Geospatial data integration with Semantic Web services: the eMerges approach

Geographic space still lacks the semantics allowing a unified view of spatial data. Indeed, as a unique but all encompassing domain, it presents specificities that geospatial applications are still unable to handle. Moreover, to be useful, new spatial applications need to match human cognitive abilities of spatial representation and reasoning. In this context, eMerges, an approach to geospatial data integration based on Semantic Web Services (SWS), allows the unified representation and manipulation of heterogeneous spatial data sources. eMerges provides this integration by mediating legacy spatial data sources to high-level spatial ontologies through SWS and by presenting for each object context dependent affordances. This generic approach is applied here in the context of an emergency management use case developed in collaboration with emergency planners of public agencies

Automated Rule-Based Selection and Instantiation of Layout Templates for Widget-Based Microsites

Veebi avatud arhitektuuron loonud soodsa pinnase veebisolevate andmete kasutamiseks nii keerulisemates kui lihtsamates veebirakendustes. Andmete kogumise ja visualiseerimise lihtsustamiseks lihtsates veebirakendustes on loodud hulganisti tööriistu, mille seas on ka mashup'ide loomise tööriistad. Olemasolevate tööriistadega kõrge kasutatavusega mashup veebilehe loomine võib aga paraku olla keerukas, kuna nõuab erinevate tehnoloogiate ning programmeerimiskeelte tundmist, rääkimata kasutatavuse juhtnööridega kursisolemist. Kuigi osad mashup'ide platvormid, a'la OpenAjax Hub, lihtsustavad olemasolevate komponentide kombineerimist, on lahendamata probleemiks siiani nende rakenduste kasutatavus. Käesolev magistritöö kirjeldab reeglipõhist lahendust andmete visualiseerimise vidinate jaoks sobiva veebilehe malli automaatseks valimiseks vastavalt enimlevinud veebilehtede kasutatavuse juhtnööridele. Selleks laetakse vidinate ning struktuurimallide kirjeldused koos kasutatavuse juhtnööridest saadud reeglitega reeglimootorisse ning kasutatakse reeglimootorit ekspertsüsteemina, mis soovitab sobivamaid malle vastavalt etteantud vidinate komplektile. Lahenduse reeglipõhine ülesehitus võimaldab uute vidinate ning mallide lisandumisel või juhtnööride muutumisel operatiivselt reageerida nendele muutustele reeglibaasi täiendamise kaudu. Väljapakutud lahendus realiseeriti käesoleva töö raames Auto Microsite rakendusena, mis koosneb serveri- ning kliendipoolsest osast. Serveri poolel toimub reeglite abil vidinate komplekti visualiseerimiseks sobiva malli valimine kasutades OO jDREW RuleML reeglimootorit ning rakenduse paketeerimiseks koodi genereerimine. Kliendi poolel kasutatakse OpenAjax Hub raamistikkuvidinate turvaliseks eraldamiseks ning omavahel suhtlemapanemisel. Samuti on kliendi poolel lahendatud genereeritud veebilehe vastavusse viimine brauseri võimalustega. Katsetamaks Auto Microsite rakendust praktikas loodi seda kasutades realisatsioonid kahele lihtsale stsenaariumile. Esimesel juhul viusaliseeriti Euroopa 1997-2008 tööjõukulude (Hourly labour costs in Euros (European Union 1997-2008) ing. k.) andmeid kaardi, tabeli, kokkuvõtte ja menüü vidinatega. Teisel juhul kasutati lisaks andmete visualiseerimise vidinatele ka väliseid andmeallikaid, mis olid realiseeritud mittevisuaalsete vidinatena. Saadud andmed visualiseeriti kahe tabeli ning ühe kaardi vidinaga. Näidisveebilehtede loomise tulemusena järeldub, et rakendus sobib lihtsate veebilehtede loomiseks. Lisaks on võimalik lahendust täiendada keerukamate veebirakenduste automaatseks loomiseks läbi vastavate mallide ning reeglite lisamise.This thesis proposes a rule-based widget and layout template matchmaking solution for widget-based microsites. The solution takes as an input a set of widget descriptions and a set of layout templates with widget placeholders and returns a microsite, where the most suitable template has been instantiated with corresponding widgets. Matchmaking is based on applying a rule engine to metadata of widgets and placeholders about their content categories and dimensions,. Additional usability rules are used to further improve the results with respect to commonly accepted usability guidelines. Such a solution makes it possible to modularly enhance the usability results in the future simply by adding new usability rules and layout templates. Furthermore, the solution can be applied in mashup creation tools for layout selection. The proposed solution has been implemented and is called Auto Microsite in this thesis. The system consists of a server-side and a client-side component. The server-side component matches widgets with layout template placeholders according to the given rules by using the OO jDREW RuleML engine. The client-side is responsible for presenting the mashup appropriately for the client device. The latter is based on OpenAjax Hub 2.0 framework, which enables secure sandboxing and communication of widgets in the generated microsite. Furthermore, OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 specification is used in this thesis to package the widgets such that they could be easily reused. In order to evaluate the Auto Microsite system in practice two proof of concept (PoC) scenarios were implemented. The first scenario visualized "Hourly labour costs in Euros (European Union 1997-2008)" data using widgets for a map, a table and a summary. In the second scenario, also data was queried through a SOAP service and a Web site. In the scenario data was visualized using two table widgets and a map widget. The SOAP service and queries to the Web site were packaged as non-visual widgets to fit the framework. The POCs demonstrate that the Auto Microsite system is able to construct widget-based microsites. Furthermore, the framework is capable of constructing also more complex Web applications, with several pages and more content widgets, by adding new rules and templates

