Semantic Search of Distributed Information and Knowledge

Search services are more and more provided for semantic search of different types of information and knowledge (resources) from multiple heterogeneous sources, by gaining platform independence and transparent access. The growth of service provisioning and the advent of advanced service registries have led to the design of sophisticated techniques and tools to retrieve services apt to access required resources. This paper describes a computer aided methodology for semantic search of resources in P2P networks, based on the efficient retrieval and the effective suggestion of suitable search services. The methodology relies on a formal specification for services registered across a Distributed Service Registry (DSR) in a P2P environment and exploits service semantic descriptions to retrieve and suggest services apt to satisfy user semantic searches. The SELF-SERVICE approach based on formal service specifications, scoring mechanism and thresholds, can support - in a user-transparent and cost effective way - semantic search on multiple heterogeneous sources in P2P environments.