A suite of DAML plus OIL ontologies to describe bioinformatics web services and data

The growing quantity and distribution of bioinformatics resources means that finding and utilizing them requires a great deal of expert knowledge, especially as many resources need to be tied together into a workflow to-accomplish a useful goal. We want to formally capture at least some of this knowledge within a virtual workbench and middleware framework to assist a wider range of biologists in utilizing these resources. Different activities require different representations of knowledge. Finding or substituting a service within a workflow is often best supported by a classification. Marshalling and configuring services is best accomplished using a formal description. Both representations are highly interdependent and maintaining consistency between the two by hand is difficult. We report on a description logic approach using the web ontology language DAML+OIL that uses property based service descriptions. The ontology is founded on DAML-S to dynamically create service classifications. These classifications are then used to support semantic service matching and discovery in a large grid based middleware project (my)GRID. We describe the extensions necessary to DAML-S in order to support bioinformatics service description; the utility of DAML+OIL in creating dynamic classifications based on formal descriptions; and the implementation of a DAML+OIL ontology service to support partial user-driven service matching and composition.