Dhavalkumar Thakker

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Project Details


Focus of my research work is on Web services and Semantic Web. I have been involved with following projects which utilizes these two technologies :

Bridging the Gap between Semantic and Non-Semantic standards for Web services Composition

Semantic Case Based Reasoner (S-CBR) for Web services Discovery and Matchmaking

Semantic Spatial Web Services with Case-Based Reasoning

Integrative Semantic Framework for Image Annotation and Retrieval

 

Bridging the Gap between Semantic and Non-Semantic standards for Web services Composition

The most practically deployed Web services composition techniques use the theory of business workflow-management as composition process model to achieve formalization for control and data flow. Mainly based on the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) standard, these techniques also have practical capabilities that fulfil the needs of the business environment, such as fault handling and state management. However, the main shortcoming of these techniques is the static composition approach, where the service selection and flow management are done a priori and manually. In contrast, composition techniques based on the semantic web, such as Ontology Web Language for Web services (OWL-S), use ontologies to provide a mechanism to describe the Web services functionality in machine-understandable form, making it possible to discover, and integrate Web services automatically.

The focus of this project was on bridging the gap between the two approaches by introducing semantics to workflow-based composition. Developed framework exploits the BPEL process creation mechanism combined with semantic domain concept (OWL) to implement an automatic composition-programming framework providing a hybrid solution that merges the benefit of practicality of use and adoption popularity of workflow-based composition. Framework has advantage of using semantic description to aid both service developers and composers in the composition process and facilitating the dynamic integration of Web services into it. The paper [Bridging the Gap between Workflow and Semantic-based Web services Composition] provides more detail on implementation. Publications related to this project are as follows:

Publications

  1. Osman, T., Thakker, D. and Al-Dabass, Chapter XIII: “Web Services Hybrid Dynamic Composition Models For Enterprise”, In the Book  “Enterprise Architecture and Integration: Methods, Implementation and Technologies” Editors: Wing Lam and Venky Shankararaman, Publishers: Idea Group Inc, USA
  2. Osman, T., Thakker, D., and Al-Dabass, D., “Bridging the Gap between Workflow and Semantic-based Web services Composition”, In the Proceedings of the Workshop on WWW Service Composition with Semantic Web Services 2005 (wscomps05), the 2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence (WI 2005) and Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2005), Compiègne, France, September 19, 2005. ISBN 2-913923-18-6, pp. 13-23. [pdf]
  3. Thakker, D., Osman, T., Al-Dabass, D., “Web Services Hybrid Dynamic Composition Models for Ubiquitous Computing Networks”, IEEE 8th Int. Conf. on Advanced Communication Technology, Phoenix Park, Korea, 22-24 Feb 2006, paper No. 02D-3, pp. 274-280. [pdf]
  4. Thakker, D., Osman, T., and Al-Dabass, D., “Semantics based automatic assignment in Web services composition”, In the Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Modeling and Simulation Conference, 4-6 April, 2006, Oxford, UK. pp. 67-72. [pdf]

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Semantic Case Based Reasoner (S-CBR) for Web services Discovery and Matchmaking

Web services are being increasingly adopted as the computing engine of choice for today's Internet-driven applications. The composition of Web services further advances their advantages by allowing different services to integrate for providing new, value-added services. The automated discovery of adequate Web services is the pre-requisite and core feature for achieving dynamic Web services composition. In this project, we experiment a new approach that utilizes Case Based Reasoning methodology for modelling the Web services discovery and matchmaking problem. Our framework uses OWL semantic descriptions extensively for implementing both the components of the CBR engine and the matchmaking profile of the Web services. 

Publications

  1. Osman, T., Thakker, D. and Al-Dabass, “Utilization of Case Based Reasoning for Semantic Web Services Composition”, Submitted for the International Journal of Web and Grid Services (IJWGS).
  2. Thakker, D., Osman, T., and Al-Dabass, D.,(2006) “S-CBR: Semantic Case Based Reasoner for Web services discovery and matchmaking” In the proccedings of the 20th European Conference on Modeling and Simulation (ECMS 2006), Bonn, Germany, 28-31 May 2006, pp. 723-729. [pdf]
  3. Osman, T., Thakker, D., Al-Dabass, D., Lazer, D., and Deleplanque, G(2006) “Semantic-Driven Matchmaking of Web services using Case-Based Reasoning” In the Proceedings of the fourth IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2006), IEEE Computer Society, September 18-22, 2006, Chicago, USA, pp. 29-36 [pdf]
  4. Thakker, D., Osman, T., and Al-Dabass, D.,“Semantic-Driven Matchmaking and Composition of Web services using Case-Based Reasoning”, In the proceedings of the fifth IEEE European Web Services Conference(ECOWS 2007),IEEE Computer Society, Halle, Germany, November 26-28, 2007, pp. 67-76. [pdf]

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Semantic Spatial Web Services with Case-Based Reasoning

A significant proportion of Web resources can be associated to some degree to geo-referenced entities. Statistics collected by search engines and systems on the Web show that spatial information is pervasive on the Web, and that many queries explicitly or implicitly contain spatial factors. Motivated by the requirement of evaluating the closeness between spatial web services, this project experiments a novel approach for integrating some sorts of spatial semantics in CBR case retrieval. The model are tested with web-based travel planning, e.g. flight schedule arrangement, according to user's requests, relevant constraints, and preferences.

Publications

  1. Osman,T., Thakker, D., Yang, Y., Claramunt, C., “Semantic Spatial Web Services with Case-Based Reasoning”.In the Proccedings of the 6th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems (W2GIS 2006), Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Hongkong, China, December 4-5, pp.247-258. [pdf]

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Integrative Semantic Framework for Image Annotation and Retrieval

Most public image retrieval engines utilise free-text search mechanisms, which often return inaccurate matches as they in principle rely on statistical analysis of query keyword recurrence in the image annotation or surrounding text. In this project we work on creating a semantically-enabled image annotation and retrieval engine that relies on methodically structured ontologies for image annotation, thus allowing for more intelligent reasoning about the image content and subsequently obtaining a more accurate set of results and a richer set of alternatives matchmaking the original query. Our semantic retrieval technology is designed to satisfy the requirements of the commercial image collections market in terms of both accuracy and efficiency of the retrieval process. We also extend our efforts in further improving the recall of our retrieval technology by deploying an efficient query expansion technique.

Publications

  1. Osman, T., Thakker, D., Schaefer, G., Leroy, M., and Fournier, A., “Semantic Annotation And Retrieval Of Image Collections”, In the proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Modelling and Simulation, June 4-6, 2007, Prague, Czech Republic, pp.
  2. Osman, T., Thakker, D., Schaefer G., and Lakin, P., “An Integrative Semantic Framework for Image Annotation and Retrieval”, To Appear in the IEEE computer socierty proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/ACM conference on web intelligence, Silicon Valley, November 2007.

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