Some mechanisms to enable an effective transition from domain models to web service descriptions are developed. The introduced domain modeling support provides verification and correction on the customization part. An automated mapping mechanism from the domain model to web service ontologies is also developed. The proposed approach is based on Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA), Semantic Web technologies and ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (ebBP). Major contributions of this work are the conceptualizations of a feature model for web services and a novel approach for knowledge-based elicitation of domain-specific outcomes in order to allow designing and deploying services better aligned with dynamically changing business goals, stakeholders&#039 / concerns and end-users&#039 / viewpoints. The main idea behind enabling a knowledge-based approach is to pursue automation and intelligence on reflecting business requirements into service descriptions via model transformations and automated reasoning. The proposed reference variability model encloses the domain-specific knowledge and is formalized by using Web Ontology Language (OWL). Adding formal semantics to feature models allows us to perform automated analysis over them such as the verification of model customizations through exploiting rule-based automated reasoners. This research was motivated due to the needs for achieving productivity gains, maintainability and better alignment of business requirements with technical capabilities in engineering service-oriented applications and systems.

This thesis introduces a novel approach in which multiple heterogeneous devices collaborate to provide useful applications in an ad-hoc network. This thesis proposes a smart home as a particular ubiquitous computing scenario considering all the requirements given by the literature for succeed in this kind of systems. To that end, we envision a horizontally integrated smart home built up from independent components that provide services. These components are described with enough syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge to accomplish spontaneous collaboration. The objective of these collaboration is domestic use, that is, the provision of valuable services for home residents capable of supporting users in their daily activities. Moreover, for the system to be attractive for potential customers, it should offer high levels of trust and reliability, all of them not at an excessive price. To achieve this goal, this thesis proposes to study the synergies available when an ontological description of home device functionality is paired with a formal method. We propose an ad-hoc home network in which components are home devices modelled as processes represented as semantic services by means of the Web Service Ontology (OWL-S). In addition, such services are specified, verified and implemented by means of the Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), a process algebra for describing concurrent systems. The utilisation of an ontology brings the desired levels of knowledge for a system to compose services in a ad-hoc environment. Services are composed by a goal based system in order to satisfy user needs. Such system is capable of understaning, both service representations and user context information. Furthermore, the inclusion of a formal method contributes with additional semantics to check that such compositions will be correctly implemented and executed, achieving the levels of reliability and costs reduction (costs derived form the design, development and implementation of the system) needed for a smart home to succeed.