Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the Semantic Web: A Multi-Dimensional Review

Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009 a significant number of conventional knowledge organization systems (KOS) (including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS" as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications) and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS).Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, accepted paper in International Journal on Digital Librarie

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

Role-Based Enterprise Mashups with State Sharing, Preservation and Restoration Support for Multi-Instance Executions

Veebimaastikul suurt populaarsust kogunud tavatarbijatele suunatud vidinapõhised veebi-rakendused on loonud soodsa pinnase üldotstarbeliste mashup’ite loomise raamistike ning tööriistade tekkeks. Need tööriistad on eelkõige suunatud tava-Interneti kasutajatele, et luua lihtsaid mashup-tüüpi rakendusi. Samal ajal oleks vidinapõhistest veebirakendustest kasu ka ärirakendustena. Peamiseks takistuseks ärirakenduste loomisel veebipõhiste raken-dustena on keerulisest äriloogikast tulenevad keerukad nõuded ning protsessid. Antud magistritöö uurib, kuidas teostada veebividinatel põhinevate mashup-tüüpi ärirakenduste arendamist nii, et säiluks mashup’ite loomisega seotud peamised eelised, lihtsus ja kiirus. Käesolev magistritöö pakub välja laienduse olemasolevale mashup-tüüpi raamistikule, et toetada mashup’i dekompositsiooni rollipõhisteks vaadeteks. Selleks jagatakse mashup väiksemateks vidinate komplektideks, tagades igale kasutajarollile komplekt just temale vajaminevatest vidinatest. Kuigi igal kasutajarollil võib olla erinev vaade kogu ärirakendusest, tagab käesolevas magistritöös pakutud lahendus suhtluse nende erinevate vaadete vahel. See on vajalik tagamaks mashup’i eksemplari ühtsust kõikide mashup’i vaadete vahel, olenemata sellest, millistest vidinatest antud kasutaja vaade koosneb. Lisaks pakub käesolev magistritöö välja lahenduse toetamaks mitut eksemplari samast vidinapõhisest ärirakendusest ning toetamaks ärirakenduse oleku salvestamist ning taastamist. Kuna ärirakendused on suunatud lahendamaks kasutajate igapäevaseid ülesandeid, on vajalik, et kasutaja saaks valida olemasolevate mashup’i eksemplaride hulgast või alustada uut eksemplari. Lisaks on vajalik, et kasutaja saaks igal ajahetkel rakenduse kasutamise lõpetada selliselt, et hiljem rakenduse kasutamist jätkates oleks tagatud sama rakenduse olek, millest kasutamine katkestati. Väljapakutud lahenduse toimimist testitakse näidisrakendusega, mis realiseerib krediidihalduse protsessi.Recent hype on consumer web mashups has resulted in many general-purpose mashup frameworks and tools. These tools aim at simplifying the creation of mashups targeted to mainstream Internet users. At the same time, mashups are also used for solving specific business-related tasks. Such mashups are called enterprise mashups and more sophisticated frameworks and tools have been developed to support their creation. However, similarly to traditional web application development tools, the complexity of these frameworks is hindering the main benefits associated with mashup development – agility and simplicity. This thesis aims at extending a general-purpose mashup framework to support develop-ment of enterprise mashups while still preserving the simplicity and agility of develop-ment. More specifically, this thesis describes a solution for role-based decomposition of mashups for multi-instance executions with state sharing, preservation and restoration. In this thesis, a general-purpose mashup framework is extended with the concept of roles to support multi-user interaction and decomposing complex enterprise mashups with rich interactions into role-based views. In the context of this thesis, a view is defined as a subset of widgets a mashup is made of. Hence, through views an effective mechanism is provided for decomposing enterprise mashups to mashups as simple as general-purpose mashups. Additionally, this thesis proposes a generic solution for multi-instance mashup executions. In this thesis, each workflow instance is associated with an instance of a mashup. Since situational applications target at solving users day-to-day tasks, it is necessary to support multiple instances of a mashup. Furthermore, support for multiple mashup instances leverages users’ ability to participate in multiple workflow instances and to initialize new ones. Such mashup instances are in this thesis also referred to as mashup sessions. Finally, a solution is proposed for supporting mashup state sharing, preservation and restoration. Sharing states with other users is the key mechanism for facilitating interaction and collaboration between multiple users. State preservation and restoration are needed to allow a user to stop using the mashup and to resume to the same state at a later time. The proposed solution is also validated through a proof of concept application