University of the West of England Home Page - Faculty Online Data (FOLD)
University of the West of England Home Page - Faculty Online Data (FOLD)
Directions and Map of Campus - Multimap zoomable map - Map of Frenchay Campus - Faculty Information System Blog
HTML Tree View - JavaScript - SiteMaps/HomeSiteMap.html.
HTML Table View - SiteMaps/HomeSiteTable.html.
XML Tree View - JavaScript - SiteMaps/HomeSiteMap.xml.
My Research site on Google Sites - index
Further Information/Examples
My Research site on Google Sites - home page
Models - Demonstration/translation/visualisation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm.
I'm developing a survey on usability, I don't think it's quite right yet, but I would still welcome anyone using it to leave feedback on my research topic (or about the survey) - Click Here to take part in a usability survey, and support my PhD research, for anyone who does not want to remain anonymous, I would be pleased to take an interest in their research.
The survey compares these interfaces -
Taxonomy - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm.
Diagrammatic - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm.
And asks for further advice on end-user programming.
I'm interested in feedback from anyone, whatever their level of IT skills.
Survey Results - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#SurveyResults - http://www.toluna.com/polls/37921/Do_You_Think_End-User_Programming_can_be_made_possible?.
Clicking a link will scroll the page to the relevant section
About me, and my research - Research Summary - Research Aim - Research Objectives
My Research site on Google Sites
Ontology Based Modelling Solutions
Semantic Web Modelling Centre of Excellence
End User Programming using the Semantic Web
End User to Software Translation
Ontology and Semantic Web Development
Modelling, Decision Support and Knowledge Management Links, Simulation
Visualisation and Interaction
Visualisation Techniques - Interactive Examples - SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) - Flash - Software Engineering, Java, and Open Source - XML (eXtensible Markup Language) - Web2.0/Ajax
Science, Engineering and the Public
How to Add Google Search to Your Web Site - UWE IT Services - Google Search - Adding Google search to your website.
I am a member of the Bristol Institute of Technology (BIT) UWE Groups I have links with -
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
Systems Modelling research Group - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/research/groups/smrg.html - The primary research focus of the Systems Modelling Research Group (SMRG) is processes. In particular, we are engaged in investigating, modelling, analysing, re-engineering, designing, and simulating processes. We also research how processes may best be supported by IT. Within the group, members have a range of research interests, including: process enactment with mobile devices, enactable declarative process models, language action and process models, narratives and processes in organisations, multi-agent support for business processes, process modelling and health informatics, and process architectures.
This is an overview of my research with lots of links to researchers in similar fields and articles or papers and examples I've found useful. Each section links to a page which goes into more deatil. At the bottom of the page are links to my Publications. There is also an Events guide for any local computing and aerospace events I happen to notice.
My Blog - User-Driven Modelling - Blog
My Ezine Articles - Ezine Articles - This web site lets people submit articles, the content is then checked against their guidelines, and accepted if OK.
I've just began as an International Research Associate for The Institute for End User Computing.
The Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The IEUC Homepage - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html - as edited on Wednesday, May 17, 2006.
This is my Lens, this links together all my research and is at - http://www.squidoo.com/userdrivenprogramming/ - the facilities to edit this are provided by Squidoo.
Contact me - Contact Details
I am a Researcher in the final year of my PhD, my photo is here (from the Hewlett-Packard Jena User Conference), I'm located here - Multimap. I am a member of the British Computer Society. I specialise in applying Semantic Web techniques. For more information about the Semantic Web see the web site of one of the pioneers Tim Berners-Lee Tim Berners-Lee. His page also has a link to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which he chairs.
My website is designed to connect all the research that I have done with research of others, and any research I would like to have completed myself or can see I should have done, or should get involved in. This idea of connecting research via web links fits in with this quote from Steve Jobs of Apple - "Creativity is just connecting things" - Originally From Wired Magazine February 1996 Gary Wolf - Reproduced Here. Currently I am using this website for public outreach, and modelling and visualisation of problems including aerospace modelling and biological taxonomies.
My current research is on a technique of 'User Driven Modelling/Programming'. My intention is to enable non-programmers to create software from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario. This involves a user entering information visually in diagrammatic form. I am developing ways of automatically translating this information into program code in a variety of computer languages. The research is on translating from an abstract model of a problem expressed by a user, to software to solve the problem, and visualise the solution. This is very important and useful for many people who have insufficient time to learn programming languages. I am making use of the open source Protégé ontology editor developed from a project of Stanford University. I have a page on the Protégé community web site. I am researching visualisation techniques to create a human computer interface that allows non experts to create software.
A one page summary of my PhD is available here.
Background information to justify why this approach should be researched is here - User Driven Modelling Background.
A Flash movie that presents this concept using a simple example - User Driven Modelling Demonstration.
Translation demonstration (A Flash Player is required to view this) - RectangleDemo
 | - Explanation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/RectangleDemo/RectangleDemo.viewlet/RectangleDemo_launcher.html |
Simple SVG Example of Rectangle as demonstrated in the Flash Movie - Internet Explorer Version - Requires SVG player - SVG Rectangle Internet Explorer.
Simple SVG Example of Rectangle as demonstrated in the Flash Movie - Mozilla Firefox - SVG Rectangle Mozilla Firefox.
A summary of my PhD work is available based on a Powerpoint presentation - HTML - Research Seminar - HTML - Powerpoint - Research Seminar - Powerpoint - Adobe Acrobat - Research Seminar - PDF.
A Detailed Explanation including a simple example, and a complex example (Aircraft Wing Spar) - User Driven Modelling Detailed Explanation - In Depth Explanation.
I have created examples of User Driven Modelling, which I am developing to aid computer literate users to create software models. These examples are applied to aircraft cost optimisation, though the technique should have a wide range of applications firstly in modelling and eventually more general applications. I am putting as many as possible of these examples onto a web site and seeking comments and feedback for testing these techniques. I'm also putting links to other peoples' examples on this page, so if you are interested in my linking to your example(s) please email me at .
I gave a SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
I am also linking my research site into networks of sites for those with similar research interests. This also supports a proposal which I am working on (for a Semantic Web Modelling Centre of Excellence) to provide a network of support for modelling researchers, and an infrastructure to allow them to add models to a structured and searchable web site. This would be combined with seminars and conferences to allow developers and users of models to work together.
Models for Visualisation and/or calculation - Models.
I am writing for this web site to support this work and adding the explanation pages, over time I hope to receive and respond to feedback, and then to write up my results for my PhD.
A very short explanation of what my research is about - So would be a good place to start - Explanation.
I'm in the UWE Bristol Institute of Technology and mainly look at tree based systems.
This is my MSc research that I've advanced for my PhD - Early Research - MSc Research Summary - The earliest research was into providing a user driven model development example that would provide the kind of user interface and visualisation required for interactive costing.
My Staff Profile is here - here - Using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation).
A Staff Profile based on XML and XQuery eXist for the Faculty Information System - is available here.
Scenta Profile - Careers - Role Models - Science, Engineering and Maths Careers Catalogue.
I've created my Friend of a Friend File FOAF using FOAF-a-Matic, More FOAF information available is here. If anyone wants to be added to this as please let me know. I'm interested in keeping in contact with researchers in similar topics.
- My Friend of a Friend Representation - Peter Hale - Visualisation of FOAF file. - FOAF Explorer. - New FOAF files for people can be created at FOAF-a-matic, or people added on this Wiki - FOAFBulletinBoard.
This is my Wife Jo's FOAF Jo Hale.
My CV is here in Word Format, and Adobe PDF Format.
I also have a Ziggs profile Ziggs.com.
I was involved with the Fold project to create a semantic information system for CEMS (Computing Engineering and Mathematical Sciences) at UWE web site, blog.
Enabling Decision Support and Costing of Product Designs by using Visual Metaphors - HTML - HTML Version - Word - Word Adobe Acrobat PDF
PhD Summary - User Driven Programming - article.
The research question to be answered in this thesis is - To what extent is it possible to improve user-driven collaborative software development through the use of diagrams and without requiring people to learn computer languages?
This research involves enabling computer literate people who are not programmers to create software. The means for this is construction of visual diagrams that represent the task, in a similar way to how family trees and taxonomies can be represented as diagrams. The visual interface is available from a website and the research involves translating this to code. The aim is to enable programming without requiring people to learn computer languages. An important objective is to make it possible for a wider range of people to collaborate on software development.
The methodology for this is automation by translation from a human level of abstraction to software.
The theory behind this thesis is that it is possible to create a systematic diagrammatic representation of logical thought to enable representation of user's wishes to a computer.
The problem examined in this thesis is that of allowing domain experts to create decision support software. This is a way of testing the assumption that these domain expert’s thoughts can be represented in a systematic diagrammatic way, and then translated to computer code. The main emphasis is on engineers, who experience problems in creating and sharing their software. The alternatives they have for creation of software are spreadsheets, which do not have collaboration and information modelling abilities sufficiently built in, or complex software that needs considerable expertise to use, and often still has insufficient collaboration or information modelling capabilities.
The hypothesis is that it is possible to create an end-user programming environment, usable by non-programmers, which can have a wide variety of uses. The aim of this research is to create a modelling system that can be edited by computer literate non-programmers, and so demonstrate an application of end-user programming that could be used in a generic way. The possibilities for a generic user-driven programming environment will be explained. It is possible to create an end-user visual programming environment using Semantic Web technologies, especially for modelling of information, where this approach is well suited. All that is necessary is to link the information visually via equations, and store these results for reuse and collaboration. This can make translation from humans to computers easier and more reliable than current software systems and languages. The use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems.
C.S. Peirce (1906) stated in 'Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism' "Come on, my Reader, and let us construct a diagram to illustrate the general course of thought; I mean a system of diagrammatization by means of which any course of thought can be represented with exactitude". That is the purpose of this research, but to limit the scope and so make application of this theory testable the research is restricted mainly to engineers (because they often think in terms of diagrams) and to the domain of modelling (which often requires diagrams). So the aim is to apply the research first where it can have the most use and encourage others to expand it for other domains and other users. This research is intended to simplify computing for computer literate non-programmers, this includes many engineers. The main research area is enabling users such as engineers to model the problems they encounter in manufacturing and design. However, the wider aim is to prototype research for enabling a larger range of software users to model their problems. The intention is to create collaborative tools that allow users to develop software in a way they will be familiar with from their use of spreadsheets.
