Survey over Existing Query and Transformation Languages

A widely acknowledged obstacle for realizing the vision of the Semantic Web is the inability of many current Semantic Web approaches to cope with data available in such diverging representation formalisms as XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. A common query language is the first step to allow transparent access to data in any of these formats. To further the understanding of the requirements and approaches proposed for query languages in the conventional as well as the Semantic Web, this report surveys a large number of query languages for accessing XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. This is the first systematic survey to consider query languages from all these areas. From the detailed survey of these query languages, a common classification scheme is derived that is useful for understanding and differentiating languages within and among all three areas

BlogForever D2.6: Data Extraction Methodology

This report outlines an inquiry into the area of web data extraction, conducted within the context of blog preservation. The report reviews theoretical advances and practical developments for implementing data extraction. The inquiry is extended through an experiment that demonstrates the effectiveness and feasibility of implementing some of the suggested approaches. More specifically, the report discusses an approach based on unsupervised machine learning that employs the RSS feeds and HTML representations of blogs. It outlines the possibilities of extracting semantics available in blogs and demonstrates the benefits of exploiting available standards such as microformats and microdata. The report proceeds to propose a methodology for extracting and processing blog data to further inform the design and development of the BlogForever platform

A characteristics framework for Semantic Information Systems Standards

Semantic Information Systems (IS) Standards play a critical role in the development of the networked economy. While their importance is undoubted by all stakeholders—such as businesses, policy makers, researchers, developers—the current state of research leaves a number of questions unaddressed. Terminological confusion exists around the notions of “business semantics”, “business-to-business interoperability”, and “interoperability standards” amongst others. And, moreover, a comprehensive understanding about the characteristics of Semantic IS Standards is missing. The paper addresses this gap in literature by developing a characteristics framework for Semantic IS Standards. Two case studies are used to check the applicability of the framework in a “real-life” context. The framework lays the foundation for future research in an important field of the IS discipline and supports practitioners in their efforts to analyze, compare, and evaluate Semantic IS Standard

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

An approach to open virtual commissioning for component-based automation

Increasing market demands for highly customised products with shorter time-to-market and at lower prices are forcing manufacturing systems to be built and operated in a more efficient ways. In order to overcome some of the limitations in traditional methods of automation system engineering, this thesis focuses on the creation of a new approach to Virtual Commissioning (VC). In current VC approaches, virtual models are driven by pre-programmed PLC control software. These approaches are still time-consuming and heavily control expertise-reliant as the required programming and debugging activities are mainly performed by control engineers. Another current limitation is that virtual models validated during VC are difficult to reuse due to a lack of tool-independent data models. Therefore, in order to maximise the potential of VC, there is a need for new VC approaches and tools to address these limitations. The main contributions of this research are: (1) to develop a new approach and the related engineering tool functionality for directly deploying PLC control software based on component-based VC models and reusable components; and (2) to build tool-independent common data models for describing component-based virtual automation systems in order to enable data reusability. [Continues.

Assessment of web accessibility and technical specifications conformance of web sites from four EU member states

The Internet is playing an important part in our day to day life, through its power of making information universally available. Provided that web content is designed with accessibility in mind, the Internet can bring immense benefits to people with restricted access to different aspects of life due to various types of disability. An important source for accessible web design resources is the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). WAI published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0)[1] in May 1999, which is now a reference point in web accessibility related policies in many different jurisdictions. An automated web accessibility surveying system investigating W3C WCAG 1.0 and HTML technical conformance of large samples of web sites, was implemented at the eAccess laboratory at RINCE, D.C.U.,Dublin, Ireland. In order to evaluate the practical results of the efforts invested in promoting web accessibility in Ireland, the conformance level of a sample of subjectively selected Irish web sites was monitored between April 2002 and December 2004. In order to place the web accessibility conformance level of Irish web sites at EU level, conformance levels of samples of randomly selected Irish, UK, French and German web sites were also monitored between May 2003 and December 2004. The findings of the study show that the general level of web accessibility guidelines and HTML standards conformance in all the web samples studied is very poor and there were no clearly distinguishable improvements in the time interval considered. More than that, although the web samples differ greatly through the number of web sites considered, the results show a high similarity in the failures detected in the five web samples, over the entire time interval in which the investigations were carried out. These findings show that the efforts invested in promoting web accessibility until now have had a small impact in reality. The findings also suggest the need for a different, more firm, approach in promoting web accessibility guidelines compliance on the web