Modeling views in the layered view model for XML using UML

In data engineering, view formalisms are used to provide flexibility to users and user applications by allowing them to extract and elaborate data from the stored data sources. Conversely, since the introduction of Extensible Markup Language (XML), it is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, and interchanging data among various web and heterogeneous data sources. In combination with XML Schema, XML provides rich facilities for defining and constraining user-defined data semantics and properties, a feature that is unique to XML. In this context, it is interesting to investigate traditional database features, such as view models and view design techniques for XML. However, traditional view formalisms are strongly coupled to the data language and its syntax, thus it proves to be a difficult task to support views in the case of semi-structured data models. Therefore, in this paper we propose a Layered View Model (LVM) for XML with conceptual and schemata extensions. Here our work is three-fold; first we propose an approach to separate the implementation and conceptual aspects of the views that provides a clear separation of concerns, thus, allowing analysis and design of views to be separated from their implementation. Secondly, we define representations to express and construct these views at the conceptual level. Thirdly, we define a view transformation methodology for XML views in the LVM, which carries out automated transformation to a view schema and a view query expression in an appropriate query language. Also, to validate and apply the LVM concepts, methods and transformations developed, we propose a view-driven application development framework with the flexibility to develop web and database applications for XML, at varying levels of abstraction

Database independent Migration of Objects into an Object-Relational Database

This paper reports on the CERN-based WISDOM project which is studying the serialisation and deserialisation of data to/from an object database (objectivity) and ORACLE 9i.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures; CMS CERN Conference Report cr02_01

CompendiumLD – a tool for effective, efficient and creative learning design

Developers and teachers go through a complex decision making process when designing new learning activities – working towards an effective pedagogical mix, combining resources, tools, student and tutor support. This paper describes CompendiumLD, a prototype tool we have built to support practitioners through the process of designing learning activities. We describe how the tool fits into our vision of a dynamic, interactive set of resources and system tools to support effective, efficient and creative learning design. It describes CompendiumLD's features and explains the rationale behind their development. It shows how the tool is intended to aid designers make choices, and plan developments, facilitating creativity and efficiency in the design process. In our conclusions we consider how such a system can support the design of effective learning activities

MammoApplet: an interactive Java applet tool for manual annotation in medical imaging

Web-based applications in computational medicine have become increasingly important during the last years. The rapid growth of the World Wide Web supposes a new paradigm in the telemedicine and eHealth areas in order to assist and enhance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of patients. Furthermore, training of radiologists and management of medical databases are also becoming increasingly important issues in the field. In this paper, we present MammoApplet , an interactive Java applet interface designed as a web-based tool. It aims to facilitate the diagnosis of new mammographic cases by providing a set of image processing tools that allow a better visualization of the images, and a set of drawing tools, used to annotate the suspicious regions. Each annotation allows including the attributes considered by the experts when issuing the final diagnosis. The overall set of overlays is stored in a database as XML files associated with the original images. The final goal is to obtain a database of already diagnosed cases for training and enhancing the performance of novice radiologistsPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Developing an interactive writing tool for business law students

Students&rsquo; performance in assessment tasks requiring logical written answers to case study problems can be adversely affected by difficulties in constructing a full length, logical written argument that demonstrates understanding to the level expected. This paper describes a teaching and learning tool developed to assist students in constructing logical full-length answers to given problems, using individual understanding of underlying concepts and their application. The tool allows students to see their thoughts and reasoning written into full-length answers of different styles. Developed initially for Business law students, this Answer Styles tool has scope to assist students&rsquo; writing in many disciplines.</div

Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

A design recording framework to facilitate knowledge sharing in collaborative software engineering

This paper describes an environment that allows a development team to share knowledge about software artefacts by recording decisions and rationales as well as supporting the team in formulating and maintaining design constraints. It explores the use of multi-dimensional design spaces for capturing various issues arising during development and presenting this meta-information using a network of views. It describes a framework to underlie the collaborative environment and shows the supporting architecture and its implementation. It addresses how the artefacts and their meta-information are captured in a non-invasive way and shows how an artefact repository is embedded to store and manage the artefacts

DepAnn - An Annotation Tool for Dependency Treebanks

DepAnn is an interactive annotation tool for dependency treebanks, providing both graphical and text-based annotation interfaces. The tool is aimed for semi-automatic creation of treebanks. It aids the manual inspection and correction of automatically created parses, making the annotation process faster and less error-prone. A novel feature of the tool is that it enables the user to view outputs from several parsers as the basis for creating the final tree to be saved to the treebank. DepAnn uses TIGER-XML, an XML-based general encoding format for both, representing the parser outputs and saving the annotated treebank. The tool includes an automatic consistency checker for sentence structures. In addition, the tool enables users to build structures manually, add comments on the annotations, modify the tagsets, and mark sentences for further revision