Scholars GeoPortal: A New Platform for Geospatial Data Discovery, Exploration and Access in Ontario Universities

The need to support and promote the use of geospatial data and available collections has grown at Ontario Universities in recent years. These data, along with numeric data collections, are used to enhance research and expand the skill set of students graduating from a broad array of disciplines. Providing access to these types of data collections has proven challenging, and access points available to large groups of people inside academia, in government and public domains have been made possible through online portal implementations. The defined need for a geospatial portal at Ontario Universities is outlined in the first part of this paper, followed by components of the Geospatial Portal Project vision and specific requirements and technical aspects of the project. How metadata is handled is also discussed, as is the implementation of the portal’s web application. Additional project components include health data collections that are available to researchers and which could be used in conjunction with the portal. Finally, project governance and future growth beyond the Ontario user base are also discussed

Internet based molecular collaborative and publishing tools

The scientific electronic publishing model has hitherto been an Internet based delivery of electronic articles that are essentially replicas of their paper counterparts. They contain little in the way of added semantics that may better expose the science, assist the peer review process and facilitate follow on collaborations, even though the enabling technologies have been around for some time and are mature. This thesis will examine the evolution of chemical electronic publishing over the past 15 years. It will illustrate, which the help of two frameworks, how publishers should be exploiting technologies to improve the semantics of chemical journal articles, namely their value added features and relationships with other chemical resources on the Web. The first framework is an early exemplar of structured and scalable electronic publishing where a Web content management system and a molecular database are integrated. It employs a test bed of articles from several RSC journals and supporting molecular coordinate and connectivity information. The value of converting 3D molecular expressions in chemical file formats, such as the MOL file, into more generic 3D graphics formats, such as Web3D, is assessed. This exemplar highlights the use of metadata management for bidirectional hyperlink maintenance in electronic publishing. The second framework repurposes this metadata management concept into a Semantic Web application called SemanticEye. SemanticEye demonstrates how relationships between chemical electronic articles and other chemical resources are established. It adapts the successful semantic model used for digital music metadata management by popular applications such as iTunes. Globally unique identifiers enable relationships to be established between articles and other resources on the Web and SemanticEye implements two: the Document Object Identifier (DOI) for articles and the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) for molecules. SemanticEye’s potential as a framework for seeding collaborations between researchers, who have hitherto never met, is explored using FOAF, the friend-of-a-friend Semantic Web standard for social networks

Enterprise Search in the European Union: A Techno-economic Analysis

This Report contributes to the work being carried out by IPTS on the potential of Search, discussing, in particular, the prospects of Enterprise search as well as the main challenges and opportunities. It is part of CHORUS+, an initiative supported by the Directorate General Information Society and Media. Information about CHORUS+ is available at http://avmediasearch.euJRC.J.3-Information Societ

On Teaching XQuery to Digital Humanists

Abstract XQuery provides an excellent means for teaching programming to digital humanists because it works seamlessly with their existing XML data, has an elegant and simple core with a well-structured standard library, and can be used in conjunction with XML databases to develop end-to-end web applications. However, current teaching materials for XQuery do not address the needs of digital humanists, presupposing implicit knowledge of programming concepts that they frequently lack. Based on experience teaching XQuery to digital humanists (including alt-ac professionals, archivists, faculty members, graduate students, and librarians) in three distinct settings: a weekly training session for librarians, a graduate seminar on digital humanities, and a two week NEHsupported Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities, I suggest how the XML community might develop resources to widen the appeal and accessibility of XQuery

NoSQL Databases: A Survey on Schema Less Databases

NoSQL (Not only SQL) databases are called as non-relational or unstructured databases. These databases are open source databases. Basically horizontally scalable feature is useful in most of the cloud computing applications. These are to be able to store and process mass data effectively. Traditional relational databases are facing many problems in solving mass data storage and retrieving due to their structured schema. Unstructured databases does not follow the specific schema structure. This survey will realize the necessity in moving towards NoSQL databases. The survey on different types of unstructured databases gives a clear cut list and comparison on their nativity. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15050