Peirce, C.S. - 1906. Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism - http://www.existentialgraphs.com/peirceoneg/prolegomena.htm.
PhD Research Summary - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2008/03/phd-thesis-summary.html.
The thesis explains research into modelling problems using software. It advocates an approach to software that enables users to create models, and share them online. This can assist modellers to become end-user programmers and be in control of the model creation process.
This research arises out of projects to create systems to facilitate management of design and cost related knowledge within aerospace organisations, with the aim of using this knowledge to reduce the costs of designing and manufacturing products. This thesis identifies ways that problems arising from the model development process can be addressed, by a new way of providing for the creation of software. With experience from projects, which have used a combination of proprietary software solutions and bespoke software, it is possible to identify the approach of User Driven Programming (UDP) as an effective software development technique. This research brings together approaches of object orientation, the Semantic Web, relational databases, and model driven and event driven programming. Frankel et al. (2004) explain the opportunities for and importance of this kind of research. The approach encourages much greater user involvement in software development. The advantages of increasing user involvement in software development are explained by (Olsson, 2004). The intention of this research is to allow users to create the model/program they develop without typing code. This research brings together End-user Programming, Modelling and the Semantic Web, so the shaded area is examined.
Visualisation is important to all three of these research areas.
The diagram below shows the research direction this thesis moved in over time.
My Research Area - This aim of my research is to try to bring together the areas of End User Programming, Modelling and the Semantic Web. So I'm examining the area marked in yellow. These research areas are enabled by a visual interface with the end user.
Research Direction Spiral
By the end of this research it was perceived that this particular combination as indicated by the mid point of the yellow section was currently under researched by the wider community.
End-User Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Semantic Web - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm.
Semantic Web Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
Frankel, D., 2004. Hayes, P. Kendall, E. McGuinness, D., The Model Driven Semantic Web - 1st International Workshop on the Model-Driven Semantic Web (MDSW2004) Enabling Knowledge Representation and MDA® Technologies to Work Together (2004).
Olsson, E., 2004, What active users and designers contribute in the design process, Interacting with Computers 16 (2004) 377-401.
This research will examine creation of models and modelling systems, and how this can be eased so that a wider range of the population can achieve this. It will also identify ways that creation of models and modelling systems is similar to other types of programming, and how the research can be applied more generally. The main users of the system will be engineers; possibilities for wider application will be explored.
The purpose of user driven modelling/programming is to enable non programmers to create and adjust models in order to maximise the maintenance, extensibility, ease of use, and sharing of information in models and modelling systems. The research will investigate the following areas in order to ease the process of model creation.
Maintenance
Maintenance of models and modelling systems will be improved by:-
Extensibility
Extensibility will also be improved by the above means; this enables understanding of a model and so allows for easier re-use. A clear structure and visualisation can be edited with fewer worries about unintended consequences (side effects). This is to be achieved by enabling model builders and users to modify the ontology, and to provide and use translation/ modelling capability, and visualisation. This is the three-step translation process developed for User Driven Programming/Modelling. A person could make changes to whichever step is most appropriate depending on the task they are performing and their interests and preferences. McGuinness (2003) observes the importance of extensibility, "Extensibility. It will be impossible to anticipate all of the needs an application will have. Thus, it is important to use an environment that can adapt along with the needs of the users and the projects."
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Ease of Use
Clear structuring and visualisation of information also assists in making a modelling system easier to use.
Sharing of Information
Maintenance, extensibility and ease of use are the key drivers for sharing of information. Achievement of the objectives in these areas would enable collaboration. Ontologies are used as a way of representing explicit and implicit knowledge. This is visualised as a taxonomy type view of the ontology information.
Methodology for Achievement of Objectives
Achievement of the above objectives can make possible creation of manageable, maintainable, and flexible models. To enable these objectives, a diagrammatic representation of models will be used as well as a taxonomy based visualisation. This will make it possible for engineers to use an interface that many of them are familiar with. Translation capabilities will be provided to enable better communication between computer systems, and between humans and computer systems. This will allow visualisation of chains of equations which are common in cost modelling. This visualisation will make it easier for people to add and manage information in large models, and identify cost information. A cost modelling example will be used throughout the thesis, but this work is relevant to modelling in general.
Information management and Interaction
This work will be based on information held in an Ontology, accessed using Semantic Web technology. Cost models will be constructed from information chosen by users through an interface that interacts with the user to establish what information is required, how it should be processed, what calculations should be made, and how should it be displayed, e.g. as a diagram or taxonomy.
Cheung et al. (2007) assert the necessity for collaboration tools to support early stage product development within networked enterprises. They explain how greater use of collaboration tools can be achieved. Cheung et al. make the point that any collaborative system to support the early stages of product development can also be used for the later stages, providing there is an open standard basis for information representation. Linking of models with each other and with ontologies is essential in order to deal with the increased complexity of products and collaborative engineering that Cheung et al. explain. This linking can be enabled by techniques advocated in here - Interoperability, and an ontology based infrastructure as described here - Ontologies for Modelling. Fensel et al. (2001) explain that organizations are often geographically dispersed and act as virtual teams, so virtual collaboration is essential. Corcho et al. (2003) examine the issue of ontology based collaboration and argue that "The future work in this field should be driven towards the creation of a common integrated workbench for ontology developers to facilitate ontology development, exchange, evaluation, evolution and management, to provide methodological support for these tasks, and translations to and from different ontology languages. This workbench should not be created from scratch, but instead integrating the technology components that are currently available". This can provide the infrastructure for ontology based modelling. Corcho et al. compare, contrast and describe ontology development tools, making use of a helpful tabular format. McGuinness (2003) also investigates ontology tools/systems, and advocates their use for supporting collaboration for distributed teams.
Modelling systems investigated for this thesis must provide interaction with an ontology. This is an essential requirement because of the objective of improving Sharing of Information outlined here - Objectives, and with a methodology explained here - Methodology. Ontologies provide the infrastructure for Step 1 of the translation process. The systems investigated below also provide a mechanism for Step 2 translation of domain level modelling into open standard representation and vice versa. Ontology based systems could provide a mechanism for translation/communication with external applications (Step 3). Vanguard System was used for this step 2 and 3 translation within a prototype system, but other tools such as below would also be needed for a full scale implementation.
The following systems are not an exclusive list but they all use open standards for information representation and translation, so this ensures there should be a development path, whatever changes there may be in the software market. This use of open standards also ensures that a system can link with most environments used by others. This enables a translation and visualisation approach to ensure that new models can be added using the existing ontology/ies, and that design changes in the ontology and translation can enable modelling of different problems. So if there is a new problem to be modelled there are two ways to achieve this, adapt the ontology and/or adapt the translation and modelling approach.
A light-weight ontology is used for the thesis, and this is evaluated for usefulness before deciding whether it would need to be more structured. McGuinness (2003) mentions that "building the more complicated ontologies may be cost prohibitive for certain applications." Issues about visualisation of light weight ontologies are examined by Fluit et al. (2003). Fluit et al. examine scalability of ontologies, and visualisation, they recommend visualising ontology schemas and instances in a related coherent way. Hunter (2002) evaluates engineering ontologies and gives examples. Hunter explains how taxonomies can be the basis of the definitions for an ontology, and that commercial software is available. Hunter gives examples of the Ministry of Defense technology taxonomy, and the Boeing online ontology. An important reason for creating an open standards central ontology is that it can be accessed by many different applications. Research of others in this field assists with interoperability of ontologies (Corcho and Gómez-Pérez, 2000) compare and contrast ‘traditional’ and web-based ontology languages, and (Corcho et al., 2003) - examine ontology tools and techniques. Noy and McGuinness (2004) describe ontologies by means of examples, and outline a methodology for their systematic construction. The open standard OWL (Web Ontology Language) was used for this thesis; the role of OWL is explained here - OWL (Web Ontology Language). Bechhofer and Carroll (2004) explain the three classes of OWL documents, and the sublanguages that define them - Lite, DL, and Full.
References
Bechhofer, S., Carrol, J., 2004. Parsing owl dl: trees or triples?. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web, NY, USA, pp 266-275.
Cheung, W. M., Matthews, P. C., Gao, J. X., Maropoulos, P. G., 2007. Advanced product development integration architecture: an out-of-box solution to support distributed production networks. International Journal of Production Research March 2007.
Corcho, O., Fernández-López, M., Gómez-Pérez, A., 2003. Methodologies, Tools and Languages For Building Ontologies. Where is their Meeting Point?. Data and Knowledge Engineering, 46, pp 41-64.
Corcho, O., Gómez-Pérez, A., 2000. A Roadmap to Ontology Specification Languages. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, Chicago, USA.
Fensel, D. Van Harmelen, F. Horrocks, I. McGuinness, D. Patel-Schneider, P. F., 2001. OIL: An ontology infrastructure for the semantic web. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(2), pp 38-45. - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2001/IEEE-IS01.pdf.
Fluit, C., Marta, S., Harmelen, F. V., Staab, S., Studer, R., 2003. Handbook on Ontologies in Information Systems. Springer-Verlag.
Hunter, A., Engineering ontologies - http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/a.hunter/tradepress/eng.html - Anthony Hunter.
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Noy, N.F., McGuinness, D., 2004. Semantic Integration: A Survey Of Ontology-Based Approaches. SIGMOD Record, Special Issue on Semantic Integration, 33(4).
Information on my Semantic web and ontology research, and useful links is available here - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#OntologyDevelopment.
The representation of program structure also needs to be visualised to End-User Programmers so they can create and edit content. Semantic Web research is not an end in itself as without the combination with End-User Programming/Modelling in order that people can create programs; there is insufficient incentive for creation and use of Semantic Web information. The reverse of this combination is that end-user modelling/programming is not practical without creation and use of structured information available through an accessible interface, such as representations using the Semantic Web. This fusion of research and technologies is illustrated by the relationships between the research shown by Lieberman (2000), and McGuinness (2003), which contain explanations and links between End-user Programming and Semantic Web research areas. In order to increase the use of Semantic Web technologies it is necessary to create applications that make use of the Semantic Web for practical applications. Enabling modelling with Semantic Web technologies could encourage domain experts to fill ontologies with useful information, so generating more benefit from their use.
