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Ruben Verborgh

Capturing the functionality of Web services with functional descriptions

Ruben Verborgh, Thomas Steiner, Davy Van Deursen, Jos De Roo, Rik Van de Walle, and Joaquim Gabarró Vallés

Many have left their footprints on the field of semantic RESTful Web service description. Albeit some of the propositions are even W3C Recommendations, none of the proposed standards could gain significant adoption with Web service providers. Some approaches were supposedly too complex and verbose, others were considered not RESTful, and some failed to reach a significant majority of API providers for a combination of the reasons above. While we neither have the silver bullet for universal Web service description, with this paper, we want to suggest a lightweight approach called RESTdesc. It expresses the semantics of Web services by pre- and postconditions in simple N3 rules, and integrates existing standards and conventions such as Link headers, HTTP OPTIONS, and URI templates for discovery and interaction. This approach keeps the complexity to a minimum, yet still enables service descriptions with full semantic expressiveness. A sample implementation on the topic of multimedia Web services verifies the effectiveness of our approach.

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Published in 2013 in Multimedia Tools and Applications.

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Cite this article easily using its BibTeX entry: 

@article{verborgh_mtap_2013,
  title = {Capturing the functionality of {Web} services with functional descriptions},
  author = {Verborgh, Ruben and Steiner, Thomas and Van Deursen, Davy and De Roo, Jos and Van de Walle, Rik and Gabarr\'o Vall\'es, Joaquim},
  journal = {Multimedia Tools and Applications},
  year = 2013,
  month = may,
  volume = 64,
  number = 2,
  pages = {365--387},
  publisher = {Springer},
  doi = {10.1007/s11042-012-1004-5},
  url = {http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11042-012-1004-5},
}

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ACM
Ruben Verborgh, Thomas Steiner, Davy Van Deursen, Jos De Roo, Rik Van de Walle, and Joaquim Gabarró Vallés. 2013. Capturing the functionality of Web services with functional descriptions. Multimedia Tools and Applications 64, 2 (May 2013), 365–387.
APA
Verborgh, R., Steiner, T., Van Deursen, D., De Roo, J., Van de Walle, R., & Gabarró Vallés, J. (2013). Capturing the functionality of Web services with functional descriptions. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 64(2), 365–387.
IEEE
R. Verborgh, T. Steiner, D. Van Deursen, J. De Roo, R. Van de Walle, and J. Gabarró Vallés, “Capturing the functionality of Web services with functional descriptions,” Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 365–387, May 2013.
LNCS
Verborgh, R., Steiner, T., Van Deursen, D., De Roo, J., Van de Walle, R., Gabarró Vallés, J.: Capturing the functionality of Web services with functional descriptions. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 64, 365–387 (2013).
MLA
Verborgh, Ruben, et al. “Capturing the Functionality of Web Services with Functional Descriptions.” Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 64, no. 2, Springer, May 2013, pp. 365–87.

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