star:chart – preserving data semantics in web-based applications

STAR:chart - Preserving Data Semantics in Web-based Applications12th Business Information System Conference (BIS 2009) – Poznan, April 27th 2009 - © CEFRIEL 2009

STAR:chart STAR:chart –– Preserving Data Preserving Data Semantics in WebSemantics in Web--based based

ApplicationsApplications

Presenter: Irene Celino – CEFRIEL, http://swa.cefriel.it

Paper Authors: Irene Celino, Dario Cerizza, Francesco Corcoglioniti, Alberto Guarino, Andrea Turati and Emanuele Della Valle

Poznan, April 27th 2009 – © CEFRIEL 20092STAR:chart - Preserving Data Semantics in Web-based Applications

AgendaAgendaProblem statement and motivation The STAR:chart framework

High level view of its conceptual foundationsFramework’s primitivesTechnical view: components and execution flowCritical analysis of the framework

Case study: STAR:chart in Service-FinderThe Service-Finder project and its portal“Behind the scenes” of the SF Interface

ConclusionsEvaluation and open issuesFuture steps


AgendaAgendaProblem statement and motivation Problem statement and motivation The STAR:chart framework





Problem statement and motivationProblem statement and motivation

Data manager Web designer

I know what my data are about I know how to design a

Web application

Data knowledge Web knowledge

Mmmh… I think the Web design doesn’t reflect the meaning of my data. Can you make my data

Web presentation more effective and meaningful? Sigh… I made my best to present the data, but they are hard to understand for me. Can you better explain

to me what they mean and your expectations?

And I don’t want to learn all data details…

I don’t want to deal with technical details…


Cherry picking from today solutionsCherry picking from today solutionsWeb 2.0 advent put a strong accent on user experience

There are several attempts to categorize Interaction PatternsOn this basis, we talk about “fruition modalities”, i.e. how interaction patterns are made concrete on the Web and how this impacts on the various forms that user navigation takes

The long-lasting field of Web engineering studied and systematize the way to design Web applications

A common way to develop Web application is to design Web Information Architecture and to realize it via “sitemaps”

From this trend, we took the experience of model-driven Web engineering and we apply it with Semantic Web technologies

Semantic Web technologies express their best through the capability to model knowledge via ontologies

Ontologies, mapping and rules are commonly used to draw correspondences between different systems and conceptualizations

We use ontologies also to model interaction patterns, fruition modalities, sitemaps and Web engineering and we use mappings and rules to relate those ideas to specific domain knowledge


AgendaAgendaProblem statement and motivation The STAR:chart frameworkThe STAR:chart framework

High level view of its conceptual foundationsHigh level view of its conceptual foundationsFrameworkFramework’’s primitivess primitivesTechnical view: components and execution flowTechnical view: components and execution flowCritical analysis of the frameworkCritical analysis of the framework




STAR:chart foundations STAR:chart foundations –– high levelhigh level

Data managerWeb designer

Data knowledge Web knowledgeSTAR:chartSTAR:chartframeworkframework

STAR:chart is a framework to develop knowledgeknowledge--intensive Web applicationsintensive Web applicationsthat reduces the gapreduces the gap between data managers’ point of view and Web designers’ one, by letting data managers express their requirementsdata managers express their requirements in a more straightforward way

and by helping Web designersWeb designers to deal only with designdeal only with design--related issuesrelated issues.

STAR:dustontology

STAR:shipontology

domainontology

Conceptualization of interaction patterns

Conceptualization of Web applications structure


STAR:chart conceptual foundationsSTAR:chart conceptual foundations

STAR:dustSTAR:dust is the Web presentation and interaction conceptual model

The mappingmapping definitiondefinition is the artifact – by the data manager – that expresses the role of the data in the final Web application; it puts in relation the data ontology with the STAR:dust ontology

The widgetswidgets are the software components that implement the presentation and interaction patterns defined in the STAR:dust ontology

STAR:shipSTAR:ship is the Web sitemap structure conceptual model

The sitemapsitemap specificationspecification is the artifact – semi-automatically produced by the framework itself –that specifies the actual structure of the Web application in terms of widgets; it is expressed in terms of the STAR:ship ontology

widgets

STAR:dustontology

STAR:shipontology

mappingdefinition

sitemapspecification

interaction patterns

Web appl. patterns


STAR:chart framework architectureSTAR:chart framework architecture

framework core

widgetsSTAR:dustontology

STAR:shipontology

mappingdefinition

sitemapspecification

domainontology datasource

* *

**

portal pagesgeneration

config. timerun-time***


Critical analysis of STAR:chartCritical analysis of STAR:chartSince 2001, several initiatives applied Semantic Web technologies to develop Web portals: what is the innovation of STAR:chart w.r.t. previous approaches?