References
Lieberman, H., 2000. Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software, Morgan Kaufmann.
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Within this research the terms 'user', and 'domain expert' are used interchangeably. The user or domain expert may be an end-user, or an end-user programmer/modeller depending on their circumstances and purposes. The user is a domain expert who wants a problem represented and modelled using software. The domain is engineering, but this research could be applied to other domains.
I examine technologies that can be used for providing translation capabilities from a domain level representation of the problem to code. These technologies can also be used for separating information from program code so that users can edit the information directly via a visual interface, without having to edit code.
My intention is to examine tools and technologies that can translate from a domain representation and/or abstract representation of a problem into program code, and examine a systematic way to make this possible. Technologies to enable this, with links to explanations of them are shown below :-
The way these technologies were used in my research in order to achieve the above aims is described here.
The table below illustrates the layered architecture on which ontology systems are built. This thesis uses this layered architecture approach to implement the translation for User Driven Modelling/Programming, as illustrated here - Explanation and Diagram. So the main benefit of researching these tools was the inspiration they provided for translation process design and implementation, from a domain level of representation to a code level. The table shows tools, technologies, and languages that can assist in this :-
|
Domain Representation |
Modelling/Programming |
Abstract Representation |
Structured Data File |
|
RDF, RDF(S), DAML+OIL, OWL, RuleML, SWRL, MathML, RSS, SVG, VRML, UML, XMI |
|||
The ontology editors and modelling tools are used either in a specific domain, for general modelling and programming or both, they make use of structured languages to represent their information. The intention of this research is to enable users to navigate between tools such as these without necessarily being aware of which tool or technology they are using. The way to achieve this is through an end-user programming environment that makes use of these technologies. A person should be able to model their domain using a visual modelling language, this modelling language should then translate the representation to an abstract representation, which can be translated to open standard formats, able to be held as structured data files that can be understood by computer software. The Modelling/Programming layer provides a translation service and can perform calculations, therefore converting a source tree to a result tree. The intention is for the user to be able to use the domain layer tool without having to interact directly with any of the layers below. The results are then fed back to the user, who can drill down through the result tree in order to find the reasoning behind the results.
An advantage of using a stack of open standard representations is that this allows for choice in which search language(s) to use, for example XQuery can be used for XML, and SPARQL for RDF and OWL. The main disadvantage is that either the structure must be simple enough to be represented at the lowest level of Semantics, or loss of Semantics through the downward translation must be allowed for and managed. This disadvantage is the reason for concentrating on use of light ontologies.
Online Examples
The table below shows the way that technologies were used or created for User Driven Modelling/Programming.
The problem examined is that of allowing domain experts to create decision support software. The main emphasis is on engineers. Engineers experience problems in creating and sharing their decision support software. The alternatives they have for creation of software are spreadsheets, which do not have collaboration and information modelling abilities sufficiently built in, or complex software that needs considerable expertise to use, and often still has insufficient collaboration or information modelling capabilities. The cost in time and person effort of developing decision support systems, often involving requests for help from IT service providers who manage specialist systems, can be too high. Instead ad hoc decisions are made with insufficient justification or records for use as lessons learned. The problem and possible solutions are illustrated using the example of modelling the cost of wing components, the aims of the research are to provide the foundation for a generic solution to these, and other end user programming problems.
The hypothesis is that it is possible to create an end user programming environment, usable by non-programmers, which can have a wide variety of uses. The aim of this research is to create a modelling system that can be edited by computer literate non-programmers, and so demonstrate an application of end user programming that could be used in a more generic way. The possibilities for a generic user-driven programming environment will be explained. It is possible to create an end user visual programming environment using Semantic Web technologies, especially for modelling of information, where this approach is well suited. All that is necessary is to link the information visually via equations, and store these results for reuse and collaboration. This can make translation from humans to computers easier and more reliable than current software systems and languages. The use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems. Although other researchers have prototyped Semantic Web languages such as RDF (Resource Description Framework) (World Wide Web Consortium) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) based search tools, this has not yet been combined into a comprehensive application that is usable for end user programming of a large range of modelling problems. A flexible interface built with Semantic Web Languages can provide an interactive programming environment for computer literate non-programmers to manipulate information and construct their own solution oriented models.
The metaphor behind the provision of this End-User programming environment is that of visual representation of interlinked information snippets. These snippets will be visualised as nodes or translated to other views. The nodes can be linked via equations. An example of this is an engineering component, which can be viewed as interconnected nodes of information or as a diagram. The same information can be viewed and translated both ways. The information can be further translated into computer languages to make use of compilers and interpreters that can run models that perform calculation. This research is a test case for a whole new approach that could be possible, of collaborative end user programming by domain experts. The end user programmers will be enabled to use a visual interface where the visualization of the software exactly matches the structure of the software itself, making translation between user and computer, and vice versa, much more practical. This makes it possible to model any problem, by creating items and equations that link them.
In order to make user driven modelling and programming possible, it is essential that a communication mechanism is established, which allows users to generate changes and receive changes generated by the modelling system.
Types of Change
There are two types of change that can be applied to the model driven programming system, User Generated, and Model Generated.
User Generated
Figure 1 shows a user initiating a change, which is to delete a node from the bottom left and attach a new node to a branch in the top tight. The tree is translated to structured text, and this is further translated to Code.
Figure 1 - User Generated Change
For the second user generated change shown in figure 2 an object represented by a tree is visualised as a diagram. The user can amend either the diagram or the tree, in either case the change is filtered to the alternative representation and translated to the structured text and code.
Figure 2 - User Generated Change, Alternative Interfaces
Model Generated
A model generated change is initiated by the model itself, which changes the code and the structured text in response to a calculation (that may have been requested by the user). The model passes a translated result tree to the user interface to let the user know that the recalculations have been finished, and give the user the results using a suitable visualisation. This is shown in figure 3.
Figure 3 - Model Generated Change
Model Driven Programming and User Driven Model Driven Programming.
Model-Driven Programming - http://ezinearticles.com/?Model-Driven-Programming&id=1350655 - Spahn et al. (2007) explain that end-users are domain experts not IT professionals, and because they cannot program their own solution, this is requiring them to communicate their needs to IT developers. Spahn et al. argue for the empowerment of users to customise software by providing an abstraction layer to hide technical details and allow for concentrating on business needs. Model-Driven Programming and the Semantic Web are explained by Frankel et al. (2004), and they discuss how these techniques can be combined. Bringing together model-driven programming with the Semantic Web can enable diagrammatic programming, and translation to structured and searchable Semantic Web output, this eases visualisation and interaction problems at each stage of translation. Visualisation and interaction with ontologies is important for model-driven programming research in this thesis. Frankel et al. investigate translation of UML and entity relationship diagrams that use graphical notations and store in formats such as XMI into OWL.
Research Theory influencing this Translation Mechanism
The use of the Semantic Web in my thesis is to be a means for open standard representation of information (built on XML), transformation into different representations as required, and for provision of a high level interface as a tool for model creation, and translation to program code. An 'elaborator', is used, this is a translator that converts the diagrammatic representation of the problem into software code. Translations can be performed into any programming or meta-programming language or open standard information representation language, the visualisation of the model created can be displayed on the web. This translation builds on research in program and model transformation. The translation software performs transformations as required between different programming languages and visual model views. This has been prototyped, but it is important to further this research in order to establish a user base, and make the translation generic. Figure 1 shows the process.
Figure 1 Translation Process
Implementation
Translation Process
Vanguard System to Protégé and Access database link instructions - Text File - with instructions for developers trying to to this.
This research involves finding alternative ways of representing models, which do not require the user to write code. The intention is to make it easier to interact with and change the models, and to share and develop information with colleagues. The information used in the models resides in an ontology, and from this ontology models can be automatically produced via a recursive translation tool that has been prototyped.
The research for my thesis uses a technique of interpreting information in order to create decision support programs automatically in response to user choices. This technique is then extended for use in the automatic creation of programs in other computer languages and systems. This can be achieved by automated translation of the Vanguard System information into other languages. Vanguard system acts as a reasoning agent on the translated ontology information to derive new information; as recommended by Uschold and Gruninger (2004). The basis of this is that elaborators are nodes in the tree, which are automatically created and dynamically write objects. This allows the wing box definition to be translated to the decision support system for costing and then to other software such as web pages for further processing or visualization. An open standard semantic editor Protégé created by Stanford University was used to structure this information into related taxonomies. This ontology holds the definitions of nodes representing information, and calculations to be performed. Taxonomies are created in Protégé for 'Parts', 'Materials', 'Consumables', 'Processes', 'Rates', and 'Tooling' for a prototype costing system. 'Parts' is the core taxonomy. New categories can be produced as required. Domain experts would edit the taxonomies; these experts can specify the relationships of classes and the equations to be used via a visual user interface in Protégé. These relationships are evaluated and translated to produce computer code.
Uschold and Gruninger (2004) describe an approach of 'Ontology as Specification'. This involves building the ontology for the required domain, producing software consistent with the ontology, and translating between these. The translation process consists of :-
Figure 2 illustrates how code is produced from the semantic relationships.
Figure 2 Translation Process Implementation
Uschold and Gruninger (2004, 61) describe the benefits of this approach as "documentation, maintenance, reliability, and knowledge re-use". This translation process is also used for purposes that Uschold and Gruninger describe as 'Neutral Authoring', and 'Ontology-Based Search' demonstrated here Research Uschold and Gruninger (2004, 61) describe neutral authoring as providing an "artifact authored in single language, based on ontology - converted to multiple target formats". Code written for this thesis within Vanguard System provides multiple translations to different languages and formats. Uschold and Gruninger describe the benefits of Neutral Authoring as "knowledge reuse, maintainability, long term knowledge retention."
