schemaLocation =
"urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:query:xsd:2.0 query.xsd">
<ResponseOption returnType = "LeafClass" returnComposedObjects = "true" />
<FilterQuery> <ClassificationNodeQuery> <SourceAssociationBranch> <AssociationFilter> <Clause>
<SimpleClause leftArgument = "associationType">
<StringClause stringPredicate = "Equal"> DatatypeProperty</StringClause>
</SimpleClause> </Clause>
</AssociationFilter>
<ClassificationNodeQuery> <NameBranch>
<LocalizedStringFilter> <Clause> <SimpleClause leftArgument = "value">
<StringClause stringPredicate = "Contains"> ReserveAFlightService</StringClause>
</SimpleClause> </Clause> </LocalizedStringFilter> </NameBranch>
</ClassificationNodeQuery> </SourceAssociationBranch> </ClassificationNodeQuery> </FilterQuery> </AdhocQueryRequest>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

39. A query template to find all the advertised instances of a Web
service class
TravelService
Entertainment
Service
Accommodation
ReserveAFlight
BuyATicket
AirTransportation
Transportation
MyService1
MyService2
MyService3
ebXML Registry 1
ebXML Query
Get Extension of a
ClassificationNode 2
ebXML Query Result
MyService1
MyService2
MyService3
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

40. An Example Query: Retrieving all the Services Classified with “ReserveAFlightService” ClassificationNode
<AdhocQueryRequest
xmlns = "urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:query:xsd:2.0"
xmlns:xsi = "
xsi:schemaLocation = "urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:query:xsd: 2.0 query.xsd">
<ResponseOption returnType = "LeafClass" returnComposedObjects = "true" />
<FilterQuery> <ServiceQuery> <ClassifiedByBranch>
<ClassificationNodeQuery>
<NameBranch>
<LocalizedStringFilter>
<Clause>
<SimpleClause leftArgument = "value">
<StringClause stringPredicate = "Equal"> ReserveAFlightService </StringClause>
</SimpleClause> </Clause> </LocalizedStringFilter> </NameBranch>
</ClassificationNodeQuery> </ClassifiedByBranch> </ServiceQuery> </FilterQuery>
</AdhocQueryRequest>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

41. Get SpecificationLink
ebXML Registry
ebXML Repository
TravelService
WSDL of
MyService1
OWL-S of
MyService1
Transportation
Service
Accommodation
Service
Entertainment
Service
AirTransportation
Extrinsic
Object
ReserveAFlight
BuyATicket
Extrinsic
Object
SpecificationLink
MyService1
A Content Retrieval
Query template 1
ebXML Query
Get SpecificationLink
Content of a Service 2
ebXML Query Result
WSDL of
MyService1
OWL-S of
MyService1
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

42. Retrieving the WSDL Files
<GetContentRequest
xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:query:xsd:2.1"
xmlns:rim="urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:rim:xsd:2.1"
xmlns:xsi="
xsi:schemaLocation="urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:rim:xsd:2.1
../schema/rim.xsd urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-regrep:query:xsd:2.1
../schema/query.xsd">
<rim:ObjectRefList>
<--! The unique id of the WSDL file in the registry -->
<rim:ObjectRef
id="urn:uuid:7e4397db-916a-490f-bdc7-c9da"/>
</rim:ObjectRefList>
</GetContentRequest>
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

43. OWL-S
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

44. OWL-S: Defines an Upper Ontology for Web Services in OWL
ServiceGrounding
ServiceModel
Resource
ServiceProfile
Supports:
How to access it
presents: What it does
provides
describedBy:How it works
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

45. Web services and the Healthcare Domain
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

46. Challenges of Healthcare Informatics
According to Jonathan Borden, M.D. of ASTM:
A disaster: 1.1 Trillion $/year in the USA
30-40 % overhead
Mostly paper based
Highly proprietary commercial systems
Tens of thousands of people die each year due to poor information/errors
Most of the information is rendered useless
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

47. Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

48. Challenges of Healthcare Informatics
Most of the health information systems today are proprietary
They often only serve one specific department within a healthcare institute
To complicate the matters worse, a patient's health information may be spread out over a number of different institutes which do not interoperate
This makes it very difficult for clinicians to capture a complete clinical history of a patient
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

49. Patient Records: Problems
Content: too little, too much, or wrong
Format: poor organization of information
Access, availability, security
Linkages and integration
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