Abmash: Mashing Up Legacy Web Applications by Automated Imitation of Human Actions

Many business web-based applications do not offer applications programming interfaces (APIs) to enable other applications to access their data and functions in a programmatic manner. This makes their composition difficult (for instance to synchronize data between two applications). To address this challenge, this paper presents Abmash, an approach to facilitate the integration of such legacy web applications by automatically imitating human interactions with them. By automatically interacting with the graphical user interface (GUI) of web applications, the system supports all forms of integrations including bi-directional interactions and is able to interact with AJAX-based applications. Furthermore, the integration programs are easy to write since they deal with end-user, visual user-interface elements. The integration code is simple enough to be called a "mashup".Comment: Software: Practice and Experience (2013)

Developing front-end Web 2.0 technologies to access services, content and things in the future Internet

The future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessible from all over the web. This approach has not yet caught on since global user?service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states one vision with regard to next-generation front-end Web 2.0 technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the future Internet. In this paper, we illustrate how front-ends that wrap traditional services and resources can be tailored to the needs of end users, converting end users into prosumers (creators and consumers of service-based applications). To do this, we propose an architecture that end users without programming skills can use to create front-ends, consult catalogues of resources tailored to their needs, easily integrate and coordinate front-ends and create composite applications to orchestrate services in their back-end. The paper includes a case study illustrating that current user-centred web development tools are at a very early stage of evolution. We provide statistical data on how the proposed architecture improves these tools. This paper is based on research conducted by the Service Front End (SFE) Open Alliance initiative

Distributed orchestration of user interfaces

Workflow management systems focus on the coordination of people and work items, service composition approaches on the coordination of service invocations, and, recently, web mashups have started focusing on the integration and coordination of pieces of user interfaces (UIs), e.g., a Google map, inside simple web pages. While these three approaches have evolved in a rather isolated fashion although they can be seen as evolution of the componentization and coordination idea from people to services to UIs in this paper we describe a component-based development paradigm that conciliates the core strengths of these three approaches inside a single model and language. We call this new paradigm distributed UI orchestration, so as to reflect the mashup-like and process-based nature of our target applications. In order to aid developers in implementing UI orchestrations, we equip the described model and language with suitable design, deployment, and runtime instruments, covering the whole life cycle of distributed UI orchestrations. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

End-user composition of interactive applications through actionable UI components

