A Hindsight on Formal Methods and Prospects of Semantic Computing in Software Engineering

New research activities sailing under the brands of semantic web, semantic web service, and semantic computing have extended, and partly also confused the classical meaning of the term semantics as the software engineering community established it in the last century. In this article we try to shed some light on the different connotations of meaning with this word. We reflect on the role of semantic definitions and formally defined specifications, modeling and programming languages in software engineering activities. We sketch formally defined construction and validation methods, and discuss contributions of tools that exploit semantic information to enhance the quality of software products and development processes. We explore recent work on the use of semantic computing technology in software engineering and discuss opportunities for successful future applications. We conclude with an outlook on the potential of service-oriented computing to change the way software applications are designed, laid out, delivered, and used.