Semantic resource framework

The Semantic Resource Framework (SRF) is a multi-level description of the data sources for search computing applications. It responds to the need of having a structured representation of search services, amenable to service exploration, selection, and invocation. The SRF aims at extending the Service Mart model used so far in search computing to overcome some of its limitations. The main new features include external attributes, which represent the input to be provided by users for accessing objects; selector attributes, describing the possibility to map the same access pattern to different services based on some condition; key attributes for objects; and a generalized notion of nearness between objects. The high-level view presented by SRF is a very simple Entity-Relationship model with objects and binary connections, that can be used for very different query tasks, ranging from custom search applications (i.e. predefined queries) to exploratory search (i.e., exploration of its objects and connections) to natural language interfaces (i.e., query dialogues). Such high-level view should be considered as an initial step in the enrichment of the service repository with additional semantic capabilities. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.