SUSIE: Search using services and information extraction

The API of a Web service restricts the types of queries that the service can answer. For example, a Web service might provide a method that returns the songs of a given singer, but it might not provide a method that returns the singers of a given song. If the user asks for the singer of some specific song, then the Web service cannot be called - even though the underlying database might have the desired piece of information. This asymmetry is particularly problematic if the service is used in a Web service orchestration system. In this paper, we propose to use on-the-fly information extraction to collect values that can be used as parameter bindings for the Web service. We show how this idea can be integrated into a Web service orchestration system. Our approach is fully implemented in a prototype called SUSIE. We present experiments with real-life data and services to demonstrate the practical viability and good performance of our approach.