50. Challenges of Healthcare Informatics
The systems must interoperate for effectiveness
For interoperability standards are needed
However there are more than one standard in the health care domain
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

51. EHR Architectures „Candidates“ of EHR architectures:
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
Andrew Tanenbaum, Introduction to Computer Networks
„Candidates“ of EHR architectures:
CEN ENV „EHR Communication“
Good Electronic Health Record (GEHR)
OpenEHR
CEN EN (draft)
HL7 Clinical Document Architecture
HL7 v2 Information Model (implicit)
HL7 v3 Reference Information Model (draft)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

52. Web Services in the Healthcare Domain
Web services provides the healthcare industry with an ideal platform to achieve the difficult interoperability problems
Web services are designed to wrap and expose existing resources and provide interoperability among diverse applications
It becomes possible to provide the interoperability of medical information systems through standardizing the access to data through WSDL and SOAP rather than standardizing documentation of electronic health records
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

53. Introducing Web services to the healthcare domain brings many advantages
Medical information systems suffer from proliferation of standards to represent the same data; Web services allow for seamless integration of disparate applications representing different and, at times, competing standards
Web services will extend the healthcare enterprises by making their own services available to others
Web services will extend the life of the existing software by exposing previously proprietary functions as Web services
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

54. Semantics of Web Services
In order to exploit Web services to their full potential, it is necessary to describe their semantics
An essential element in defining the semantic of Web services is the domain knowledge
Medicine is one of the few domains to have extensive domain knowledge defined through standards
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

55. Domain Knowledge
Some of the domain knowledge exists in controlled vocabularies, or terminologies:
Some vocabularies are rich semantic nets, such as SNOMED-CT while others such as ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) is little more than lexicons of terms
However, there are also standards that expose the business logic in the healthcare domain such as HL7 and Electronic Healthcare Record based standards such as CEN TC251, ISO TC215 and GEHR which define and classify clinical concepts
These standards offer significant value in developing ontologies to express the semantics of Web services
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

56. What kind of Semantics? Service Functionality Semantics:
HL7 has categorized the events in healthcare domain by considering service functionality which reflects the business logic in this domain
This classification can be used as a basis for defining the service action semantics through a Service Functionality Ontology
Service Message Semantics:
Electronic healthcare record (EHR) based standards like HL7 CDA (Clinical Document Architecture), GOM (GEHR Object Model), and CEN TC251's ENV define meaningful components of EHR so that when transferred, the receiving party can understand the record content better
The meaningful components defined by these standards can be used in developing service message ontologies
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

57. HL7 and Web Services
The primary goal of HL7 is to provide standards for the exchange of data among healthcare computer applications
An event in the healthcare world, called the trigger event, causes exchange of messages between a pair of applications
When an event occurs in an HL7 compliant system, an HL7 message is prepared by collecting the necessary data from the underlying systems and it is passed to the requestor, usually as an EDI message
Mapping HL7’s message based events directly into Web services may result in several inefficiencies
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

58. HL7 and Web Services
The input and output messages defined for HL7 events are usually very complex containing innumerous segments of different types and optionality
Furthermore, all the semantics about the business logic and the document structure are hard coded in the message
This implies that, the party invoking the Web service must be HL7 compliant to make any sense of the content of the output parameter(s) returned by the service
Furthermore, the information contained in an HL7 message may be coming from different systems either proprietary or complying to different standards
Hence, in Web services terminology, HL7 events correspond to Composite services, whereas more elementary services are needed
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

59. HL7 and Web Services
Since HL7 has already been through an effort of categorizing the events in healthcare domain considering service functionality, it can be used as a basis for a service functionality ontology
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

60. An Example Service Functionality Ontology
HealthCareServices
PatientAdministration
PatientCare
PatientReferral
Scheduling
ObservationReporting
PatientReferralRequest
PatientInfoRequest
CancelPatientReferral
InsuranceInformation
ClinicalInformation
DemographicData
GetClinicalInformation
Properties of the
Generic Service
Class
serviceQuality
location
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

61. Service Messages
A Web service in the healthcare domain usually accesses or updates a part of an electronic healthcare record, that is, parts of the EHR constitute the service parameters
An electronic healthcare record may get very complex with data coming from diverse systems such as lab tests, diagnosis, prescription of drugs which may be in different formats
Electronic healthcare record (EHR) based standards like HL7 CDA, GOM and CEN's ENV aim to facilitate the interoperability between Medical Information Systems
These standards provide conceptual building blocks or meaningful components
We propose to use these standards as a basis for Service Message Ontology
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

