Current middleware solutions, such as application servers and Web services, are very complex software products that are hard to tame because of intricacies of distributed systems. This work contributes an ontology-based approach to support the development and administration of middleware-based applications.

Fundamentals.- Middleware.- Ontologies.- Towards Semantic Management.- Design of a Management Ontology.- Analysis of Existing Ontologies.- The Appropriate Foundational Ontology.- An Ontological Formalization of Software Components and Web Services.- Realization of Semantic Management.- Design of an Ontology-Based Application Server.- Implementation.- Applying the Management Ontology.- Finale.- Related Work.- Conclusion & Outlook.

Current middleware solutions, such as application servers and Web services, are very complex software products that are hard to tame because of the intricacies of distributed systems. So far, their functionalities have mostly been developed and managed with the help of administration tools and corresponding configuration files, recently in XML. Though this constitutes a very flexible way of developing and administrating a distributed application, the disadvantage is that the conceptual model underlying the different configurations is only implicit. Hence, its bits and pieces are difficult to retrieve, survey, check for validity and maintain. To remedy such problems, SEMANTIC MANAGEMENT OF MIDDLEWARE contributes an ontology-based approach to support the development and administration of middleware-based applications. The ontology is an explicit conceptual model with formal logic-based semantics. Therefore, its descriptions may be queried, may foresight required actions, or may be checked to avoid inconsistent system configurations. SEMANTIC MANAGEMENT OF MIDDLEWARE builds a rigorous approach towards giving the declarative descriptions of components and services a well-defined meaning by specifying ontological foundations and by showing how such foundations may be realized in practical, up-and-running systems. SEMANTIC MANAGEMENT OF MIDDLEWARE is an excellent training companion for active practitioners seeking to incorporate advanced and leading edge ontology-based approach and technologies. It is a necessary preparation manual for researchers in distributed computing who see semantics as an important enabler for the next generation. This book is also suitable for graduate-level students in computer science.

From the reviews: "Middleware can largely ease the heterogeneity and increasing complexity of the distributed information systems. … Realising this central issue, this book deals with the semantic aspect of middleware … . The uniqueness of the book is the presentation of taxonomies of various ontologies … . The book has addressed the important issues on weaving semantic web. This reader is useful to students, researchers and teachers to understand ontologies for middleware and to developers and administrators who like to apply semantics to middleware." (Pit. Pichappan, Journal of Digital Information Management, Vol. 4 (2), June, 2006)

Introduces the usage of semantic technologies Provides an introduction to the basics of middleware technology and a discussion of ontologies, to help readers who are not familiar with the area Includes service oriented architectures (SOA) which are considered the basis of next generation distributed software systems Preface by Amit P. Sheth, University of Georgia, USA Foreword by Steffen Staab, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras