A semantic spatial hypertext wiki

Spatial Hypertext Wiki (ShyWiki) is a wiki which represents knowledge using notes that are spatially distributed in wiki pages and have some visual characteristics such as colour, size, or font type. Spatial and visual characteristics are important in a wiki to improve human comprehension, creation and organization of knowledge. Another important capability in wikis is to allow machines to process knowledge. Wikis that formally structure knowledge for this purpose are called semantic wikis. This paper describes the semantic wiki capabilities of ShyWiki. ShyWiki can represent knowledge at different levels of formality. Users of ShyWiki can annotate the content and represent semantic relations without being experts of semantic web data description languages. The spatial hypertext features make it suitable for users to represent unstructured knowledge and implicit graphic relations among concepts. In addition, semantic web and spatial hypertext features are combined to represent structured knowledge. The semantic web features of ShyWiki improve navigation and publish the wiki knowledge as RDF resources, including the implicit relations that are analyzed using a spatial parser

An experience using a Spatial Hypertext Wiki

Most wikis do not allow users to collaboratively organize relations among wiki pages, nor ways to visualize them because such relations are hard to express using hyperlinks. The Spatial Hypertext Wiki (ShyWiki) is a wiki that uses Spatial Hypertext to represent visual and spatial implicit relations. This paper reports an experience about the use of ShyWiki features and its spatial hypertext model. Fourgroups, consisting of 3 members each, were asked to use ShyWiki for creating, sharing and brainstorming knowledge during the design and documentation of a software architecture. We present the evaluation of a questionnaire that users answered about their perceived usefulness and easiness of use of the spatial and visual properties of ShyWiki, and several of its features. We have also asked the users if they would and the visual and spatial properties useful in a wiki such as Wikipedia. In addition, we have analyzed the visual and spatial structures used in the wiki pages, and which features have been used

Architectural models of ambient-PRISMA in channel ambient calculus

Ambient-PRISMA is an architectural approach for specifying aspect-oriented software architecture and generating code of distributed and mobile systems. Ambient-PRISMA lacks a precise semantics due to the fact that it is based only on a metamodel. In this paper, Ambient-PRISMA is mapped into a formal language called Channel Ambient Calculus, a process algebra for specifying mobile applications that provides channels and ambients as first-class citizens. We argue that the formalization in Channel Ambient Calculus is particularly wellsuited for modelling Ambient-PRISMA

A semantic wiki based on spatial hypertext

Spatial Hypertext Wiki (ShyWiki) is a wiki which represents knowledge using notes that are spatially distributed in wiki pages and have visual characteristics such as colour, size, or font type. The use of spatial and visual characteristics in wikis is important to improve human comprehension, creation and organization of knowledge. Another important capability in wikis is to allow machines to process knowledge. Wikis that formally structure knowledge for this purpose are called semantic wikis. This paper describes how ShyWiki can make use of spatial hypertext in order to be a semantic wiki. ShyWiki can represent knowledge at different levels of formality. Users of ShyWiki can annotate the content and represent semantic relations without being experts of semantic web data description languages. The spatial hypertext features make it suitable for users to represent unstructured knowledge and implicit graphic relations among concepts. In addition, semantic web and spatial hypertext features are combined to represent structured knowledge. The semantic web features of ShyWiki improve navigation and publish the wiki knowledge as RDF resources, including the implicit relations that are analyzed using a spatial parser

Designing mobile aspect-oriented software architectures with ambients

This chapter focuses on designing software architectures of mobile applications using an Aspect-Oriented Architecture Description Language (AOADL). The AOADL follows an approach called Ambient-PRISMA which enables designers to address, in an explicit and abstract way, the notion of location and mobility. Concretely, the AOADL extends the PRISMA AOADL by introducing a primitive called an ambient which is inspired by Ambient Calculus. An ambient defines a bounded place where other architectural elements (components and connectors) reside and are coordinated with elements that are outside an ambient’s boundary. Architectural elements can enter and exit ambients. Ambients, as well as other architectural elements, are defined by importing aspects. Thus, behaviours that change the location of architectural elements are specified separately in distribution aspects. The objective of this chapter is to explain the steps that have to be followed when designing architecture configurations of distributed and mobile systems using the Ambient-PRISMA AOADL. This is explained by using a running example of a distributed auction system