The model created (resulting form translation) can be used as it is, or be a template for the generation of a further model(s). An example interface, a section from a model produced automatically, is shown in figure 3. This information is saved using a generic structure based on keys that define all relationships, into a relational database. This enables storage of hierarchical data in a relational database and also allows for separation of information into tables according to category, and the use of SQL (Structured Query Language) to automatically query and structure the information as required. An advantage of using a stack of open standard representations is that this allows for choice in which search language(s) to use, for example XQuery can be used for XML, and SPARQL for RDF and OWL. The main disadvantage is that either the structure must be simple enough to be represented at the lowest level of Semantics, or loss of Semantics through the downward translation must be allowed for and managed. This disadvantage is the reason for concentrating on use of light ontologies. Vanguards' tree based decision support tool Vanguard System reads this information and represents it as colour-coded nodes. The translation code written for this thesis automatically queries the taxonomies that make up the ontology and links the information as required for the model. The translation code builds in all the links required for the equations and thus links up information from different taxonomies, the information is colour coded according to which taxonomy it is from. This same kind of translation code can be reused for any modelling problem, it builds the equations and follows the links to build each equation tree, and attach this to the rest of the tree. The decision support tool can perform calculations and so output results. Figure 3 shows how the decision support tool can automatically construct and represent a branch in the tree, visualize an equation and calculate a result. Red nodes represent processes, green nodes represent the part definition and magenta nodes represent resources. This illustrates how 3 taxonomies have been automatically linked because they are needed in this calculation. In this prototype hundreds of calculations have been related to each other, this example illustrates that 'Area' was also calculated, and that this forms part of the tree for the 'Hand Layup Tool Cleaning Cost', which in turn is passed into other calculations. Hundreds of calculations using information from all the taxonomies are linked as required in this costing example. The time taken to perform the translation from the ontology and to perform all the calculations is a less than a second.
Figure 3 Ontology to Model Conversion
Though this research aims to make visual diagrammatic programming possible the emphasis is not just on visual programming. End-user programmers might prefere a visual interface and could use this but this is likely to have a speed and performance penalty. Therefore the translation must ensure that any code produced is accessible in text forma aswell as being visualised. This translation approach ensures that code can be produced in multiple languages, so this makes text based code editing more accessible. Use of open standards assists in this translation process.
The research has been applied mainly to aerospace cost modelling. Cost models have been constructed from information chosen by users through an interface that interacts with people to establish what information is required, how it should be processed, what calculations should be made, and how it should be displayed, e.g. as a diagram or taxonomy. Structuring of information through Ontology and Semantic Web techniques, and enabling End-User Programming through visualisation and interaction can achieve effective production of generic models.
The modelling system can then output the results to web-based visualisations, or to program/meta-program code.
Figure 4 shows the spar volume calculation uploaded to the web. This illustrates that an ontology defined in Step 1, has had calculation and translation performed in Step 2 and can now be visualised in Step 3.
Figure 4 Spar Volume calculation model running on the web
Uschold, M., Gruninger, M., 2004, Ontologies and Semantics for Seamless Connectivity, - http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/record/issues/0412/12.uschold-9.pdf - Boeing, Univerity of Maryland - Association for Computer Machinery - Special Interest Group on Management of Data - SIGMOD Record December 2004 Vol 33 Number 4.
I am a member of the newly formed Bristol Intitute of Technology (BIT) and have links with the centres below -
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
SERG is led by Dr. Odeh and has a number of acadmic and industrial associates.
Projects
OntoREM: Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology - This research aims to investigate and develop an Ontology driven Requirements Engineering Methodology (OntoREM) that addresses the needs of complex, trans-national and multidisciplinary fields with particular reference but not limited to the aerospace industry.
SoAgile: Adaptive Model-Driven Service-Oriented Architectures for Agile Cyber-Enterprise Processes - The SoAgile project aims to design, develop, demonstrate, and disseminate a service-adaptable virtualisation layer and an encompassing evolutionary service-oriented and model-driven engineering environment.
My SERG and CCCS (Centre for Complex Cooperative Systems) Page
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/members.php?menu=off&expand=peterhale#peterhale.
SMRG (Systems Modelling research Group) - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/research/groups/smrg.html - The primary research focus of the Systems Modelling Research Group (SMRG) is processes. In particular, we are engaged in investigating, modelling, analysing, re-engineering, designing, and simulating processes. We also research how processes may best be supported by IT. Within the group, members have a range of research interests, including: process enactment with mobile devices, enactable declarative process models, language action and process models, narratives and processes in organisations, multi-agent support for business processes, process modelling and health informatics, and process architectures.
A possible project would be to partner with industry, other academics, and interested people in order to build a semantic web modelling system for end user programming. In order to achieve this we want to examine applications that aim to assist in this, and then write extensively about how we used them and how they helped towards our goal. We particularly want to target modelling that is too complex for use of spreadsheets, and sharing of information via an ontology.
This would apply techniques in managing, categorising and visualising information to provide decision support for design and manufacture.
Using Semantic Web techniques it is possible to share modelling knowledge by using semantic web techniques to enable a wide range of people to create web models to visualise common problems. Semantic web software will be used to categorise and manage these models. Events would take place to allow a community of developers and users to share their knowledge.
End User Programming Diagram - Illustrating need to translate between human and computer and the increase in amount of calculation between domains of knowledge management, decision support, and simulation. The increase in the other direction is of complexity of information from simulation to decision support to knowledge management.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Modelling and Semantic Web Methodology - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
Models for Visualisation and/or calculation - Semantic Web Modelling Examples Page - Semantic Web Examples.
OntoREM: Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology - This research aims to investigate and develop an Ontology driven Requirements Engineering Methodology (OntoREM) that addresses the needs of complex, trans-national and multidisciplinary fields with particular reference but not limited to the aerospace industry.
RDF Resource Description Framework/Semantic Web - RDF information/Semantic Web.
Semantic Web Applications - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2008/05/semantic-web-applications.html - This article is about the need for provision of Semantic Web applications to increase the amount of Semantic Web information that could be searched. This could result in a virtuous circle of Semantic Web applications creating Semantic Web information, and so justifying the creation of more Semantic Web applications to access it. The article advocates the use of Semantic Web applications for modelling and end-user programming, and integration into business applications. - 5th May 2008
Semantic Web Collaboration - http://ezinearticles.com/?Semantic-Web-Collaboration&id=1160019 - This article discusses how Semantic Web/Web 2.0 collaboration can enable ontology editing. This helps reach agreement on the meaning of terms, and encourages end-user modelling/programming by enabling simplified development of online applications. This could be an efficient way of managing large ontologies with multiple users. - 9th May 2008.
Semantic Web Development - article - Peter Hale.
Semantic Web Modelling concept - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/semanticwebmodellingconcept.htm - Proposal Concept.
Semantic Web Modelling proposal - Semantic Web Modelling - Draft.
Semantic Web Page - Semantic Web Page.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
Systems Engineering and Simulation Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
UWE Student Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Web%20Semantic/Index.html - Investigating and implement the idea of 'ModConsWest' (Modelling and Constructionism with Web based E-Learning Semantic Tools)" - Lee Ediagbonya and Awaab Eltahir.
For this research the focus is on combining the development of dynamic software created in response to user actions, with object oriented, rule based and Semantic Web techniques. The Semantic Web was defined by Berners-Lee (2001) as "a web of data that can be processed directly or indirectly by machines". The research has examined ways of structuring information, processing and searching this information to provide a modelling capability. Research by Aziz et al. (2005) was investigated. This research examines how open standards software can assist in an organisation's collaborative product development. Wang et al. (2005) outlines an approach for integrating distributed relational database systems and Tao et al. (2004) develop a model for sharing information between enterprises using XML. The automated production of software containing recursive Structured Query Language (SQL) queries enables this. This approach is a type of high level Meta-programming. Meta-programming and structured language is explained by Dmitriev (2006) and Mens et al. (2002), and here. The approach is intended to solve the problems of cost and time over-run, and failure to achieve objectives that are the common malaise of software development projects, and many projects that use software solutions. Grant and Ngwenyama (2003) explain these problems, which are common organizational and technical issues. The problems examined in this research are lack of shared understanding, lack of communication and co-ordination among departments, inconsistencies in documentation, and duplication of effort. The creation of a web-based visual representation of the information will allow people to examine and agree on information structures, a use for taxonomies and ontologies explained by McGuinness (2003).
This alternative approach aims to develop an integrated decision support system where maintenance and extension of information can be undertaken by model builder(s) via visual editing of library taxonomies. To facilitate this, information is visualised clearly in a structured understandable way, and this information can be shared via web-based visualisation. This can be achieved by use of open standard languages for distribution of information over networks and between applications.
The User Driven Programming approach advocated in this thesis has the advantage that it is using a modelling approach for creating modelling solutions and involves creating systems to create systems. This makes it possible to solve the problem by breaking it down into stages and allowing software developers to concentrate on the most complex software problems and domain experts to be more free to concentrate on their domain problem. The standardisation possible in this approach can allow software developers to create modelling systems for generic purposes that can be customised and developed by domain experts to model their domain. This methodology can be facilitated by -
These possible solutions are not mutually exclusive and their combination could be the best way of providing usable collaborative modelling tools for computer literate end users and domain experts. The link between these alternative ways of advancing current research is translation and User Driven Modelling/Programming.
The diagram shows the solutions, and how these make User Driven Modelling/Programming possible - .
Methodology Diagram - Enabling User Driven Modelling/Programming
Improve/Build On End-User Interaction and Ease of Use.
This section examines the way software developers could make use of conceptual modelling type solutions to enable users to program their own modelling solutions. Examples of such solutions are ontology/taxonomy tools, UML (Unified Modelling Language), Scientific/Engineering Modelling tools, and Business and Process Modelling tools. McGuinness (2003) advocates conceptual modelling to provide ease of use for end-users, "conceptual modeling support, graphical browsing tools, etc. all may be important." McGuinness examined how ontology tools can assist with such end-user conceptual modelling.
Building an end-user interface and extending the translation capabilities of tools such as UML (Unified Modelling Language) and/or engineering and scientific modelling tools could make them more usable by end users. UML tools are used mainly by software developers, and engineering/scientific modelling tools are mainly used by domain experts who have software skills.