62. GEHR EHR and Transaction level Navigation level
Content (e.g. observation, subjective, instruction) level
Data types (e.g. quantity, multimedia) level
Clinical models are expressed outside the GOM in the form of archetypes
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

63. CEN TC 251 ENV 13606
Folder: High-level subdivisions of the entire EHR for a patient
Composition: A set of record entries relating to one time and place of care delivery; grouped contributions to an aspect of health care activity; composed reports and overviews of clinical progress
Headed Section: Sub-divisions used to group entries with a common theme or derived through a common healthcare process.
Cluster: Low-level aggregations of elementary entries (Record Items) to represent a compound clinical concept
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

64. An example Service Message Ontology
Concept
Property
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

65. Relating the services with the semantic defined through an ontology - UDDI
HacettepeHospital
ObservationReportingServices
PatientReferralServices
getClinicalInfo .
UDDI Business Entities and Related
UDDI tModels
Medical Services
PatientCare
PatientReferral
Observation
Reporting
GetClinicalInfo
CategoryBag reference
PatientReferralReq
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

66. Associating semantics to ebXML
ebXML Classification Hierarchy
HealthCareServices
subclassOf
subclassOf
PatientCare
PatientAdministration
ObservationReporting
subclassOf
subclassOf
PatientInfoRequest
PatientReferralRequest
Standards
Conformed
serviceQuality
ebXML
associations
ebXML
ClassificationNodes
ebXMLslots
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

67. The healthcare informatics industry has already started using Web services
An Example: Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)
IHE defines a Web service based implementation framework
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

68. Overview of IHE IT Infrastructure Integration Profiles
IHE IT Infrastructure Technical Committee
Charles Parisot, GE Medical Systems Information Technologies
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

69. IHE IT Infrastructure 5 Integration Profiles
Retrieve Information for Display
Access a patient’s clinical information and documents in a format ready to be presented to the requesting user
Enterprise User Authentication
Provide users a single name and centralized authentication process across all systems
Synchronize multiple applications on a desktop to the same patient
Patient Synchronized Applications
Patient Identifier Cross-referencing for MPI
Map patient identifiers across independent identification domains
Consistent Time
Coordinate time across networked systems
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

70. An Example: Retrieve Information for Display
Key Technical Properties:
Standards Used:
Web Services (WSDL for HTTP Get).
General purpose IT Presentation Formats: XHTML, PDF, JPEG plus CDA L1.
Client may be off-the-shelf browser or display app.
Two services :
Retrieve of Specific Information:
Patient centric: patient ID
Type of Request
Date, Time, nMostRecent
Retrieve a Document
Object Unique Instance Identifier (OID)
Content Type Expected
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

71. Retrieve Information for Display
Transaction Diagram
Retrieve Specific Info for Display [11]
Summary of All Reports
Summary of Laboratory Reports
Summary of Radiology Reports
Summary of Cardiology Reports
Summary of Surgery Reports
Summary of Intensive Care Reports
Summary of Emergency Reports
Summary of Discharge Reports
List of Allergies
List of Medications
Display
Information
Source
Retrieve Document for Display [12]
Persistent Document
Types of Requests
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

72. For Further Information…
IST STP Artemis Project: A Semantic Web Service-based P2P Infrastructure for the Interoperability of Medical Information Systems
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

73. Web Services and the Travel Industry
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

74. Overall Information Flow in Tourism Domain
About 1000 companies
4 major GDSs+
10 small
About
100,000
Hotels
Airline Companies
Hundreds Of
Chains
Olympic, Air France …
E-Comm.
Site
Two companies
XML
Hotel
Chains
Switching
Companies
Hotels
Hilton, BW, Utell, E-Rez, …
GDS
Travel
Agency
Pegasus, Worldres.
Cryptic
Hilton Ankara, Sofitel Paris ...
Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan …
Tens of
Thousands
Of agencies
Rent-a-Car
Chains
Hundreds Of
Chains
Rent-a-Car
Agencies
Avis, Hertz, …
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

75. Global Distribution Systems (GDS)
Provides connection to the airline, hotel and rent-a-car reservation systems from a single point
Leading GDSs: Amadeus, Sabre, Galileo, Worldspan
Travel Agency – GDS Connectivity
Usually in the form of dedicated client terminals that accept GDS specific cryptic commands, connected to the GDS on a private network
Special APIs provided for Client Application Developers
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

