Overview of a framework to hypermedia process modeling

In this work, we discuss aspects of a framework to support the understanding and the improvement in hypermedia development processes. The framework is built taking into account two modeling approaches and four domain levels. The modeling approaches are called prescriptive and descriptive respectively, and the domain layers are called, namely, enactment, customization, representation, and reuse/knowledge domains. We feed a potential project regarding this framework by applying a mixture of expression and analysis-oriented descriptive process modeling strategy, and expression, analysis and guided-oriented prescriptive process modeling strategy. That is, the actual or desired entities (process, artifact, and resource) are just described, represented, and analyzed in a somewhat formal way. This potentially allows us to understand, communicate, guide and improve different aspects in hypermedia development projects. Ultimately, we summarize some techniques and mechanisms for prescriptive and descriptive software modeling customized to the hypermedia domain. In addition, we present in-progress researchs and developments.Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Overview of a framework to hypermedia process modeling

In this work, we discuss aspects of a framework to support the understanding and the improvement in hypermedia development processes. The framework is built taking into account two modeling approaches and four domain levels. The modeling approaches are called prescriptive and descriptive respectively, and the domain layers are called, namely, enactment, customization, representation, and reuse/knowledge domains. We feed a potential project regarding this framework by applying a mixture of expression and analysis-oriented descriptive process modeling strategy, and expression, analysis and guided-oriented prescriptive process modeling strategy. That is, the actual or desired entities (process, artifact, and resource) are just described, represented, and analyzed in a somewhat formal way. This potentially allows us to understand, communicate, guide and improve different aspects in hypermedia development projects. Ultimately, we summarize some techniques and mechanisms for prescriptive and descriptive software modeling customized to the hypermedia domain. In addition, we present in-progress researchs and developments.Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

The Semantics of Semantic Annotation

Semantic metadata will play a significant role in the provision of the Semantic Web. Agents will need metadata that describes the content of resources in order to perform operations, such as retrieval, over those resources. In addition, if rich semantic metadata is supplied, those agents can then employ reasoning over the metadata, enhancing their processing power. Key to this approach is the provision of annotations, both through automatic and human means. The semantics of these annotations, however, in terms of the mechanisms through which they are interpreted and presented to the user, are sometimes unclear. In this paper, we identify a number of candidate interpretations of annotation, and discuss the impact these interpretations may have on Semantic Web applications

Web Annotation Systems: A Literature Review and Case Study

Web annotation has been a popular research topic since the appearance of Internet and its supplementary technologies. This paper provides a literature review in the related research areas, and introduces some currently available web annotation systems with the comparison of these systems in seven aspects. In addition, this paper incorporates a description of the ongoing NeoNote project, and identifies limitations of this study for future work

