Semantic Web Techniques to Support Interoperability in Distributed Networked Environments

We explore two Semantic Web techniques arising from ITA research into semantic alignment and interoperability in distributed networks. The first is POAF (Portable Ontology Aligned Fragments) which addresses issues relating to the portability and usage of ontology alignments. POAF uses an ontology fragmentation strategy to achieve portability, and enables subsequent usage through a form of automated ontology modularization. The second technique, SWEDER (Semantic Wrapping of Existing Data sources with Embedded Rules), is grounded in the creation of lightweight ontologies to semantically wrap existing data sources, to facilitate rapid semantic integration through representational homogeneity. The semantic integration is achieved through the creation of context ontologies which define the integrations and provide a portable definition of the integration rules in the form of embedded SPARQL construct clauses. These two Semantic Web techniques address important practical issues relevant to the potential future adoption of ontologies in distributed network environments

Hybrid Search: Effectively Combining Keywords and Semantic Searches

This paper describes hybrid search, a search method supporting both document and knowledge retrieval via the flexible combination of ontologybased search and keyword-based matching. Hybrid search smoothly copes with lack of semantic coverage of document content, which is one of the main limitations of current semantic search methods. In this paper we define hybrid search formally, discuss its compatibility with the current semantic trends and present a reference implementation: K-Search. We then show how the method outperforms both keyword-based search and pure semantic search in terms of precision and recall in a set of experiments performed on a collection of about 18.000 technical documents. Experiments carried out with professional users show that users understand the paradigm and consider it very powerful and reliable. K-Search has been ported to two applications released at Rolls-Royce plc for searching technical documentation about jet engines

Semantic Description, Publication and Discovery of Workflows in myGrid

The bioinformatics scientific process relies on in silico experiments, which are experiments executed in full in a computational environment. Scientists wish to encode the designs of these experiments as workflows because they provide minimal, declarative descriptions of the designs, overcoming many barriers to the sharing and re-use of these designs between scientists and enable the use of the most appropriate services available at any one time. We anticipate that the number of workflows will increase quickly as more scientists begin to make use of existing workflow construction tools to express their experiment designs. Discovery then becomes an increasingly hard problem, as it becomes more difficult for a scientist to identify the workflows relevant to their particular research goals amongst all those on offer. While many approaches exist for the publishing and discovery of services, there have been few attempts to address where and how authors of experimental designs should advertise the availability of their work or how relevant workflows can be discovered with minimal effort from the user. As the users designing and adapting experiments will not necessarily have a computer science background, we also have to consider how publishing and discovery can be achieved in such a way that they are not required to have detailed technical knowledge of workflow scripting languages. Furthermore, we believe they should be able to make use of others' expert knowledge (the semantics) of the given scientific domain. In this paper, we define the issues related to the semantic description, publishing and discovery of workflows, and demonstrate how the architecture created by the myGrid project aids scientists in this process. We give a walk-through of how users can construct, publish, annotate, discover and enact workflows via the user interfaces of the myGrid architecture; we then describe novel middleware protocols, making use of the Semantic Web technologies RDF and OWL to support workflow publishing and discovery

Enhancing Workflow with a Semantic Description of Scientific Intent

Peer reviewedPreprin

\u3cem\u3eJanus\u3c/em\u3e: From Workflows to Semantic Provenance and Linked Open Data

Data provenance graphs are form of metadata that can be used to establish a variety of properties of data products that undergo sequences of transformations, typically specified as workflows. Their usefulness for answering user provenance queries is limited, however, unless the graphs are enhanced with domain-specific annotations. In this paper we propose a model and architecture for semantic, domain-aware provenance, and demonstrate its usefulness in answering typical user queries. Furthermore, we discuss the additional benefits and the technical implications of publishing provenance graphs as a form of Linked Data. A prototype implementation of the model is available for data produced by the Taverna workflow system