Abstract. One of the main features of modern information technologies is the tendency to integration and open interchange of information resources (knowledge, ontologies, publications, software development components, standards, and other documents). The usefulness of such exchange is determined by the ability of the user to understand the sense and purpose of such resources. The author analyzes the approaches to specifications of information resources in some most popular projects and their common and specific conceptual and design solutions, sets of attributes applied to achieve the understandability of specifications. Refs: 22 titles.

Keywords: Web service, interface, information resource, ontology, specification of programs, functionality.