A spatial hypertext wiki for knowledge management

Collaboration is a key factor in successful knowledge management. Recently, wikis have become a popular solution for distributed and collaborative knowledge management. However, most wikis do not appropriately support the facilities needed for group idea creation and can only represent unstructured knowledge (text, images, and hyperlinks) which cannot be reused or systematized. This paper proposes the use of a Spatial Hypertext Wiki (ShyWiki) as a knowledge management wiki which allows users to interact in a distributed and collaborative way in order to generate ideas, and organize and structure knowledge. This type of wiki can help in the externalization of tacit knowledge, and is able to represent explicit knowledge at different levels of formality. Furthermore, the visual and spatial characteristics of this wiki can be used for representing implicit relations among concepts as well as for organizing and visualizing knowledge

Modelling service-oriented architectures of mobile applications by extending saoml with ambients

Mobile applications need to dynamically adapt to requirements of new environments (or locations) as users and their devices continuously move. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a recent approach for designing and developing open and distributed systems. However, SOA has to be extended in order to fully accommodate the requirements of mobile services. This paper presents an approach called AmbientSoaML, which introduces ambients in Service oriented architecture Modeling Language (SoaML) [8] proposed by the OMG in order to allow its models to include mobility primitives. Ambients are considered to be the service providers and the service consumers for providing/consuming mobility services. They also represent the boundaries that services have to cross when moving from one location to another. This paper demonstrates the use of SoaML for modeling SOA of a mobile application in order to motivate the problem our research purports to address

Distributed requirements elicitation using a spatial hypertext wiki

In Global Software Development (GSD), distributed stakeholders (e.g. team members, customers, etc) have to collaborate and communicate in an efficient and effective way to share, create and discuss knowledge. Nowadays, a challenge is to provide integrated collaborative tools that implement creativity techniques which allow distributed stakeholders to externalize their knowledge through brainstorming and share and store knowledge in a common repository. The Requirements Elicitation (RE) process is a clear example where this kind of support is needed in the software development process. This paper presents the Spatial Hypertext Wiki as a collaborative tool for supporting creativity in the RE process. The Spatial Hypertext characteristics of the wiki provide a virtual board where distributed stakeholders can share, brainstorm, negotiate, or prioritize the knowledge involved in RE

A spatial hypertext wiki for architectural knowledge management

The absence of a disciplined approach for capturing and managing architectural knowledge causes the loss of substantial knowledge generated during the software architecture process. This paper describes the use of a Spatial Hypertext Wiki (ShyWiki) as a tool for Architectural Knowledge Management (AKM) support. Specifically, we demonstrate that ShyWiki can be used for implementing lightweight knowledge sharing workspaces, which includes AKM tools, decision support facilities, and activity awareness features. We also describe how distributed stakeholders involved in the software architecting process can share knowledge and manage their tasks by various features provided by ShyWiki

Variability management in software product lines: a systematic review

Variability Management (VM) in Software Product Line (SPL) is a key activity that usually affects the degree to which a SPL is successful. SPL community has spent huge amount of resources on developing various approaches to dealing with variability related challenges over the last decade. To provide an overview of different aspects of the proposed VM approaches, we carried out a systematic literature review of the papers reporting VM in SPL. This paper presents and discusses the findings from this systematic literature review. The results reveal the chronological backgrounds of various approaches over the history of VM research, and summarize the key issues that drove the evolution of different approaches. This study has also identified several gaps that need to be filled by future efforts in this line of research