De Souza (2007) argues that the goal of human-computer interaction (HCI) will evolve from making systems easy to use to making systems that are easy to develop. Building an end-user interface and extending the translation capabilities of tools such as UML (Unified Modelling Language) and/or engineering and scientific modelling tools could make them more usable by end-users. UML tools are used mainly by software developers, and engineering/scientific modelling tools are mainly used by domain experts who have software skills.
De Souza, C., 2007. Designers Need End-User Software Engineering. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1083.
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Improve/Build On Information Structuring and Visualisation.
Improving the structuring and visualisation capabilities spreadsheets is necessary for improving their collaboration capabilities. This could enable better customisation of spreadsheet templates for particular domains and users.
Spreadsheets are a useful application of the technique of Programming by Demonstration, this is used in the 'Record Macro' Functionality. Programming by Example is expanded on by (Cypher et al., 1993) and (Lieberman, 2000).
Improve/Build On Modelling Capability and End-User Interaction.
Ontology tools can be made more usable for User Driven Modelling/Programming by extending the modelling capabilities and equation calculations and providing an end-user interface. Ontology tools can be linked also with modelling tools and spreadsheets through implementation of a User-Driven Modelling/Programming translator (explained later). Ontology tools can be linked through this translation mechanism to client Semantic Web/Web 2.0 tools or directly to Semantic Web/Web 2.0 tools on the server to provide facilities such as improved visualisation and editing.
Improve/Build On Modelling Capability and End-User Interaction.
Improving and building on modelling capabilities and end-user interaction can be achieved by extending the capabilities of Semantic Web and Web 2.0 style web based development tools to allow collaborative modelling.
Semantic Web/Web 2.0 tools can be made more usable for User Driven Modelling/Programming by extending the modelling capabilities and equation calculations and providing an end-user interface. Semantic Web/Web 2.0 tools can be linked also with modelling tools and spreadsheets through implementation of a User-Driven Modelling/Programming translator (as is also the case for ontology tools). Semantic Web/Web 2.0 tools can be linked through this translation mechanism to Ontology tools or directly to Ontology tools on the server to provide improved structuring of information.
Google developed Google Spreadsheets, and other spreadsheet like Web 2.0 tools were developed. While online spreadsheet type software developed for this thesis and other tools such as developed by Google are a useful extension of spreadsheets onto the web and encourage collaboration, they still need further development and customisation in order to structure and visualise information to make collaboration effective when dealing with complex models. An advantage of web spreadsheets over traditional spreadsheets is they enable easier customisation and development of their capabilities and linking to ontology tools through open source languages. It is also then easier to link the spreadsheet to online visualisation and modelling tools.
Research Development
It is important to enable changes to the design of the information source and its structure as necessary, even when it contains information. This makes possible continuous improvement of the information and its representation together. Clear visualisation of the structure makes out of date and duplicate information obvious, so it can be changed by the end-users of the information. This provides for maintenance of information quality without necessitating end-users to understand relational database design; though relational databases can still be used for information where the frequency of structural change is less.
The diagrams below shows the way iterative development is used both in this research and in the implementation to ensure that changes can be made systematically as necessary and without disrupting the project.
Research and Development for Thesis
Semantic Web/Web 2.0 Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#SemanticWebandWeb2Research - Examples from Research.
XForms - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#XForms
Aziz, H., Gao, J., Maropoulos, P., Chewing, W. M. (2005) Open standard, open source and peer-to-peer tools and methods for collaborative product development. Computers in Industry, 56, 260-271.
Berners-Lee T., Hendler, J. Lassila, O., 2001, The Semantic Web, a new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities, Scientific American May 2001.
Cypher A., Halbert D. C., Kurlander D., Lieberman, H., Maulsby, D., Myers, B. A., Turransky A., 1993 - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/ - Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - The entire text of this book is included on this web site. Access it through the Table of Contents. - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html - MIT Press, ISBN:0262032139.
Dmitriev, S., Jetbrains - Meta Programming System - http://www.onboard.jetbrains.com/is1/articles/04/10/lop/ - Language Oriented Programming: The Next Programming Paradigm - Sergey Dmitriev.
Grant, D., Ngwenyama, O., 2003. A report on the use of action research to evaluate a manufacturing information systems development methodology in a company, Information Systems Journal 13 (1), 21-35.
Johnson, P., 2004. Interactions, Collaborations and breakdowns. In: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Task models and diagrams Vol 86 Prague, Czech Republic.
Lieberman, H., 2000. Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Your-Wish/ - Henry Lieberman, editor.
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Mens, K., Michiels, I., Wuyts, R., 2002. Supporting Software Development through Declaratively Codified Programming Patterns. Expert Systems with Applications 23, pp 405-413.
Tao, Y., Hong, T., Sun S., 2004. An XML implementation process model for enterprise applications. Computers in Industry 55 pp 181-196.
Wang, C.-B., Chen, T.-Y., Chen, Y.-M., Chu, H.-C., 2005, Design of a Meta Model for integrating enterprise systems 2004, Computers in Industry 56 305-322.
Translation code reproduces a taxonomy/ontology and makes it available for modelling/programming systems. This taxonomy/ontology is a copied subset of the main ontology produced as an instance of the main ontology according to model builder choices and for the modelling/programming purposes of that model builder. So automated code writing produces models/programs. This is illustrated in the diagram below, which shows copying/translating from ontology to modelling system.
Ways that visualisation and interaction research is pursued in this thesis in order to make User Driven Modellinmg/Programming possible are explained here - Visualisation Techniques.
The diagram below examines many of the ways translation could be used for User Driven Modelling/Programming. An example of the repeatable process of this design is that the 'System Translator Program' created in Step 1 creates a new 'System Translator Program' in Step 2 and this creates a Visualisation. This technique is used to translate an ontology to a CAD style diagram using a second stage of translation. The second 'System Translator Program' could also create a 'Model/Program', 'Meta Program' or translate to an 'External Application'. So, this is not an exhaustive diagram, as many types of translation not shown would be possible and Step 1 could also be repeated to translate between ontologies.
Translation Process for User Driven Modelling/Programming (UDM/P)
1. Connections are established between the ontology system and any databases, spreadsheets, or other systems that hold relevant information for that modelling problem.
2. The ontology is created using RDF/OWL (Bechhofer and Carrol, 2004), and an interface built to allow domain experts to edit the ontology.
3. Libraries are created in a partnership with domain experts.
4. Taxonomies are populated by model builders who want to use them for their modelling problem. These are based on the libraries created in step 3.
5. Taxonomies are colour coded for ease of understanding. A link is created between the ontology tool and a decision support and calculation tool (Vanguard System), which reads information from the ontology tool.
6. There are 2 sorts of constraints that can be used in order to make it easier for users to build and adapt models. These are constraints on the way the ontology and models are built, and user interface constraints to reduce the scope for error.
7. The colour coding makes calculation clearer because all taxonomies can be used in any calculation, this produces a multicoloured result tree that represents the entire calculation history. User choices affect how items are related for the calculation; choices could be made manually or via a search. Colour can also be used to represent cost, time, or uncertainty.
8. Each node can also represent uncertainty, and prototypes have included uncertainty expressions in the calculations.
9. The result tree can be represented on the web and in other programs, this allows for further searching, processing and evaluation of results. Visualisation techniques and the use of searchable languages such as XML, and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) can assist in this.
10. and 11. Experts such as designers can interact with the ontology, the model, and results, there is a two way feedback mechanism where the expert can make changes at any stage, and this filters into changed results. This can then support a cycle of results and rework.
Bechhofer, S., Carrol, J., 2004. Parsing owl dl: trees or triples?. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web, NY, USA, pp 266-275.
Methodology Diagram
The ontology represents the relationships between nodes in a machine independent way, so this makes it possible to translate the information into meta languages via recursive querying. For Step 2 translation, SQL (Structured Query Language) is then used to access the underlying database representation of the ontology. These SQL calls cycle recursively through all relationships and write out code for each node, and each relationship automatically. The translation code reads node names and node types (e.g. class, attribute) so it can make an appropriate SQL call for each node, and make a copy in another language or system, then look for children or attributes. This allows trees to be represented in computer languages. Then a recursive routine writes the programming language to be output.
These routines are almost identical whatever the code output, as the syntax varies not semantics, so automated code writing produces models/programs. This is illustrated in the diagram below.
Recursive Translation - Automated Copying from ontology to modelling system
This assists with the problem of needing to individually write a recursive routine for each programming language to be output. This methodology could open up the possibilities for providing generic modelling capabilities that program with semantics and create meta-code syntax. Then it is possible to take the burden of learning multiple languages from the model builders and perform the translation for them. Once this translation is achieved for a particular language the solution can be used indefinitely by different model builders for different problems. A future possibility could be providing the translation itself as a single meta-code solution that could itself be translated to multiple language systems; this is discussed here - Meta-Programming. As well as outputting programs the translation system can produce meta languages and/or Semantic web languages, and these research areas are likely to provide a way of translating the output meta-program into generic software. This makes possible future research into generating meta programs based on the semantics defined in the visual diagrams, and so makes the solution more generic and independent of syntax.
It is possible to create an interactive CAD type representation of a component for Step 3 of the translation if information is given in Step 1 and/or 2 to define how attributes of an engineering component or physical object should be drawn. This translation is similar to the kind used for CAD systems, such as CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) and/or boundary representation BREP. The engineering component could then be represented as a tree, in STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data), and as an interactive CAD type diagram, as appropriate. Examples are given here with sufficient detail to demonstrate this. So in a full system STEPml (XML-based STEP) could be used in this translation. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics is used for the visualisation of this Web demonstration). Zhao and Liu (2008) examine mapping of STEP representations to ontology languages OWL and SWRL and how this benefits interoperability. Application of techniques to improve interoperability for this research is discussed in http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#MetaProgramming. Zhao and Liu also show a diagram (similar Berners-Lee - Here) of the position of OWL and SWRL in a stack of standards from XML in the Syntax layer up to OWL/SWRL in the Logic/Rule layer of 'Semantics'.
