Mobile and interoperable ontology-centric web services

Web services enable disparate applications running on different machines to exchange data and integrate with one another without requiring additional software or hardware. Due to the proliferation of embedded systems and communication devices, there is a need to develop quick and simple Web services. In view of this, the XML-RPC service protocol, which is among the simplest and most foolproof Web service approaches, is explored. A Web service for validating ontology files was developed using a Java implementation of the XML-RPC Web service protocol. The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) conforms to the Basic Profile 1.0, as defined by the Web Services Interoperability Organization. The project motivates and puts forward a novel approach of building a thin-layer XML-RPC Web service over an existing SOAP service. The ontology-centric Web services were then implemented on a mobile device, dedicated towards the goal of mobile learning. A fundamental challenge in mobile learning is the creation of pedagogical learning models to handle the specificity of mobile learning and the inherent constraints of mobile devices. In this project OntoMobiLe, which is a generic semantics-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) for mobile learning, is proposed. The approach taken in this project provides multi-modal interfaces for the learner and seamless integration of legacy content for service providers. Central to this project’s SOA is the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) pluggable architecture, which provides a flexible and loosely-coupled connection between the mobile device and learning content. To utilize ontology-centric Web services for mobile learning, a mobile Web service client was developed using Java Platform, Mobile Edition. The considerations taken in creating an effective mobile learning environment is discussed and features of the OntoMobiLe client are presented. A paper based on this project, titled "OntoMobiLe: A Generic Ontology-centric Service-Oriented Architecture for Mobile Learning", has been accepted for the Mobile Data Management (MDM) Workshop on Mobile Media Retrieval (MMR), 2009.Bachelor of Engineerin