Developing interactive systems to access and manipulate data is a very tough task. In particular, the development of user interfaces (UIs) is one of the most time-consuming activities in the software lifecycle. This is even more demanding when data have to be retrieved by accessing flexibly different online resources. Indeed, software development is moving more and more toward composite applications that aggregate on the fly specific Web services and APIs. In this article, we present a mashup model that describes the integration, at the presentation layer, of UI components. The goal is to allow non-technical end users to visualize and manipulate (i.e., to perform actions on) the data displayed by the components, which thus become actionable UI components. This article shows how the model has guided the development of a mashup platform through which non-technical end users can create component-based interactive workspaces via the aggregation and manipulation of data fetched from distributed online resources. Due to the abundance of online data sources, facilitating the creation of such interactive workspaces is a very relevant need that emerges in different contexts. A utilization study has been performed in order to assess the benefits of the proposed model and of the Actionable UI Components; participants were required to perform real tasks using the mashup platform. The study results are reported and discussed

An approach for supporting distributed user interface orchestration over the Web

International audienceCurrently, a lot of the tasks engaged by users over the Web involve dealing with multiple Web sites. Moreover, whilst Web navigation was considered as a lonely activity in the past, a large proportion of users are nowadays engaged in collaborative activities over the Web. In this paper we argue that these two aspects of collaboration and tasks spanning over multiple Web sites call for a level of coordination that require Distributed User Interfaces (DUI). In this context, DUIs would play a major role by helping multiple users to coordinate their activities whilst working collaboratively to complete tasks at different Web sites. For that, we propose in this paper an approach to create distributed user interfaces featuring procedures that are aimed to orchestrate user tasks over multiple Web sites. Our approach supports flexible process modeling by allowing users to combine manual tasks and automated tasks from a repertoire of patterns of tasks performed over the Web. In our approach, whilst manual tasks can be regarded as simple instructions that tell users how to perform a task over a Web site, automated tasks correspond to tools built under the concept of Web augmentation (as it augments the repertoire of tasks users can perform over the Web) called Web augmenters. Both manual and automated tasks are usually supported by specific DOM elements available in different Web sites. Thus, by combining tasks and DOM elements distributed in diverse Web sites our approach supports the creation of procedures that allows seamless users interaction with diverse Web site. Moreover, such an approach is aimed at supporting the collaboration between users sharing procedures. The approach is duly illustrated by a case study describing a collaborative trip planning over the Web

Personalizing the web: A tool for empowering end-users to customize the web through browser-side modification

167 p.Web applications delegate to the browser the final rendering of their pages. Thispermits browser-based transcoding (a.k.a. Web Augmentation) that can be ultimately singularized for eachbrowser installation. This creates an opportunity for Web consumers to customize their Web experiences.This vision requires provisioning adequate tooling that makes Web Augmentation affordable to laymen.We consider this a special class of End-User Development, integrating Web Augmentation paradigms.The dominant paradigm in End-User Development is scripting languages through visual languages.This thesis advocates for a Google Chrome browser extension for Web Augmentation. This is carried outthrough WebMakeup, a visual DSL programming tool for end-users to customize their own websites.WebMakeup removes, moves and adds web nodes from different web pages in order to avoid tabswitching, scrolling, the number of clicks and cutting and pasting. Moreover, Web Augmentationextensions has difficulties in finding web elements after a website updating. As a consequence, browserextensions give up working and users might stop using these extensions. This is why two differentlocators have been implemented with the aim of improving web locator robustness

Personalizing the web: A tool for empowering end-users to customize the web through browser-side modification

167 p.Web applications delegate to the browser the final rendering of their pages. Thispermits browser-based transcoding (a.k.a. Web Augmentation) that can be ultimately singularized for eachbrowser installation. This creates an opportunity for Web consumers to customize their Web experiences.This vision requires provisioning adequate tooling that makes Web Augmentation affordable to laymen.We consider this a special class of End-User Development, integrating Web Augmentation paradigms.The dominant paradigm in End-User Development is scripting languages through visual languages.This thesis advocates for a Google Chrome browser extension for Web Augmentation. This is carried outthrough WebMakeup, a visual DSL programming tool for end-users to customize their own websites.WebMakeup removes, moves and adds web nodes from different web pages in order to avoid tabswitching, scrolling, the number of clicks and cutting and pasting. Moreover, Web Augmentationextensions has difficulties in finding web elements after a website updating. As a consequence, browserextensions give up working and users might stop using these extensions. This is why two differentlocators have been implemented with the aim of improving web locator robustness