Zhao, W. and Liu, J.K. 2008. OWL/SWRL representation methodology for EXPRESS-driven product information model Part I. Implementation methodology, Computers in Industry - Article in Press, Corrected Proof - Abstract - This paper presents an ontology-based approach to enable semantic interoperability and reasoning over the product information model. The web ontology language (OWL) and the semantic web rule language (SWRL) in the Semantic Web are employed to construct the product information model. The traditional modeling language called EXPRESS is discussed. The representation methodology for EXPRESS-driven product information model is then proposed. The key of the representation methodology is mapping from EXPRESS to OWL/SWRL. Some illustrated examples are presented. - Keywords - Product information model; OWL; SWRL; EXPRESS; Ontology representation.
The system developer role is represented by people who would use the system advocated in this research in order to develop a domain specific system to create models. For the implementation in this thesis the author takes on the roles of a researcher who develops the capability for the 'System Creator', of a 'System Creator' who creates a modelling capability for a specific modelling problem, and of a 'Model Builder' who uses the implementation to solve an aircraft wing related modelling problem. Also, some parts of the implementation were used by Airbus and Rolls-Royce employees both as System Creators, and Model Builders and Users.
This research is mainly aimed towards engineers who develop using spreadsheets, and for spreadsheets there are two main types of users. These types are :-
Model Builders - those who build and adjust equations (formulae) in spreadsheets and tend to protect their spreadsheet against unintended overwriting of cell values.
Model Users - those who edit values in a spreadsheet and do not intend to overwrite formulae (though this can happen accidently).
Although there is a grey area between these two categories it is intended that the thesis uses only these categories in order to simplify the problem of access control and model protection, and engineers would be familiar with this division. A more complex strategy for user rights and management will be left for future work, and in any case such strategies have been applied to work implemented in relation to this thesis by Airbus and Rolls-Royce.
Model Builders
Model builders will create or edit the semantic representation of the model in an ontology editor in order to create models. Model builders do not need knowledge of a programming language, but do need training in how to use the ontology interface to create a model. Also research will be undertaken into making ontology editing easier and more accessible. The system to be created needs to cater for different types of modellers. Expert modellers aim to build models, whereas novice modellers are more inclined to search for a specific numerical answer (Willemain and Powell, 2006). A problem mentioned by Willemain and Powell is that novice modellers often have little or no training in modelling. "Little is known about how they go about their tasks and whether they succeed." So it is important to make technologies accessible for modellers, and to enable models to be shared and navigated, so that expert modellers can assist novices to create better models.
Model Users
Model users use the models created by model builders to make decisions based on their domain knowledge. This type of user manipulates the tree/graph representation to obtain a result based on the input values they know, or otherwise based on default values. They will use a model to evaluate a problem in order to help in decision making. Ernst et al. (2003) use a similar categorisation, they call model builders 'modelers', and models users 'end-users'. Leaver (2008) uses categories of 'Application Definer', 'Information Editor' and 'RDF Querier' that are types of System developer, Model Builder, and Model User.
Ernst, N. A., Storey, M., Allen, P., Musen, M., 2003. Addressing cognitive issues in knowledge engineering with Jambalaya. In: Workshop on Visualization in Knowledge Engineering at KCAP http://www.neilernst.net/docs/pubs/ernst-kcap03.pdf.
Leaver, N., (2008) Using RDF as an Enabling Technology. MSc. Dissertation, University of the West of England, Bristol.
Willemain, T. R., Powell S. G., 2006, How novices formulate models. Part II: a quantitative description of behaviour, Journal of the Operational Research Society, pp 1-12, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/2602279a.html.
User involvement is important in development of software but a domain expert does not necessarily possess expertise in software development, and a software developer cannot have expertise in every domain to which software might apply. So it is important to make it possible for software to be created, in ways that are as close as possible to those which the domain expert normally uses. This research examined the need for and provision of the User Driven Modelling/Programming methodology to enable computer literate engineers to model/program. The proportion of domain experts in a particular domain (aerospace engineering for example) who can develop their own programs and have access to such facilities is fairly low, but the proportion that are computer literate in the everyday use of computers is much higher (Scaffidi et al., 2006). Harnessing of computer literacy to allow domain experts to develop and share models increases productivity for software development and reduces the proportion of misunderstandings between domain experts and developers. Domain experts can then explore a problem they are trying to solve and produce code to solve it. The role of software developers would then become more that of a system creator, mentor and enabler rather than someone who has to translate all the ideas of domain experts into code themselves. Other software developers may work at providing better translation software for the domain experts (e.g. engineers). Creation of a systematic environment for model building can be assisted by advancing research in current tools and techniques, and standardising the representation and navigation of information. This enables complex problems to be represented by networks of models and modellers that share information.
As end-users are creating simulations and other software it was important to address this need and attempt to establish a dependable way for them to do this. To achieve the above aims it was necessary to research the interface between Meta-Programming, Modelling and Simulation, and Semantic Web Model Creation, shaded in the Figure below. This allows end-users to develop their own Semantic Web based simulation and modelling tools using a graphical visual interface.
End-User Programming, Modelling and Meta-Programming with Semantic Web
Although User Driven Modelling/Programming is a difficult problem and only partially solved, there are numerous intermediate benefits from the search for this approach. These include better modelling and visualisation of problems, improved interaction with end-users, Semantic Web modelling search and visualisation methods, collaboration to improve modelling, and ways to agree ontology and Semantic Web representations. It was necessary to provide such intermediate benefits as the industrial collaborators had shorter term goals and so required deliverables.
The techniques used helped with progress towards improved interoperability that can aid in all the above areas. These uses and improved interoperability to support them needed to be developed together in an iterative way.
Experienced programmers/software engineers may have many of the problems of end-user programmers whenever they need to use a language/system they are unfamiliar with, or when the language/system they use is updated to a new version. So this means the techniques and approach developed can aid experienced software developers in such circumstances, as well as end-user programmers.
The thesis covered the following areas :-
Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B. (2005). Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas.
The use of a centralised information source makes these models more reliable than the standalone spreadsheet. This centralised structure was easier to manage than updating multiple instances of the spreadsheets used by different people and ensuring they all contain the same information. So the first task was to build a system for collaborative model building. As a piece of information can then only belong to a unique location, the problems arising from duplicate pieces of information are eliminated. In a wider implementation use of namespaces and integration with other ontologies could ease the maintenance problem further. The models have only the functionality that is added by the model builder so there are not other side effects to keep track of, as there are with generic functionality within spreadsheets. Enabling people to create software visually makes it easier for model builders and model users to keep track of any information they are responsible for. Translation from the ontology to models and visualisations ensures one change will affect all stages, so this makes maintenance easier.
Creating the infrastructure for the collaborative model building system took much more time than it did for the spreadsheet system, but having done so it is quicker and easier to create further models, and this makes it more practical to integrate with other Semantic Web and modelling systems. This benefit results from the facilities provided for model builders and end-users to customise the software in any one of the three step translation process. This means progress has been made in making it possible for non-programmers to build models. It also indicates that the extra research and development time taken was worth it in the long term, most of this time involved productive research and this can be used in future projects. The use of open standards in this thesis for information and models ensures there should be a development path, to help cope with changes there may be in external software systems. This use of open standards also ensures that the system can link with most environments used by others. The translation and visualisation approach ensures that new models can be added using the existing ontology, and that design changes in the ontology and translation can enable modelling of different problems. So if there is a new problem to be modelled there are two ways to achieve this, add new models to the ontology, or change the ontology.
Most people now are familiar with web pages and at least the basics of how to navigate them, and by creating such an environment, and standardising the navigation to those ways commonly used over the web, it is possible to ease usability. The models contain only the functionality that is added by the model builder, unlike the spreadsheets which had generic functionality that was not required and led to user's confusion. New Web 2.0 interaction technologies have allowed production of a rich user interface for web programs in a similar way to single computer applications. This means information held in an ontology and translated through modelling tools can be made available as interactive applications for many users. Translation allowed the same user interface to be provided in multiple tools and computer languages. Also this research showed that it was possible to provide user interfaces and visualisation differently as appropriate according to the type of user, the situation, and/or the kind of information to be shown.
The use of open standards languages for representing information makes it easier to represent information in a way that makes it accessible both to people and software. Use of namespaces and integration with standardised upper level ontologies, and standardised semantic languages such as PSL (Process Specification Language) could ease sharing of information. Ontology based modelling tools use these open standards and so ensure dependable translation, interoperability, and sharing of information. Web browsers make it possible to share information with many users at once, and so this enables collaboration. Structuring of the information using standardised languages makes it easier to search and visualise the information. This ensuring of interoperability is important for long term use of the overall modelling system.
This section outlines future research on extending the areas of application for User Driven Modelling/Programming both for other types of problem within engineering and for other types of modelling. One possible application is the use of these techniques for scientific visualisation and modelling based on taxonomies.
A major aspect of future work will be to develop a reversal of the 3 step process and ensure the translation can be performed from visualisation to ontology as well as ontology to visualisation. So this would involve Step 3 - 'Visualisation and Interaction' - Step 2 'Translation' - Step 3 'Ontology'. This has been examined but not prototyped in so much detail as the Step 1 to 3 process. It could be possible to provide high level facilities for end-users to edit ontologies, using this stepped translation methodology, and thus complete the circle of iterative communication between human and computer. An iterative user-computer translation diagram to illustrate such a translation would then have a double headed arrow. This is illustrated in the diagram below -
Two Way Translation between users and computers
Ontology Visualisation and Interaction
To encourage easier end-user interaction with Step 1 ontology creation it is important to make ontology editing easier. As mentioned here - Ontology Based Modelling Solutions, OWL (Web Ontology Language) can be used with visual ontology editors. These that provide extra capabilities for representing and visualising information e.g. Jambalaya (Ernst et al., 2003) for visualisation of knowledge and relationships. Enabling of web-based editing of ontologies would make ontology editing more accessible, and Leaver (2008) created an online ontology editor at the University of the West of England (Bitriple). Richer semantics could also make the editing process simpler by reducing complexity in the user interface.
Modelling of if-then choices formally using OWL and ontology editors should be provided. Elenius (2005) explains how OWL can be used for process modelling including for if-then choices:
"Process Modeling A powerful feature of OWL-S is the ability to model composite processes. A composite process is constructed from subprocesses that can in turn be composite, atomic, or simple. The control flow of a composite process is defined using control constructs, such as If-Then-Else, Sequence, and Repeat-Until. These constructs can be nested to an arbitrary depth."
