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

Enhancement of the usability of SOA services for novice users

Recently, the automation of service integration has provided a significant advantage in delivering services to novice users. This art of integrating various services is known as Service Composition and its main purpose is to simplify the development process for web applications and facilitates reuse of services. It is one of the paradigms that enables services to end-users (i.e.service provisioning) through the outsourcing of web contents and it requires users to share and reuse services in more collaborative ways. Most service composers are effective at enabling integration of web contents, but they do not enable universal access across different groups of users. This is because, the currently existing content aggregators require complex interactions in order to create web applications (e.g., Web Service Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL)) as a result not all users are able to use such web tools. This trend demands changes in the web tools that end-users use to gain and share information, hence this research uses Mashups as a service composition technique to allow novice users to integrate publicly available Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) services, where there is a minimal active web application development. Mashups being the platforms that integrate disparate web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to create user defined web applications; presents a great opportunity for service provisioning. However, their usability for novice users remains invalidated since Mashup tools are not easy to use they require basic programming skills which makes the process of designing and creating Mashups difficult. This is because Mashup tools access heterogeneous web contents using public web APIs and the process of integrating them become complex since web APIs are tailored by different vendors. Moreover, the design of Mashup editors is unnecessary complex; as a result, users do not know where to start when creating Mashups. This research address the gap between Mashup tools and usability by the designing and implementing a semantically enriched Mashup tool to discover, annotate and compose APIs to improve the utilization of SOA services by novice users. The researchers conducted an analysis of the already existing Mashup tools to identify challenges and weaknesses experienced by novice Mashup users. The findings from the requirement analysis formulated the system usability requirements that informed the design and implementation of the proposed Mashup tool. The proposed architecture addressed three layers: composition, annotation and discovery. The researchers developed a simple Mashup tool referred to as soa-Services Provisioner (SerPro) that allowed novice users to create web application flexibly. Its usability and effectiveness was validated. The proposed Mashup tool enhanced the usability of SOA services, since data analysis and results showed that it was usable to novice users by scoring a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 72.08. Furthermore, this research discusses the research limitations and future work for further improvements

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

weSPOT: a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry

Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers

Web 2.0: Redefining and Extending the Academic Library Service Imperative

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A Usability Evaluation Framework for

Currently, more than two billions people access the Web for various purposes. The majority are people without programming or modelling background. Part of these people (called end-users) also likes to create their own Web applications to meet their daily needs. Mashup Makers are tools to create such end-user’s Web applications. As such, Mashup Makers could become the dominant environment for end-user development of Web applications. Existing Mashup Makers promise that creating a Web Mashup is very easy and just a matter of a few mouse clicks. However, there is no evidence that this is indeed the case. On the contrary, research has already revealed usability problems with Mashup Makers. Therefore, this thesis concentrates on the usability of Mashup Makers as development environments for Web applications for end-users. Usability is a key issue for the success of software artifacts, and especially if the artifacts are intended for non-technical users. Therefore, we target the achievement of a consolidated approach, model, and framework for the evaluation of the usability of Mashup Makers for end-users. Such a framework will not only allow evaluating the usability of existing Mashup Makers, but it will also provide key issues concerning usability (ie usability impact factors) that developers of Mashup Makers and of other future end-user development tools can take into consideration when developing new tools

Modeling Users Feedback Using Bayesian Methods for Data-Driven Requirements Engineering

Data-driven requirements engineering represents a vision for a shift from the static traditional methods of doing requirements engineering to dynamic data-driven user-centered methods. App developers now receive abundant user feedback from user comments in app stores and social media, i.e., explicit feedback, to feedback from usage data and system logs, i.e, implicit feedback. In this dissertation, we describe two novel Bayesian approaches that utilize the available user\u27s to support requirements decisions and activities in the context of applications delivered through software marketplaces (web and mobile). In the first part, we propose to exploit implicit user feedback in the form of usage data to support requirements prioritization and validation. We formulate the problem as a popularity prediction problem and present a novel Bayesian model that is highly interpretable and offers early-on insights that can be used to support requirements decisions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves high prediction accuracy and outperforms competitive models. In the second part, we discuss the limitations of previous approaches that use explicit user feedback for requirements extraction, and alternatively, propose a novel Bayesian approach that can address those limitations and offer a more efficient and maintainable framework. The proposed approach (1) simplifies the pipeline by accomplishing the classification and summarization tasks using a single model, (2) replaces manual steps in the pipeline with unsupervised alternatives that can accomplish the same task, and (3) offers an alternative way to extract requirements using example-based summaries that retains context. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves equal or better classification accuracy and outperforms competitive models in terms of summarization accuracy. Specifically, we show that the proposed approach can capture 91.3% of the discussed requirement with only 19% of the dataset, i.e., reducing the human effort needed to extract the requirements by 80%