Web and Semantic Web Query Languages

A number of techniques have been developed to facilitate powerful data retrieval on the Web and Semantic Web. Three categories of Web query languages can be distinguished, according to the format of the data they can retrieve: XML, RDF and Topic Maps. This article introduces the spectrum of languages falling into these categories and summarises their salient aspects. The languages are introduced using common sample data and query types. Key aspects of the query languages considered are stressed in a conclusion

METHODOLOGIES FOR DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING HYPERMEDIA APPLICATIONS

Hypermedia design, as any other design activity, may be observed according to two points of view: methods which suggest milestones to guide the designer's work and process which concerns the actual detailed behavior of the designer at work. Cognitive studies assess that mental processes involved in any design process show widely shared human characteristics regardless to the used design method. Thereby, they provide general keys to help designers. Thus, a hypertext design environment should equally consider the two dimensions of a hypertext design activity, in particular it should support the natural design process specificities, mainly the incremental and opportunist aspects. The paper focuses on the hypertext design as a computer supported human activity. It examines what is general both in the design methods and in the design process of hypertexts in order to determine which general features are helpful to designers. This analysis has raised from the observation of the behavior of MacWeb users during design tasks. It is related to sound and well known results in cognitive science. The paper also describes how the proposed features are implemented in the MacWeb system.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

The P3 platform: an approach and software system for developing diagrammatic model-based methods in design research

Many issues in design and design management have been explored by building models which capture the relationships between different aspects of the problem at hand. These models require computer support to construct and analyse. However, appropriate modelling tools can be time-consuming to develop in a research environment. Reflecting upon five design research projects, this paper proposes that such projects can be facilitated by recognising the iterative and tightly-coupled nature of research and tool development, and by attempting to minimise the effort of solution prototyping within this process. Our approach is enabled by a software platform which can be rapidly configured to implement many conceivable modelling approaches. This configurability is complemented by an emerging library of modelling and analysis approaches tailored to explore design process systems. The platform-based approach enables any mix of modelling concepts to be easily created. We propose it could thus help researchers to explore a wide range of questions without being constrained to existing conventions for modelling – or for model integration

Scalability considerations for multivariate graph visualization

Real-world, multivariate datasets are frequently too large to show in their entirety on a visual display. Still, there are many techniques we can employ to show useful partial views-sufficient to support incremental exploration of large graph datasets. In this chapter, we first explore the cognitive and architectural limitations which restrict the amount of visual bandwidth available to multivariate graph visualization approaches. These limitations afford several design approaches, which we systematically explore. Finally, we survey systems and studies that exhibit these design strategies to mitigate these perceptual and architectural limitations

A Functional, Comprehensive and Extensible Multi-Platform Querying and Transformation Approach

This thesis is about a new model querying and transformation approach called FunnyQT which is realized as a set of APIs and embedded domain-specific languages (DSLs) in the JVM-based functional Lisp-dialect Clojure. Founded on a powerful model management API, FunnyQT provides querying services such as comprehensions, quantified expressions, regular path expressions, logic-based, relational model querying, and pattern matching. On the transformation side, it supports the definition of unidirectional model-to-model transformations, of in-place transformations, it supports defining bidirectional transformations, and it supports a new kind of co-evolution transformations that allow for evolving a model together with its metamodel simultaneously. Several properties make FunnyQT unique. Foremost, it is just a Clojure library, thus, FunnyQT queries and transformations are Clojure programs. However, most higher-level services are provided as task-oriented embedded DSLs which use Clojure's powerful macro-system to support the user with tailor-made language constructs important for the task at hand. Since queries and transformations are just Clojure programs, they may use any Clojure or Java library for their own purpose, e.g., they may use some templating library for defining model-to-text transformations. Conversely, like every Clojure program, FunnyQT queries and transformations compile to normal JVM byte-code and can easily be called from other JVM languages. Furthermore, FunnyQT is platform-independent and designed with extensibility in mind. By default, it supports the Eclipse Modeling Framework and JGraLab, and support for other modeling frameworks can be added with minimal effort and without having to modify the respective framework's classes or FunnyQT itself. Lastly, because FunnyQT is embedded in a functional language, it has a functional emphasis itself. Every query and every transformation compiles to a function which can be passed around, given to higher-order functions, or be parametrized with other functions

METHODOLOGIES FOR DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING HYPERMEDIA APPLICATIONS

Hypermedia design, as any other design activity, may be observed according to two points of view: methods which suggest milestones to guide the designer's work and process which concerns the actual detailed behavior of the designer at work. Cognitive studies assess that mental processes involved in any design process show widely shared human characteristics regardless to the used design method. Thereby, they provide general keys to help designers. Thus, a hypertext design environment should equally consider the two dimensions of a hypertext design activity, in particular it should support the natural design process specificities, mainly the incremental and opportunist aspects. The paper focuses on the hypertext design as a computer supported human activity. It examines what is general both in the design methods and in the design process of hypertexts in order to determine which general features are helpful to designers. This analysis has raised from the observation of the behavior of MacWeb users during design tasks. It is related to sound and well known results in cognitive science. The paper also describes how the proposed features are implemented in the MacWeb system.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

XML: aplicações e tecnologias associadas: 6th National Conference

This volume contains the papers presented at the Sixth Portuguese XML Conference, called XATA (XML, Aplicações e Tecnologias Associadas), held in Évora, Portugal, 14-15 February, 2008. The conference followed on from a successful series held throughout Portugal in the last years: XATA2003 was held in Braga, XATA2004 was held in Porto, XATA2005 was held in Braga, XATA2006 was held in Portalegre and XATA2007 was held in Lisboa. Dued to research evaluation criteria that are being used to evaluate researchers and research centers national conferences are becoming deserted. Many did not manage to gather enough submissions to proceed in this scenario. XATA made it through. However with a large decrease in the number of submissions. In this edition a special meeting will join the steering committee with some interested attendees to discuss XATA's future: internationalization, conference model, ... We think XATA is important in the national context. It has succeeded in gathering and identifying a comunity that shares the same research interests and has promoted some colaborations. We want to keep "the wheel spinning"... This edition has its program distributed by first day's afternoon and next day's morning. This way we are facilitating travel arrangements and we will have one night to meet