Modelling data intensive web sites with OntoWeaver

This paper illustrates the OntoWeaver modelling approach, which relies on a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model all aspects of data intensive web sites and thus offers high level support for the design and development of data-intensive web sites. In particular, the OntoWeaver site ontologies comprise two components: a site view ontology and a presentation ontology. The site view ontology provides meta-models to allow for the composition of sophisticated site views, which allow end users to navigate and manipulate the underlying domain databases. The presentation ontology abstracts the look and feel for site views and makes it possible for the visual appearance and layout to be specified at a high level of abstractio

Integrating web services into data intensive web sites

Designing web sites is a complex task. Ad-hoc rapid prototyping easily leads to unsatisfactory results, e.g. poor maintainability and extensibility. However, existing web design frameworks focus exclusively on data presentation: the development of specific functionalities is still achieved through low-level programming. In this paper we address this issue by describing our work on the integration of (semantic) web services into a web design framework, OntoWeaver. The resulting architecture, OntoWeaver-S, supports rapid prototyping of service centred data-intensive web sites, which allow access to remote web services. In particular, OntoWeaver-S is integrated with a comprehensive web service platform, IRS-II, for the specification, discovery, and execution of web services. Moreover, it employs a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model and represent all aspects of service-centred data-intensive web sites, and thus is able to offer high level support for the design and development process

OntoWeaver S: supporting the design of knowledge portals

This paper presents OntoWeaver-S, an ontology-based infrastructure for building knowledge portals. In particular, OntoWeaver-S is integrated with a comprehensive web service platform, IRS-II, for the publication, discovery, and execution of web services. In this way, OntoWeaver-S supports the access and provision of remote web services for knowledge portals. Moreover, it provides a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model and represent knowledge portals, and thus is able to offer high level support for the design and development process. Finally, OntoWeaver-S provides a set of powerful tools to support knowledge portals at design time as well as at run time

Games-Based Learning Framework

This work presents the authors’ experience in the field of mobile technologies, from which several initiatives have emerged. As result of this, a games-based framework for learning has been developed in these last years. This framework is composed by a competition called Mobigame, which has as main aim to stimulate the participation of the students. By participating in this competition participants learn to develop for mobile devices. A game to practice Japanese is also presented in this article, which was presented in the above mentioned competition. This game has been developed for mobile phones or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) based on the JME (Java Mobile Edition) technology. Finally, another initiative is also presented: A free download platform of digital contents for mobile devices based on info-educational games

Towards Systematic Personalization of Information Spaces

Web information systems often have large and complex information spaces. These spaces serve as a conceptual framework for all user-system interactions. Their complexity is likely to cause users having trouble carrying out with these systems the business cases in their portfolio. Aiding users therefore requires a view of reduced complexity on the information space being defined and made accessible to the users. Such a view is called a story. Working out the stories that best help users beneficially use Web information systems is the task of information space personalization. This paper analyses a Web information system. A Kleene algebra is used as a mathematical model of a story of this system. We illustrate that formal manipulation of Kleene algebras can be used for personalizing information spaces. This paper thus supports the proposal of using Kleene algebras as mathematical model of Web information system usage

Design of customized Web applications with OntoWeaver

OntoWeaver is our conceptual modelling methodology and a tool that support the specification and implementation of customized web applications. It relies on a number of different types of ontologies to declaratively describe all aspects of a web application. This paper focuses on the OntoWeaver customization framework, which exploits a user model, a customization rule model, and a declarative site model, to enable the design and development of customized web applications at a conceptual level. OntoWeaver makes use of the Jess inference engine to reason upon the site specifications and their underlying site ontologies according to the customization rules and the valuable user profiles to provide customization support in an intelligent way. The ontology-based approach enables the target web applications to be represented in an exchangeable format. Hence, the management and maintenance of web applications can be carried out at a conceptual level without having to worry about the implementation details. Likewise, the declarative nature of the site specifications and the generic customization framework allow the specification of customization requirements to be carried out at the conceptual level

Identifying Entity Types for E-R Diagramming in Developing Data- Intensive Web Applications

Although the Web has become a major enabler for data-intensive business applications such as e-tailing, customer relationship management, and supply chain management, we find that most Web applications are built up in ad hoc fashion, raising the data-related issues of data definition and data integration. This paper proposes a new approach for identifying entity types for E-R diagramming in developing data-rich Web applications. The methodology is founded on elements of Web applications including pages, links, Web application architecture, and business logic modules

Intranet Resource for the Mechanical Engineering Department at Green Industries

The mechanical engineering department at Green Industries has grown substantially over the past several years to keep up with the company’s overall growth. With this growth has come a reduction in the ratio of experienced team members to new team members and a shortage of appropriate mentors to serve these new engineers. In order to provide all team members with the information they need to successfully design and develop new products, the department must find a more efficient way to transfer information to individuals when experienced mentors are not available. The purpose of this field project is to determine an accurate and timesaving method to transfer needed information to team members and save man months of development effort while working within the limitations of the current intranet system at Green. Team members and team leaders will work together in a collaborative effort to determine the content needed to achieve these goals. This project should also provide a process for all engineering departments within Green to use when looking to manage the information their associates need on a daily basis. A solution to this problem is to create the framework for a home page for the consumer mechanical engineering department at Green that can manage this information. This web resource will be the home page for team members and allow them to find all of the information they need on a daily basis in one location. It will also help organize and store some of the documents used within the department

117 Issues in Information Systems

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Metadata for Photographs: from Digital Library to Multimedia Application

This paper describes the production of an educational multimedia CD-ROM about French rural houses and farms, and how to renovate them without losing their traditional features. The educational message is illustrated with many photographs of non-renovated or renovated houses, and made explicit through comments and descriptions associated with the photos. The paper focuses on the XML metadata describing the photos and the use of this metadata for the automatic generation of Web pages. We first report on the usability of the Dublin Core for interoperable photographs metadata, together with more detailed XML descriptions to support a specific multimedia application. We then show how to generate the Web pages by defining HTML document prescriptions which embed queries to the XML metadata, using Norfolk, a virtual document generator. The approach can be used in various applications ranging from personal virtual photo albums to complex virtual museum