LISSU: Integrating Semantic Web Concepts into SOA Frameworks

In recent years, microservice-based architectures have become the de-facto standard for cloud-native applications and enable modular and scalable systems. The lack of communication standards however complicates reliable information exchange. While syntactic checks like datatypes or ranges are mostly solved nowadays, semantic mismatches (e.g., different units) are still problematic. Semantic Web Services and their derivatives tackle this challenge but are mostly too ambitious for practical use. In this paper, we propose Lightweight Semantic Web Services for Units (LISSU) to support Semantic Web experts in their collaboration with domain experts. LISSU allows developers specify semantics for their services via URI ontology references, and automatically validates these before initiating communication. It automatically corrects unit mismatches via conversions whenever possible. A real-world demonstrator setup in the manufacturing domain proves that LISSU leads to a more predictable communication.