In just a few years, service-oriented architectures (SOA) and Web services not only gained considerable interest in computer science research, they were also taken up with unanimity by all major international players in the IT industry. However, and in spite of all existing standards, in most SOA applications much human intervention is still required, for example to interpret the semantics of informal descriptions or to harmonize incompatible data schemata.

Semantic Web services combine Web services communication technology with the intelligent processing of ontology-based metadata to achieve highly integrated enterprise application integration scenarios, for service look-up, schema matching, or protocol negotiation, for example. Rudi Studer and his team deliver a self-contained compendium about this exciting field, starting with the basic standards and technologies and also including advanced applications in eGovernment and eHealth. The contributions provide both the theoretical background and the practical knowledge necessary to understand the essential ideas and to design new cutting-edge applications. They address computer science students as well as researchers in academia and industry who need a concise introduction and state-of-the-art survey of current research, and the book can easily be used as the basis of a specialized course on Web services or Semantic Web applications. In addition, IT professionals will be able to assess the potential and possible benefits of this new technology.