SHARE: A Web Service Based Framework for Distributed Querying and Reasoning on the Semantic Web
This addresses data integration challenges for bioinformatics researchers by leveraging existing web services, though it is incremental as it builds on prior work like BioMOBY.
The SHARE system tackles the problem of distributed querying and reasoning on the semantic web by extending SPARQL and OWL to integrate web services, enabling queries across larger datasets than centralized approaches.
Here we describe the SHARE system, a web service based framework for distributed querying and reasoning on the semantic web. The main innovations of SHARE are: (1) the extension of a SPARQL query engine to perform on-demand data retrieval from web services, and (2) the extension of an OWL reasoner to test property restrictions by means of web service invocations. In addition to enabling queries across distributed datasets, the system allows for a target dataset that is significantly larger than is possible under current, centralized approaches. Although the architecture is equally applicable to all types of data, the SHARE system targets bioinformatics, due to the large number of interoperable web services that are already available in this area. SHARE is built entirely on semantic web standards, and is the successor of the BioMOBY project.