The semantic Geospatial web services environment developed in SWING consists of 6 components, each of which is being developed in a separate work package. As of April 2007, first prototypes of each component have been established. Material illustrating these prototypes is available below. Ongoing work enhances the prototypes, and integrates them.

 Workpackage 1: MiMS

MiMS is the Application prototype. This prototype will show dynamic discovery, composition and invocation of geospatial web services within the domain of sustainable exploitation of natural resources. MiMS is an end-user interface, using the other components to provide the semantic functionality.

As of now, the MiMS GUI has been established. It has basic functionalities regarding the creation and maintainance of projects; it connects to the Catalogue; and it provides advanced functionalities for the publication of results in the form of web pages. A movie showing the prototype and its usage is available here: MiMS Application, Flash movie.

 Workpackage 2: WSMX

WSMX is the Semantic Discovery & Execution component, which provides the basic Semantic Web Service infrastructure. It is based on the WSMX technology developed in the DIP project, adapted to the geospatial domain. The two main roles WSMX will play in the SWING environment are: semantic disvovery of Geospatial web services; and semantic execution of composed Geospatial web services.

In discovery, semantic annotations will be exploited to increase precision and recall in answering user queries searching for web services. The semantic annotation and discovery will be based on logic programming, namely WSML-flight, which is based on a light-weight logic programming paradigm (datalog with locally stratified negation), and hence provides a good trade-off between expressivity, computational efficiency, and ease of use. A first demo of semantic discovery and annotation using WSMX is shown with the WP3 Demo below.

In execution, semantic annotations can be exploited to ease the buden of the human programmer in the creation of composed Geospatial web services, when several existing web services must be combined in order to accomplish the desired functionality. Namely, semantic composition techniques can potentially be used to provide guidance to the human programmer, e.g. suggesting which web services to incorporate for a given task. On the other hand, semantic mediation techniques, in particular data mediation techniques, can potentially make it much easier to resolve the scale and format conflicts that are omnipresent in the Geospatial domain.

Semantic execution in WSMX is based on formalizing the composed web services in terms of Abstract State Machines (ASM), which provide a very powerful and flexible way of defining transition systems. Our ongoing development further develops, and adapts to the Geospatial domain, WSMX's component executing ASMs. Powerpoint slides explaining the component are available here: ASM execution in WSMX, Powerpoint presentation. A movie showing an ASM and how it is executed is available here: ASM Execution, Flash movie; ASM Execution, AVI format (note that this movie is without Audio track).

 Workpackage 3: ONTO

ONTO is the Geospatial Ontology component, which serves the ontologies used for semantic annotation, semantic discovery, and semantic execution. Recently, ONTO was equipped with a Concept Repository (CoRe) which provides maintenance functionality for ontologies. This repository provides access to a set of domain ontologies, providing a formal vocabulary for the three SWING use cases. In use case 1 information about aggregate production and consumption must be collected and processed. Use case 2 requires ontologies about constraints to opening new quarries, like natural protected zones, regions of ground water supply, and historical monuments. Based on these two, the third use case requires ontologies specifying transport networks.

Web Feature Services (WFS) are annotated with feature type ontologies, which are derived directly from the XML descriptions of the WFS. The connection between feature type ontologies and domain ontologies is made via a set of semantic mappings connecting instances of feature types and domain ontologies. The ontologies and their mappings are used for semantic discovery. The domain ontologies are also supposed to form the basis of semantic execution. Discovery for geospatial processing functionality, in form or Web Processing Services (WPS), was developed using a similar (yet more complex) approach. Operations including their in- and outputs are described by semantic annotations and axioms specify input constraints and dependencies between in and outputs.

We illustrate ONTO with a video explaining the ontologies and their development, as well as showing the prototypical semantic discovery. The video is available here: ONTO, Flash movie; ONTO, AVI format.

A video introducing the Ontology Testing Framework (OTF), an eclipse plug-in enabling unit testing in ontology development is available here: OTF Installation, AVI format; OTF Guide, AVI format.

 Workpackage 4: ANNOT

ANNOT is the Semantic Annotation component, which utilises information acquisition technology to analyse the semi-structured descriptions of existing geospatial web services, in order to facilitate semantic annotations.

In its current stage, ANNOT consists of two parts: OntoBridge, a Graphical User Interface for establishing mappings between two ontologies; and AutoBridge, a tool that automatically matches target terms against key terms, using data mining techniques. In ongoing work, the two tools are integrated, and tailored more specifically to the Geospatial domain. The two ontologies in OntoBridge will be instantiated respectively (see WP3 above) with a feature type ontology and with a domain ontology. The term matching from AutoBridge will be used to provide a ranking of possible mappings, hence semi-automating the annotation process.

We illustrate ANNOT, i.e., OntoBridge and AutoBridge, with movies showing a demonstration of these prototypes. The movies are available here: OntoBridge, Part I, Flash movie; OntoBridge, Part II, Flash movie; AutoBridge, Flash movie. The respective text spoken in each demo is available here: OntoBridge, Part I; OntoBridge, Part II; AutoBridge.

 Workpackage 5: CAT

CAT is the Catalogue component, which provides a standard web service registry interface storing entries to classical geospatial and non-spatial services. In addition, it utilises the underlying components to provide semantically enhanced discovery functionality.

Our ongoing development enhances a standard Catalogue with a semantic query interface and with connections to WSMX for the semantic part of the discovery. Further, this WP develops the necessary interface between a SWING end user -- a Geospatial domain expert -- and WSMX's semantic execution (see WP2 above). Given a composed Geospatial web service, WSMX needs the parameters for its execution (for execution of the respective ASM) in WSML format, while the end user should of course be able to use the composed service like any standard OGC service. So an OGC adapter is needed, transforming OGC parameters to WSML input, and transforming WSML output to OGC results. The OGC adapter serves to be able to treat composed Geospatial services (WSMX ASMs) like and other OGC services inside the Catalogue.

As yet, we have developed such an OGC adapter for WFS services. A movie showing the adapter tool, and explaining its use in the interplay between end user and WSMX, is available here: WFS Adapter, Flash movie.

 Workpackage 6: DEV

DEV is the Development Environment component, which is based on IBM's Open Source Eclipse Development Environment. It consists of a number of plug-ins that integrates and hides the complexity of the other components. Application and service developers can use the Development Environment to discover semantic services, to semantically describe their services and to compose multiple services.

As of now, the current version of the Development Environment allows the import of ontologies, it connects to a query component for geospatial and semantic discovery. It features a version of a UML-based graphical web service composer. A movie illustrating the tool and its use is available here: DEV, AVI format.