Local Radiance

Recent years have seen a proliferation of web applications based on content management systems (CMS). Using a CMS, non-technical content authors are able to define custom content types to support their needs. These content type names and the attribute names in each content type are typically domain-specific and meaningful to the content authors. The ability of a CMS to support a multitude of content types allows for endless creation and customization but also leads to a large amount of heterogeneity within a single application. While this meaningful heterogeneity is beneficial, it introduces the problem of how to write reusable functionality (e.g., general purpose widgets) that can work across all the different types. Traditional information integration can solve the problem of schema heterogeneity by defining a single global schema that captures the shared semantics of the heterogeneous (local) schemas. Functionality and queries can then be written against the global schema and return data from local sources in the form of the global schema, but the meaningful local semantics (such as type and attribute names) are not returned. Mappings are also complex and require skilled developers to create. Here we propose a system that we call \textit{local radiance} (LR) that captures both global shared semantics as well as local, beneficial heterogeneity. We provide a formal definition of our system that includes domain structures---small, global schema fragments that represent shared domain-specific semantics--- and canonical structures---domain-independent global schema fragments used to build generic global widgets. We define mappings between local, domain, and canonical levels. Our query language extends the relational algebra to support queries that radiate local semantics to the domain and canonical levels as well as inserting and updating heterogeneous local data from generic global widgets. We characterize the expressive power of our mapping language and show how it can be used to perform complex data and metadata transformations. Through a user study, we evaluate the ability of non-technical users to perform mapping tasks and find that it is both understandable and usable. We report on the ongoing development (in CMSs and a relational database) of LR systems, demonstrate how widgets can be built using local radiance, and show how LR is being used in a number of online public educational repositories

Facilitating data-metadata transformation by domain specialists in a web-based information system using simple correspondences

We seek to empower domain specialists and non-technical web designers to be able to design and configure their system directly, without necessarily requiring interaction with a software developer or DB specialist. We observe that structured information shown on a web page presents a conceptual model of the information shown; and, that such web pages make a variety of choices regarding whether or not application information is presented in the data (with or without schema labels) or in the metadata (schema). Also, the same application may present the same data in different schemas on different pages. In this paper, we extend our earlier work—on providing generic widgets for structured information that can be easily used and configured by domain specialists—to also include data/metadata transformation. Thus, we put data/metadata transformation (from one conceptual model to another) in the hands of domain specialists without database expertise. The contributions of this paper are: showing how our approach can be used to support data/metadata transformation in both directions and demonstrating this capability in a non-trivial case study. The paper also provides evidence that non-expert users can successfully provide simple correspondences through the results of a small-scale user study

CyberPDX: A Camp for Broadening Participation in Cybersecurity

With society’s increasing dependence on technology infrastructure, the importance of securing the computers, networks, data, and algorithms that run our digital and physical lives is becoming critical. To equip the next generation of citizens for the challenges ahead, an effort is underway to introduce security content early in a student’s academic career. It is important that these efforts broaden participation and increase diversity in the field. While many camps and curricula focus on introducing technical content and skills related to cybersecurity, such approaches can prematurely limit how students view career opportunities in the field, potentially limiting those who ultimately pursue it. In addition, it is likely that many problems in cybersecurity can only be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner by those trained in the arts and humanities as well as in technical fields [1]. This paper describes CyberPDX, a residential summer camp that introduces cybersecurity to high school students. Key to CyberPDX is its focus on the range of societal issues that will be impacted by cybersecurity as well as its coverage of the breadth of roles that students can play to help address them. Through four learning threads taught by faculty in Computer Science, Sociology, and Film Studies, the CyberPDX curriculum spans topics from constitutional law, cyberpolicy, ethics, and filmmaking to programming, cryptography, security, and privacy in order to show students how broad cybersecurity issues are and the many ways they can participate in helping to solve them