Towards improving web service repositories through semantic web techniques

The success of the Web services technology has brought topicsas software reuse and discovery once again on the agenda of software engineers. While there are several efforts towards automating Web service discovery and composition, many developers still search for services via online Web service repositories and then combine them manually. However, from our analysis of these repositories, it yields that, unlike traditional software libraries, they rely on little metadata to support service discovery. We believe that the major cause is the difficulty of automatically deriving metadata that would describe rapidly changing Web service collections. In this paper, we discuss the major shortcomings of state of the art Web service repositories and, as a solution, we report on ongoing work and ideas on how to use techniques developed in the context of the Semantic Web (ontology learning, mapping, metadata based presentation) to improve the current situation

Spatially organized visualization of image query results

Gianluigi Ciocca, Claudio Cusano, Simone Santini, Raimondo Schettini, "Spatially organized visualization of image query results", Proceedings of SPIE 7881, Multimedia on Mobile Devices 2011; and Multimedia Content Access: Algorithms and Systems V. Ed. David Akopian, Reiner Creutzburg, Cees G. M. Snoek, Nicu Sebe, Lyndon Kennedy, SPIE (2011). Copyright 2011 Society of Photo‑Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.In this work we present a system which visualizes the results obtained from image search engines in such a way that users can conveniently browse the retrieved images. The way in which search results are presented allows the user to grasp the composition of the set of images "at a glance". To do so, images are grouped and positioned according to their distribution in a prosemantic feature space which encodes information about their content at an abstraction level that can be placed between visual and semantic information. The compactness of the feature space allows a fast analysis of the image distribution so that all the computation can be performed in real time

A monitoring approach for runtime service discovery

Effective runtime service discovery requires identification of services based on different service characteristics such as structural, behavioural, quality, and contextual characteristics. However, current service registries guarantee services described in terms of structural and sometimes quality characteristics and, therefore, it is not always possible to assume that services in them will have all the characteristics required for effective service discovery. In this paper, we describe a monitor-based runtime service discovery framework called MoRSeD. The framework supports service discovery in both push and pull modes of query execution. The push mode of query execution is performed in parallel to the execution of a service-based system, in a proactive way. Both types of queries are specified in a query language called SerDiQueL that allows the representation of structural, behavioral, quality, and contextual conditions of services to be identified. The framework uses a monitor component to verify if behavioral and contextual conditions in the queries can be satisfied by services, based on translations of these conditions into properties represented in event calculus, and verification of the satisfiability of these properties against services. The monitor is also used to support identification that services participating in a service-based system are unavailable, and identification of changes in the behavioral and contextual characteristics of the services. A prototype implementation of the framework has been developed. The framework has been evaluated in terms of comparison of its performance when using and when not using the monitor component

HILT : High-Level Thesaurus Project. Phase IV and Embedding Project Extension : Final Report

Ensuring that Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) users of the JISC IE can find appropriate learning, research and information resources by subject search and browse in an environment where most national and institutional service providers - usually for very good local reasons - use different subject schemes to describe their resources is a major challenge facing the JISC domain (and, indeed, other domains beyond JISC). Encouraging the use of standard terminologies in some services (institutional repositories, for example) is a related challenge. Under the auspices of the HILT project, JISC has been investigating mechanisms to assist the community with this problem through a JISC Shared Infrastructure Service that would help optimise the value obtained from expenditure on content and services by facilitating subject-search-based resource sharing to benefit users in the learning and research communities. The project has been through a number of phases, with work from earlier phases reported, both in published work elsewhere, and in project reports (see the project website: http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/). HILT Phase IV had two elements - the core project, whose focus was 'to research, investigate and develop pilot solutions for problems pertaining to cross-searching multi-subject scheme information environments, as well as providing a variety of other terminological searching aids', and a short extension to encompass the pilot embedding of routines to interact with HILT M2M services in the user interfaces of various information services serving the JISC community. Both elements contributed to the developments summarised in this report

A software classification scheme

Reusing code is one approach to software reusability. Code is the end product of the software lifecycle. It is delivered in a low level representation that is difficult to reuse unless an almost perfect match exists between available features and required specifications. There is a need to organize large inventories of software such that reusable code is easy to locate and exchange. The relative success in the reuse of code fragments reported by some software factories is due in part to their capacity to encapsulate domain specific functions and create specialized libraries of components classified by these locally standardized functions.A general software classification scheme that organizes reusability related attributes and common functions from different domains is proposed as a partial solution to the software reusability problem. For the problem of selecting from similar, potentially reusable. components, a partial solution based on evaluation of common characteristics is also proposed. A library system is presented that integrates the proposed classification scheme with an evaluation mechanism based on inherent component attributes, programming languages characteristics and reuser experience.The fundamental contribution of this dissertation is a formal treatment of a faceted scheme for software classification leading to better understanding of reusability at the code level. This approach has been prototyped in a library system for the semi-automatic classification of software components. Analysis were performed to evaluate the classification scheme. The results show the potential of the scheme in organizing collections of code fragments, in improving retrieval, and in simplifying the classification process. Tests of the evaluation mechanism showed positive correlation with evaluations conducted by potential reusers

Faceted classification as the basis of all information retrieval

The Classification Research Group manifesto of 1955 proclaimed its members’ commitment to the techniques of facet analysis as a general methodology for organizational, indexing and retrieval systems. In the 1950s this was hardly the case, but sixty years later the influence of faceted classification can be seen in all kinds of representation and discovery tools, and goes far beyond the limits of the conventional bibliographic classification that many of the original CRG envisaged as their objective. However, the CRG’s purpose was not just to encourage the faceted approach to designing and constructing classifications, but to propose it as a fundamental theory of knowledge organization, at the core of the disciplines of library and information science. At the time faceted classification theory was in many respects poorly articulated; many of the elements of ‘classical’ facet analysis were yet to be properly identified and defined, and it would be the work of some years to arrive at a mature theory. Yet that rudimentary model would eventually provide a foundation for much modern information retrieval. What are the distinctive features of facet analysis that make it so compatible with current needs, particularly in a digital environment? Some of the truth resides in the integrated nature of the faceted model, its clear explication of categorization, order, and intra- and inter-facet relationships, which can be rolled out across different species of knowledge organization system. The logic of this structures is readily exploited in automated systems, and can in part be expressed by representation languages. The complexity of the fully faceted classification, while internally consistent, is, nevertheless, challenging to realise in the same way

A NASA-wide approach toward cost-effective, high-quality software through reuse

NASA Langley Research Center sponsored the second Workshop on NASA Research in Software Reuse on May 5-6, 1992 at the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The workshop was hosted by the Research Triangle Institute. Participants came from the three NASA centers, four NASA contractor companies, two research institutes and the Air Force's Rome Laboratory. The purpose of the workshop was to exchange information on software reuse tool development, particularly with respect to tool needs, requirements, and effectiveness. The participants presented the software reuse activities and tools being developed and used by their individual centers and programs. These programs address a wide range of reuse issues. The group also developed a mission and goals for software reuse within NASA. This publication summarizes the presentations and the issues discussed during the workshop