Rakenteiset Dokumentointiprosessit - Yksittäistutkimus

Kaksi tärkeintä päämäärää, joiden takia SGML:n käyttö teknisessä dokumentaatiossa yleensä aloitetaan, ovat dokumentointiprosessin nopeuttaminen ja yksinkertaistaminen. Tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena oli selvittää, saavutetaanko tavoitteet siirryttäessä perinteisestä tekstinkäsittelydokumentaatiosta SGML:ään. Myös uuden SGML-pohjaisen prosessin heikkouksia kartoitettiin käytettävyystutkimuksen avulla. Teoreettinen tarkastelu perustuu yleiseen prosessiteoriaan ja saatavilla olevaan ohjelmisto- ja hypermediatutkimuksen tuloksiin, kuten myös tietämykseen rakenteellisen dokumentaation käytön eduista ja haitoista. Näiden teorioiden pohjalta tämä diplomityö esittelee sekä vanhan että uuden dokumentointiprosessin vaiheet teknisestä näkökulmasta. Dokumenttien läpimenoaika mitattiin sekä vanhassa että uudessa prosessissa viiden kirjoittajan kanssa. Tulokset osoittivat, ettei kirjoitusympäristöjen välillä ollut tilastollista eroa, vaikka SGML-mittaustulokset kertoivatkin keskiarvollisesti paremmasta tehokkuudesta. Dokumenttiin kirjoitetun uuden materiaalin määrän nähtiin korreloivan hyvin sivua kohti kuluneen kirjoitusajan kanssa vanhassa ympäristössä, muttei ainakaan vielä merkittävästi SGML-ympäristössä. Taustatyöhön kulunut aika näytti korreloivan hyvin dokumenttiin lisätyn uuden materiaalin määrän kanssa molemmissa ympäristöissä. Vaikka kokonaisläpimenoaika olikin pidempi SGML-pohjaisessa prosessissa, paikallisten vaiheiden määrä väheni ja vertailukelpoisempi, teknisessä mielessä tärkeämpi paikallinen läpimenoaika myös Iyheni. Dokumentointiprosessin käytettävyyden evaluointi suoritettiin tarkkailuna ja arviointilomakkeilla niille samoille kirjoittajille, jotka osallistuivat myös kirjoitusprosessin mittauksiin. Tarkkailu ja avoimet kysymykset paljastivat joitakin hyötyjä, mutta myös monia ratkaisua kaipaavia heikkouksia käytetyissä SGML-työkaluissa ja dokumentointiprosessissa. Esille tuli myös monia ongelmakohtia, jotka onneksi voidaan ratkaista koulutuksen ja lisäharjoituksen avulla. Suljetut kysymykset paljastivat, että SGML-työkalut mielletään käytettävyydeltään kohtalaisen hyviksi, mutta dokumentointiprosessin käytännön seikat ovat vielä aika vaikeita eikä niitä kaikkia ole vielä täysin omaksuttu. Kaiken kaikkiaan, nykyinen SGML-pohjainen dokumentointiympäristö tyydytti suurinta osaa osallistuneista kirjoittajista varsin hyvin

Content And Multimedia Database Management Systems

A database management system is a general-purpose software system that facilitates the processes of defining, constructing, and manipulating databases for various applications. The main characteristic of the ‘database approach’ is that it increases the value of data by its emphasis on data independence. DBMSs, and in particular those based on the relational data model, have been very successful at the management of administrative data in the business domain. This thesis has investigated data management in multimedia digital libraries, and its implications on the design of database management systems. The main problem of multimedia data management is providing access to the stored objects. The content structure of administrative data is easily represented in alphanumeric values. Thus, database technology has primarily focused on handling the objects’ logical structure. In the case of multimedia data, representation of content is far from trivial though, and not supported by current database management systems

Groupware for Collaborative Tailoring

In everyday work, teamwork in the presence of the tools, the resources, and the processes that enable work is mostly transparent to the workers. They center their attention on performing work. However, a noticeable change in the work conditions, in the required quality of the product, or in the perceived results of work, may be experienced as a breakdown that brings teamwork to the center of attention. To deal with breakdowns it is currently common practice to include tailoring facilities in groupware systems. The extent to which these facilities are provided, and the way in which they are implemented, determine the power users have to change the groupware system. Determining these facilities has been the focus of most research on tailorability in CSCW. How collaborative tailoring (defined as, collaboration for and in tailoring) can be facilitated remains as yet undetermined. This thesis tackles the problem of the lack of computer support for dis- tributed team members that need to perform tailoring in the context of team- work. The challenge of tailoring in the context of teamwork is to understand and support the needs of the group members, from the moment they encounter a breakdown during work until they have enacted the changes they deem nec- essary. This thesis is based on the premise of participation as a means to achieve acceptance of change. The approach to support collaborative tailoring of team- work presented in this thesis consists of a method for collaborative breakdown handling, a selection of specific groupware tools to be used for the deliberation activities defined by the method, and guidance in the form of scaffoldings for the application of the method. Breakdowns can also occur during tailoring. To deal with breakdowns that occur during tailoring, the method, the tools, and the scaffolding can be tailored. The proposed support for collaborative tailor- ing of teamwork is delivered as a stand-alone groupware system for collaborative tailoring. The system can be deployed along existing groupware systems, thus extending them with support for collaborative tailoring. This thesis exceeds related work by approaching tailoring of teamwork as a social system with a model that explains tailoring as the result of collaborative breakdown handling. The requirements of communication, collaboration, co- operation and coordination, and negotiation observed in the social system are supported by the corresponding technical system. The approach in this thesis is not limited to its application in a particular scenario or groupware system. The only requirement is that the target system/scenario can be tailored. The approach has been conceived to enable and support its own evolution as the result of its tailoring.Editorial: FernUniversität in Hagen. Informatik-Berichte Vol. 325.FernUniversität in Hage