STAR:chart is a framework to develop Web applications (and not a single portal that makes use of ontologies)

The presentation and navigation semantics are reused across different instantiations of the framework

STAR:chart applies semantics to describe interaction and fruition as well as the architecture of Web applications

It builds upon the studies and advances in the field of user experience and interaction design

STAR:chart abstracts from the specific type of data sourceAny kind of data source can be “plugged-in” the framework, provided that it can be seen as a knowledge base described by a domain ontology




Case study: STAR:chart in ServiceCase study: STAR:chart in Service--FinderFinderThe ServiceThe Service--Finder project and its portalFinder project and its portal““Behind the scenesBehind the scenes”” of the SF Interfaceof the SF Interface



The projectThe project

SemanticsKnowledge Representation

& Reasoning

Web ServicesAs a basic tool to implementa Service Oriented Architecture

Semantic Web ServicesAs a means to realize

Service Oriented Architecture

Web 2.0User clusteringUser-Resource correlation

Semantic SearchConceptual Indexing

Semantic Matching

AutomaticSemantic Annotation

Combining smart-machine and smart-data

Service-Finder aims at developing a platform for service discovery in which Web Services are embedded in a Web 2.0 environmentService-Finder aims at developing a platform for service discovery in which Web Services are embedded in a Web 2.0 environment

Realizing Web Service Discovery at Web Scale

http://demo.service-finder.eu


ServiceService--Finder case study for STAR:chartFinder case study for STAR:chart

Where we instantiated the

STAR:chartframework

Domain ontologies we mapped to STAR:dust


““Behind the scenesBehind the scenes”” of the SF Interfaceof the SF Interface

Mapping between SF ontologies and STAR:dust Service-Finder

ontologiesSTAR:dustontology

mappingdefinition

sfo:Servicesfo:hasNamesfo:rating

sfo:Endpointsfo:availabilityLastMonth

dc:titleSD:RelevantPropertySD:DetailProperty

:sampleServiceMapping a SD:PresentationMapping ;SD:onClass sfo:Service ;SD:mappingSource sfo:hasName ;SD:mappingDestination dc:title ; SD:mappingDestination SD:RelevantProperty ;SD:isMultiValue "false" ;rdfs:label "Name" ;SD:noValueText " - " .

CP

CP

P

P

P

P

map

ping

s.n3


Service-Finder portal sitemap


RatingWidget

TabWidget

PropertyWidget

AddTagWidget AddCategoryWidget

LoginWidget

Service details page



Widgets’ configuration

RatingWidget(Java class)

HTMLtemplate

Rating:

mapping definition

instance of RatingWidgeton sfo:Service

SELECT ?rWHERE{<s> a sfo:Service ;

sfo:rating ?r . }

:m1 a SD:PresentationMapping ;SD:onClass sfo:Service ;SD:mappingSource sfo:rating ;SD:mappingDestination SD:RatingProperty .

STAR:dust

SD:RatingProperty PSELECT ?rWHERE{

<x> a Class ;RatingProperty ?r.

}



Widgets’ executionRatingWidget

(Java class)

Rating:

HTMLtemplate

generatedHTML

fragment

Rating:

:ServiceX a sfo:Service ;sfo:rating “3.5” ;...

Triples in the datasource

instance ofRatingWidgeton sfo:Service

SELECT ?rWHERE{<s> a sfo:Service ;

sfo:rating ?r . }

Service details pageon :ServiceX

HTTP RequestHTTP Request“3.5”

?r

Service details pageon :ServiceX

HTTP ResponseHTTP Response





ConclusionsConclusionsEvaluation and open issuesEvaluation and open issuesFuture stepsFuture steps


Evaluation of STAR:chart in ServiceEvaluation of STAR:chart in Service--FinderFinder

ExplicitExplicit user feedbacksuser feedbacksWe are collecting users’ feedbacks, both from the portal itself and from a selected set of users

We are aware that evaluating the development of a Web application built on the framework (e.g. how much is it easier/faster developing a UI with STAR:chart?) is not as easy as evaluating the final result

ImplicitImplicit user feedbacksuser feedbacksThe analysis of the portal logs leads both to interesting metrics and hints on the actual usage of the portal wrt the fruition modalities

The framework comprises a special kind of widgets (called “actions”) for several functions, among which logging of users’ click stream

Usability questionnairesUsability questionnairesWe will further evaluate the Service-Finder Interface by means of a survey about portal usability by involving the open community

We’re looking for volunteers to answer the survey! Anybody available?


ConclusionsConclusionsNext steps:

RDFa annotations in pages through annotations directly produced by widgets this enables also the linked data visionSemi-automation of sitemap specification starting from the ontologies and the mapping definitionMore widgets in the framework library

Long term vision:It would be nice to have visual tools for mappings and other configuration-related activitiesEither enriching STAR:chart and releasing it open source……or using our experience to extend popular CMS (e.g. Drupal is already embedding Semantic Web stuff): STAR:chart demonstrates that it is possible, it is feasible and it is effective

STAR:chart - Preserving Data Semantics in Web-based Applications12th Business Information System Conference (BIS 2009) – Poznan, April 27th 2009 - © CEFRIEL 2009

Thanks for your attention! Any question?

STAR:chart – Preserving Data Semantics in Web-based ApplicationsPaper Authors: Irene Celino, Dario Cerizza, Francesco Corcoglioniti,

Alberto Guarino, Andrea Turati and Emanuele Della Valle

Contacts: Irene Celino – Semantic Web PracticeCEFRIEL – ICT Institute, Politecnico di Milanoemail: [email protected] – web: http://swa.cefriel.it

phone: +39-02-23954266 – fax: +39-02-23954466Slides available at: http://www.slideshare.net/iricelino

star:chart – preserving data semantics in web-based applications

Technology

web presentation

web designers

solutions web

patterns star

dust ontology web

webbased applications

data semantics

data ontology