A Conceptual Architecture for Pragmatic Web Services

In the current literature on service-oriented computing, the relationship between services and web-services is not always clear. Much research, notably in the area of service representation, discovery and composition, claims to address services whereas they actually apply to web-services. In this paper, we use insights from Language/Action Perspective and from value modeling to define services at an abstract (business) level. On that basis, we explore a pragmatic approach to service discovery, the cornerstone of the Service Oriented Architecture, and show how it differs from web service discovery. In the course of the discussion, some differences between a Semantic Web approach and a Pragmatic Web approach become apparant.