Elenius illustrates this with a screenshot of a composite process, its tree structure, and its graph representation.
SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) combining OWL and RuleML, and its use in modelling will also be investigated. This could be used for formally specifying the construction of equations and rules in a model and the relationships and constraints between items represented in an equation. Miller and Baramidze (2005) explain the SWRL language. An editing facility to model these equations and constraints, so that errors could be prevented, would improve the usability of future visual modelling systems created. Support for SWRL in Protégé and other ontology based systems will assist with the construction of a modelling system with sophisticated editing of rules (Miller and Baramidze, 2005). In addition, these rules could assist with provision of alternative interfaces such as an editable CAD type view, and with translating between these interfaces on the fly (e.g. from CAD) type to tree/graph type).
Use of ontology tools for translation is outlined here - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#OntologyToolUseTranslation.
Ciocoiu et al. (2000) and Horrocks (2002) consider the advantages of moving towards a more formal ontology. this is investigated at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#TheNeedforOntologiestoaidModelling and http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#OntologyBasedModellingSolutions. More expressive semantic descriptions are possible through the use of the standard OWL dialects. These more expressive descriptions require sophisticated visualisation tools. Making use of a more formal ontology is the next major aim for the research behind this thesis. Creation of a formal ontology, while at the same time creating applications that model problems such as early stage design and cost, and interactive modelling environments for students, will widen the applicability of the research. This would enable further testing on ways ontologies can be used to solve problems, and how they are meaningful to people as well as being searchable by computer software. The intention is to enable online tagging of this ontology/ies and editing of it by users, in order to allow users and domain experts to be involved in the ontology construction.
So far the ontologies/taxonomies used in this thesis include traditional object oriented relationships such as child, parent, sibling, attribute, and instance. Though for this research instance means re-use of a class within an application rather than its object oriented meaning. There are other types of relationship that would need to be modelled in order to maximise the capabilities of software that would use the ontologies/taxonomies. Key relationships used within the object oriented programming domain between classes/objects have been modelled already. These key relationships depict families and aggregations of classes/objects that may share attributes and methods through inheritance. When physical items are represented, this can be translated to geometric diagrams. Semantic descriptions with more relationship types than the ones modelled so far would allow a more expressive depiction of a problem domain, and can aid some forms of search within a model.
References
Ciocoiu, M., Gruninger, M., Nau, D. S., 2000. Ontologies for Integrating Engineering Applications. Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 1(1) pp 12-22.
Elenius, D., 2005. The OWL-S Editor - A Domain-Specific Extension to Protégé - 8th Intl. Protégé Conference - July 18-21, 2005 - Madrid, Spain.
Ernst, N. A., Storey, M., Allen, P., Musen, M., 2003. Addressing cognitive issues in knowledge engineering with Jambalaya. In: Workshop on Visualization in Knowledge Engineering at KCAP http://www.neilernst.net/docs/pubs/ernst-kcap03.pdf.
Horrocks, I., 2002. DAML+OIL: a Reason-able Web Ontology Language. In: proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2002) March 24-28 2002, Prague. http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2002/edbt02.pdf.
Leaver, N., (2008) Using RDF as an Enabling Technology. MSc. Dissertation, University of the West of England, Bristol.
Miller, J A., Baramidze, G., - Simulation and the Semantic Web - 2005. - Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference.
Future work would build further on research in Semantic Web enabled modelling and simulation outlined here - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm. Miller and Baramidze (2005) examine efforts to develop mathematical semantic representations above the syntactical representations of MathML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#MathML. SWRL also has standardised arithmetic and comparison operators (Zhao and Liu, 2008). These languages should enable standardisation of the representation of mathematical expressions that relate nodes, and their values and expressions; this would seem to be a difficult problem as it needs a user interface that enables complex mathematical structures to be conveyed by language and/or diagrammatic visualisation. The next stage in the research after this thesis will be provision of constraints to prevent invalid mathematical expressions. Miller and Baramidze's DEMO system uses OWL to define a simulation and modelling class hierarchy. The first steps were taken towards creating an example simulation to demonstrate with a practical model how a web-based simulation can be provided based on an ontology, and how this can enable people to use interactive simulations on the web. This could be extended as described below.
References
Miller, J A., Baramidze, G., - Simulation and the Semantic Web - 2005. - Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference.
Zhang, Z., 2005. Ontology Query Languages for the Semantic Web: A Performance Evaluation. MSc Thesis, (Under the Direction of John.A.Miller).
Meta-Programming and Rule-based languages (Wallace, 2003) could be used to develop an interface to an end-user programming environment. So far the automated output of code in such languages has been provided and automated output of machine independent code such as in XML, RDF, and SVG format. Research is needed into combining meta-language, rule-based and web and interoperability standard code to enable creation of modelling systems from this code automatically. This would be achieved in a similar way to that demonstrated in the examples already created, but in a more flexible and machine independent way. Examples demonstrated that the translation process can be used to create meta-code necessary for this, (in Step 1 and Step 2). So it remains to make use of this meta-code within Step 3 by sending it to appropriate visualisation and interaction tools (e.g. Simkin (Whiteside, 2008)). This could involve a Step 4 translation from meta-code, interoperable or web standard code, and/or rule based code to an automatically created model/program. A further possibility is to provide a meta-code version of the translation itself, so this can be machine independent.
References
Wallace, C., 2003, Using Alloy in process modelling, Information and Software Technology, Vol. 45 (15), 1031-1043 - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~sjgreen/ChrisWallace.pdf.
Through this thesis, ontologies and taxonomies has been used to represent computing structures and engineering information. Taxonomies have not yet been used in this research for managing biological information, though this was the purpose for which Linnaeus developed taxonomy representation. So, future research could provide an interactive visual taxonomy management system that uses the translation and interaction techniques developed in this thesis. The taxonomy will be used to structure, manage, and enable understanding of complex scientific information to enable scientists to collaborate using a systems approach. A circular layout would make it possible to visualise and navigate large trees more easily. The main subject would be editing and display of phylogenetic knowledge, this could make possible new insights. It is intended for this to act as a resource to link the research of biologists and environmental scientists.
More Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Taxonomies.htm.
It is intended that this research will also be applied to E-Learning and Collaboration, and to enabling wider participation in online communities. Work is beginning on a project to link companies and individuals mainly in the West of England aerospace/space industry and also to involve amateurs in this industry. This is a practical application for a web-based distributed constructionist approach (Resnick, 1996) to modelling and collaboration, and could also be used in teaching. Berners-Lee and Fischetti (1999) also argue for collaborative interactivity, which they call 'Intercreativity'. Research in e-learning would involve end-user programming enabled with Semantic Web technologies and with a visualisation and interactivity layer, as shown in the figure below.
E-Learning, End-User Programming, and the Semantic Web
References
Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1999. Weaving the Web. Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X
Resnick, M., 1996, Distributed Constructionism - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html.
More Information on E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning.htm.
More Information on Space Horizons Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/aerospace.htm.
Future work would be required to provide more sophisticated definition, and implementation of user types and rights. Through this thesis people were represented in 3 categories - ‘System Builders’, ‘Model Builders’, and ‘Model Users’. However, these categories would need to be further divided into sub-categories, and these be managed visually and interactively. Management of use, based on an ontology of people constructing or using systems would help enable management and collaboration on larger scales.
The question examined was ‘to what extent was it possible to improve user-driven collaborative software development through the interaction with diagrams and without requiring people to learn computer languages?’ The research involved enabling computer literate people to create software using a combination of modelling via use of formulae (equations) and visualisation of the way these formulae interact. It was possible to construct modelling software without requiring code. Crapo et al. (2002) explained the need for this approach, and this was applied in this thesis as a User Driven Modelling/Programming approach. This approach was applied to engineering modelling problems, and the test implementation proved it was usable for large models. Some work has already been completed on applying this to other problems. The approach involved a 3 step translation process, and this eased problems of maintenance, extensibility, ease of use, and sharing of information. Each step produces a diagrammatic representation for humans, and computer code.
Within this thesis it was argued that there is a need for software developers to create programs that enable users to solve problems themselves. In effect this involves production of a system to create systems. This approach can widen programming participation by including computer literate non-programmers. This is a reaction to the increased complexity of real world problems and software systems, which makes development of some types of software solutions impractical without greater involvement from end-users. It is difficult for developers to foresee every need of users and use of the software produced, so it makes sense to enable more end-user customisation, especially for modelling of complex engineering, science, and business problems. It is also argued that the research for this thesis has been a step towards making end-user programming possible particularly for modelling. The research ideas cover a wide range but the core research is all about simplifying software development.
The approach of developing decision support models for design and costing using a spreadsheet (http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm#SpreadsheetModelling) was compared to the alternative approach of using open standards taxonomies and a web interface for this purpose. The conclusion is that although use of spreadsheets allows for the creation of models relatively quickly they are beset by problems. These relate to Maintenance, Extensibility, Ease of Use, and Sharing of Information. A spreadsheet example and the explanation represents problems currently experienced throughout software and computer use.
The alternative approach for this thesis of User Driven Modelling/Programming involves the development of a system, where a model builder, via visual editing of library taxonomies can undertake maintenance and extension of information. Dealing with this proof of concept has indicated that it is easier to maintain, search, and share information using this approach than it was using spreadsheets. This also enables much more of the maintenance task to be left to end-users, who can also customise the system. Creating the infrastructure has taken much more time than it did for the spreadsheet system, but having done so it is much quicker and easier to create further models. This indicates that the extra research and development time taken, though far exceeding what would have been required for a spreadsheet modelling project, is well worth it in the long term. Also the use of a centralised information source makes these models more reliable than the standalone spreadsheet, standalone decision support models created individually are prone to out of date information. In addition, since a well constructed ontology implies that a piece of information can only belong to a unique location, the problems arising from duplicate pieces of information can be eliminated, especially if top level ontologies, standards, and namespaces are used. It is also much easier to create models once the infrastructure is in place; this can enable users to develop models. The ability to visualise, search, and share information using structured languages and web applications is a huge advantage for creation of dynamic structured views and decision support models over the web, to aid collaboration.
