An Ontological Approach to Inter-Operation of Mobile Services

This paper proposes and integration platform for mobile services, based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)and Semantic Web technologies. Mobile technology has revolutionized many aspects of our lives. The wireless infrastructure is now capable of supporting applications and services in various domains such as transport, medicine and tourism, by providing increased coverage and quality of data transfer. With the rapid growth in number of mobile services there is a genuine need for a common platform to allow interoperability and reusability regardless of the underlying structure of each service. We have introduced an ontololgical approach to designing a platform which enables registration of mobile service providers and users as semantic web services. A meta-ontology has been designed as the core element of the platform to coordinate the overall process of registration and discovery and to enable interoperability between heterogeneous services. The meta-ontology supports the SOA concept and makes the process of service discovery robust by serving as a structuring basis and central reference point. The ultimate objective is to provide an integration platform to allow interoperability of heterogeneous applications operating in a mobile environment with a view to enhance service discovery considering, mobile, domain and environmental attributes of the services and users. As at present, parts of the meta ontology has been implemented and the process of registration verified, together with concomitant service discovery. Setting the scene for verifying interoperability of mobile services is taking place using "Mobile Telemedicine" as a use case.