LARKS: An ontology-based algorithm for geographic web service discovery

The geographic data use through Web Services shows the Geospatial Web Services (GWS). A growing number of GWS designed to interoperate spatial information over the network have emerged. GWS are changing the way in which spatial information systems and applications are designed, developed, and deployed. When GWS is increasing, the difficulty of the service discovery increases too. Mastering this phase requires enriching the GWS description and the user profile semantic aspects. One of these aspects is assured through the quality in ontological form. The correspondence between user requests and advertisements published GWS is ensured through the use of the matching algorithm "LARKS" based on quality ontology. In this paper we propose a LARKS algorithm adapted to the GWS discovery by applying the first three filters (context, profile, similarity) on the quality criteria in the user request and the GWS descriptions classes available in the metadata catalog based on quality ontology. This solution allows us to have a result like "relaxed match". At UDDI registry, the application of the matching algorithm is based on the query mechanism of UDDI registry using the different pages (white pages, yellow pages, green pages). A list of GWS ranked in order of match (quality aspect, functional aspect) is the discovery result.