76. Disadvantages of GDSs (I)
But GDSs suffer from:
Mostly they rely on their own private networks
They have difficult to use cryptic languages
Mainly for human use
A request to the system usually involves more than one interaction with the person on the terminal
GDSs have limited speed and search capabilities
It is difficult to interoperate them with other systems and data sources
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

77. Challenges of Travel Industry (II)
GDSs are legacy systems and suffer from:
Classical problems with centralized architectures
Among the millions of travel agents, only about 10 to 20% of all travel agents are in connection with the GDS companies
Weak support for SMEs (major hotel chains and etc..)
Do not support every type of services
in travel industry (no support for tours)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

78. A Web service based architecture can bring several advantages to the industry
Opening up the resources over the Internet
Interoperability
Ability to access legacy systems
Better support for SMEs
Ease in service discovery
Machine processing
Better accessibility
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

79. Web Services in Travel Industry
A few early adopters in the travel industry have started developing Web Services
Sabre and Datalex are among
the first companies to develop OTA based Web services
Sabre Web Services provide all the functionality needed to sell travel
Galileo also provides a Web service based solution and claims to have cut down the development time by 80%
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

80. New Business Opportunities through Web Services in the Travel Domain (I)
GDS companies support only major travel products;
Airline ticketing,
Hotel reservation and
Car rental
Through Web services other types of specialized services can be made available
Especially different types of tour and transportation based travel products can be advertised and accessed
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

81. New Business Opportunities through Web Services in the Travel Domain (II)
Among the millions of travel agents, only about 10 to 20% of all travel agents are in connection with the GDS companies
Most travel agencies and travel organization companies choose to manage travel services by themselves, due to reasons which may be
Technical, or
Economical
These companies generally suffer from the lack of advertising their services as well as publishing them electronically
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

82. New Business Opportunities through Web Services in the Travel Domain (III)
Web services technology will provide a solution for all companies, especially for small-to-medium enterprises in the travel industry
The travel agencies and service providers will collaborate with each other on a new level
The companies will be able to provide every type of travel service; the service alternatives will be found on the fly
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

83. Service Semantics in Travel Domain
Generic service semantics can be defined through DAML-S (later OWL-S) upper ontology
However some other properties of the services depend on the application domain
To facilitate the discovery of the Web services, there is a need for an ontology to describe service functionality in the domain
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

84. Ontology Efforts in the Travel Domain
There are some efforts in this direction
There have been some efforts in defining the message ontologies in the travel domain such as the Harmonise project
The Harmonise project have defined the Interoperability Minimum Harmonization Ontology (IMHO)
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

85. Open Travel Alliance (OTA)
OTA exposes considerable amount of domain knowledge which can offer significant value in describing the semantics of travel Web services:
Generic messages
Air messages
Car message
Hotel messages
Golf Tee Times
Insurance messages
Package Tours/Holiday Bookings
Travel Itinerary messages
Rail information messages
Loyalty messages
Profile messages
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

86. Service Functionality Ontology
First Level
TravelWebServices
VehicleServices
HotelServices
RailServices
AirServices
InsuranceServices
AirDetailsServices
AirBookingServices
AirScheduleServices
CheckingAvailabilityServices
RequestAirAvail
ResponseAirAvail
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

87. The advantages of Service Functionality Ontology
All sorts of Web services can be classified by using the nodes of such an ontology to make their meaning clear
Web service instance discovery is facilitated: All the services classified through a node in the ontology can be retrieved from service registries
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

88. Message Ontologies There is a need for message ontologies
It is also necessary to define the semantics of the messages exchanged so that the party receiving the message can interpret it
When ontologies are used to describe the messages, since the messages can refer to ontology concepts, it becomes possible to map one message instance into another through ontology mapping although they may be defined through different ontologies
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

89. For Further Information…
IST STP Satine Project: Semantic-based Interoperability Infrastructure for Integrating Web Service Platforms to Peer-to-Peer Networks
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

90. Conclusions…
Semantic information about Web services can be made use of both
through querying the service registries and
through reasoners running over ontologies
Needless to say reasoning produces new information and hence is more powerful
But given that we do not have industrial strenth reasoners yet; through querying the we can get very useful semantics on Web services
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

91. Conclusions…
The semantic efforts on the Web services area need to focus on application domains
Semantics is domain specific knowledge
Also different domains have evolved differently; and they have different needs
Web service technology can improve the interoperability and can introduce new business models in these domains
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004

92. Thank you for your attention!
Asuman Dogac
RIDE 2004, Boston, March 28, 2004