The Semantic Shadow : Combining User Interaction with Context Information for Semantic Web-Site Annotation

This thesis develops the concept of the Semantic Shadow (SemS), a model for managing contentual and structural annotations on web page elements and their values. The model supports a contextual weighting of the annotated information, allowing to specify the annotation values in relation to the evaluation context. A procedure is presented, which allows to manage and process this context-dependent meta information on web page elements using a dedicated programming interface. Two distinct implementations for the model have been developed: One based on Java objects, the other using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as modeling backend. This RDF-based storage allows to integrate the annotations of the Semantic Shadow with other information of the Semantic Web. To demonstrate the application of the Semantic Shadow concept, a procedure to optimize web based user interfaces based on the structural semantics has been developed: Assuming a mobile client, a requested web page is dynamically adapted by a proxy prototype, where the context-awareness of the adaptation can be directly modeled alongside with the structural annotations. To overcome the drawback of missing annotations for existing web pages, this thesis introduces a concept to derive context-dependent meta-information on the web pages from their usage: From the observation of the users' interaction with a web page, certain context-dependent structural information about the concerned web page elements can be derived and stored in the annotation model of the Semantic Shadow concept.In dieser Arbeit wird das Konzept des Semantic Shadow (dt. Semantischer Schatten) entwickelt, ein Programmier-Modell um Webseiten-Elemente mit inhaltsbezogenen und strukturellen Anmerkungen zu versehen. Das Modell unterstützt dabei eine kontextabhängige Gewichtung der Anmerkungen, so dass eine Anmerkung in Bezug zum Auswertungs-Kontext gesetzt werden kann. Zur Verwaltung und Verarbeitung dieser kontextbezogenen Meta-Informationen für Webseiten-Elemente wurde im Rahmen der Arbeit eine Programmierschnittstelle definiert. Dazu wurden zwei Implementierungen der Schnittstelle entwickelt: Eine basiert ausschließlich auf Java-Objekten, die andere baut auf einem RDF-Modell auf. Die RDF-basierte Persistierung erlaubt eine Integration der Semantic-Shadow-Anmerkungen mit anderen Anwendungen des Semantic Webs. Um die Anwendungsmöglichkeiten des Semantic-Shadow-Konzepts darzustellen, wurde eine Vorgehensweise zur Optimierung von webbasierten Benutzerschnittstellen auf Grundlage von semantischen Strukturinformationen entwickelt: Wenn ein mobiler Benutzer eine Webseite anfordert, wird diese dynamisch durch einen Proxy angepasst. Die Kontextabhängigkeit dieser Anpassung wird dabei bereits direkt mit den Struktur-Anmerkungen modelliert. Für bestehende Webseiten liegen zumeist keine Annotationen vor. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit ein Konzept vorgestellt, kontextabhängige Meta-Informationen aus der Benutzung der Webseiten zu bestimmen: Durch Beobachtung der Benutzer-Interaktionen mit den Webseiten-Elementen ist es möglich bestimmte kontextabhängige Strukturinformationen abzuleiten und als Anmerkungen im Modell des Semantic-Shadow-Konzepts zu persistieren