Patent ID: 8086658

Claim:
A method of discovering at least one service being advertised with at least one specialized network node in a communication system with a node that includes an internal memory, comprising the steps of: receiving at least one service ontology describing an order of service characteristics as a service query; storing the at least one service ontology in the internal memory; formulating a discovery statement by expanding the service query with soft constraint parameters that should be fulfilled and with hard constraint parameters that must be fulfilled, the soft constraint parameters and the hard constraint parameters expressing user service conceptions as different charcaracterizations of each service advertised through service ontologies; and discovering services with service attributes that match the discovery statement using the order of service characteristics described by the service ontology, the soft constraints, and the hard constraints; wherein the discovering services step comprises a step of modifying the service ontology so as to represent service characteristics in compliance with the structure of the service query and using the elements in the modified service ontology following the service query as starting position for service discovery.