This research was a test case for a whole new approach that could be possible, of collaborative end-user programming by domain experts. The end-user programmers could use a visual interface where the visualisation of the software exactly matches the structure of the software itself, making translation between user and computer, and vice versa, much more practical. For this reason highly structured visualisations were preferred over web spreadsheets. Semantic Web languages are ideal for representing graphs and trees in an open standard way. The spatial, and tree/graph visualisations used both have the same underlying semantics, and therefore can both be translated to computer languages. In fact it would be much better in the long run to use the Semantic Web languages as standardised programming languages for such problems as this would avoid the need to further translate into other programming languages, and systems. The advantage to this is that of using Semantic Web languages for representation of information, meta-programming, and translation to a visual display for users. The use of Semantic Web languages as a connectivity environment for connecting information, and for connecting users to the information held in Semantic Web data sources could enable an environment that could be made easier to use, install and maintain.
There are numerous obstacles such as current technologies and languages providing insufficient support for User Driven Modelling/Programming systems. However, research on this can improve the development and use of such technologies. Accessible model creation systems are needed that enable intuitive construction and sharing of models.
More generally a new approach is required to software creation. This approach should involve developers creating software systems that enable users to perform high level programming, and model the problem for which they are the experts, and involve collaboration to share results. This is an alternative to the provision by developers of modelling solutions that try to provide an out of the box solution that just needs 'tweaking'. Such an out of the box system is not practical for complex models/modelling, considering both increases in complexity of manufactured products, and of software systems themselves. Feedback from publishing the research examples behind this thesis and working with industrial partners indicates that people like to work on their own solutions, providing they are computer literate and confident they have domain knowledge that the developers do not possess. This is true for software development in general, not just in the domain of engineering. Research cited in this thesis from others involved in end-user programming confirms this.
For proving the hypothesis that it is possible to create an end-user programming environment, usable by non programmers, it has been found that structuring and relating of information is all important in this solution. To achieve this, it was only necessary to link the information visually via equations, and store these results for reuse and collaboration. Semantic Web standardisation could enable the range of model building/use and collaboration possible, making the solution more generic. If users can understand and navigate relationships, and add new relationships they could model most problems. It was important to design a visual interface that is intuitive to use, and allows for proper interpretation of the results. Feedback has indicated that users can navigate this structure and manipulate it. This is preferable to 'black box' solutions that hide information. There are no dead ends or blocks to expanding and improving this approach. To make the system easier to use it is necessary to trial continually better interfaces, and to assist by providing guidance to the user. There was not sufficient time and resources to expand this research much to areas outside engineering modelling, but there is scope for researchers to improve end-user programming for engineering modelling systems, and to expand the research into other areas. Any problem that requires structured visualisation and/or equation based calculation would benefit from this approach.
References
Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.
A new approach is required to software creation. This approach should involve developers creating software systems that enable users to perform high level programming, and model the problem for which they are the experts. Dependence on information systems that are supplied and customised by an IT department removes control from domain experts, Spahn et al. (2007) argue for empowering users by enabling abstraction from technical details and concentration on business needs.
This section outlines future research that is required for the advancement of representation, search, and visualization of information, and at recent and future developments in the use and representation of taxonomies and ontologies, and visualisation tools that can aid in their use. Berners-Lee et al. (2006) explain the importance of visualisation for navigation of information "Despite excitement about the Semantic Web, most of the world's data are locked in large data stores and are not published as an open Web of inter-referring resources. As a result, the reuse of information has been limited. Substantial research challenges arise in changing this situation: how to effectively query an unbounded Web of linked information repositories, how to align and map between different data models, and how to visualize and navigate the huge connected graph of information that results."
Horrocks (2002) explains the advantages of moving towards a more formal ontology. This can provide for a new way of enabling end-user programming - with the user editing interactive diagrams. In terms of automated model generation, labelling relationships between objects allows the depiction of a number of aspects of a domain in one model, and with a consistent syntax. Ciocoiu et al. (2000) explain how an engineering ontology can be made more rigorous in order to facilitate interoperability. This allows representation of, say, a product structure and its manufacturing processes together. A single node then is the only representation of that node within the model, with all its relationships depicted as arcs emanating/terminating at the node. More expressive semantic descriptions are possible through the use of one of the standard OWL dialects. Protégé has OWL plug-ins available that provide this functionality, together with links to reasoning tools for maintaining and analysing the logical constructs (Storey et al., 2004) and (Elenius, 2005). The University of Victoria Computer-Human Interaction and Software Engineering lab (CHISEL) (2006) has developed Jambalaya (Ernst et al., 2003) for visualization of knowledge and relationships. Ernst et al. explain that the "larger ontologies that are being developed quickly exhaust human capacity for conceptualizing them in their entirety", so the visualization tools must assist the user to view the information they need. McGuinness (2003) recommends using different presentational styles according to users and their needs, "Presentation Style. Possibly closely related to user type is presentation style. Some users need to see extensive detail, some need pruned information, and some need abstractions. Presentation of information may be textual, graphical, or other. While no one environment needs to support all presentation styles, it is important that the environment is at least extensible enough to have new presentation methods added when needed." Researchers at the University of Queensland Australia have developed a hyperbolic browser to display RDF files, this is explained in Eklund et al. (2002). Cheung et al. (2005) provide an ontology editor for knowledge sharing in manufacturing. Fluit et al. (2003) establish the importance of enabling different views according to peoples’ questions and purposes. Ernst et al. (2003) also discuss mapping between user's mental model of a system, and the system model. They suggest multiple views of the problem to help a user understand the problem. This subject is explored by Crapo et al. (2002), and is the basis of the visualisation techniques used in this thesis to enable the user to create and understand models that are subsequently translated into software representations.
The above is an alternative to the provision by developers of modelling solutions that try to provide an out of the box solution that just needs 'tweaking'. Such an out of the box system is impractical considering both increases in complexity of manufactured products, and of software systems themselves. Cheung (2005) writes "there is no single management tool or data exchange format that can satisfy all requirements and overcome all the obstacles involved within a collaborative product development environment". People like to work on their own solutions providing they are computer literate and confident they have domain knowledge that the developers do not possess. Research cited here from others involved in end-user programming seems to confirm this.
Research in the use and visualization of Semantic Web information provides the tools that end-user programmers have been lacking until recently. Cheung (2005) explains that "With the development of user-friendly ontology editing software and automatic data exchange functions, the application of ontological approaches to exchange information across the WWW is most likely to be an essential aspect of the next generation of global knowledge management tools.
It is also important not to stay limited on one ontology development environment but instead explore how ontologies can be developed using a range of development tools and translated between each where necessary (Garcia-Castro and Gomez-Perez, 2006) are testing this process. Ontologies can also enable communication between computer systems, and between computer systems and users; Garcia-Castro and Gomez-Perez (2006) evaluate mechanisms for this, and interoperability of models/modelling is examined here - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#Interoperability. An important new development is SWRL a Semantic Web Rule Language Combining OWL and RuleML and its use in modelling. This could be of use for formally specifying the construction of equations and rules in a model and the relationships and constraints between items represented in an equation. Miller and Baramidze (2005), Horrocks et al. (2003), and Zhang (2005) explain the SWRL language. Horrocks et al. talk of defining properties as general rules over other properties and of defining operations on datatypes, this research could assist in providing a visual rule and equation editor. An editing facility to model these equations and constraints, so that errors could be prevented, would improve the usability of future visual modelling systems. Support for SWRL in Protégé (Miller and Baramidze, 2005) will assist with the construction of a modelling system with sophisticated editing of rules.
A future task to be undertaken would be the inclusion of uncertainty in the automatically produced models, for situations where accurate information cannot be provided for the model. This would require provision of a way of handling uncertainty for parameters within the ontology, e.g. as 3 values describing a triangular distribution rather than a unique absolute value. The decision support meta-program could be expanded to write out the code to run Monte-Carlo sampling, hence making use of the statistical uncertainty capability. Miller and Baramidze (2005) examine efforts to develop mathematical semantic representations above the syntactical representations of MathML. this effort should make it possible for standardisation of representation of mathematical expressions that relate nodes, and their values and expressions, to each other. Constraints could then be added to prevent invalid mathematical expressions. The next stage in the research surrounding this research will be provision of constraints to prevent invalid mathematical expressions. Miller and Baramidzes' DEMO system uses OWL to define a simulation and modelling class hierarchy. It would be very useful to create an example to demonstrate this with a practical model to test the use of this ontology. Burnett et al. (2007) state "end users are using various languages and programming systems to create software in forms such as spreadsheets, dynamic web applications, and scientific simulations. This software needs to be sufficiently dependable, but substantial evidence suggests that it is not." As end-users are creating simulations and other software it is important to address this need and attempt to establish a dependable way for them to do this.
It would be interesting and useful to create an environment where people could use example models and evaluate their usability and usefulness. This could follow a similar model to that used for the development of open source software or collaborations such as Wikipedia (2007), and the Semantic Web Environmental directory SWED (2006). Testing of usability for collaboration is complex and (Johnson et al., 2003) explain how this requires interdisciplinary expertise from several fields. Semantic Web research also requires an interdisciplinary approach as explained by Berners-Lee et al. "Understanding and fostering the growth of the World Wide Web, both in engineering and societal terms, will require the development of a new interdisciplinary field." A project such as this can bring together people with diverse backgrounds, interests and expertise. Cheung et al. (2007) make the point that open source development can avoid vendor lock-in, eliminate unnecessary complexity, give freedom to modify applications, and provide platform and application independence. Johnson (2004) has developed more sophisticated ways of understanding and providing for complex human activity and testing the success of this.
It could be possible to extend the semantics used in the specification of models to allow the creation of a framework for simulations. Lacy and Gerber (2004) examine how OWL can be used to aid modelling and simulation. Because the ontology uses open standards, these simulations could be made broadly available on the web. It is important that the necessary infrastructure is created to allow this facility to be added. The approaches of others to this problem have been examined. Page (1998), Page et al. (2000) and Page and Opper (2000) examine the nature of web-based simulations. Miller et al. (2001) explain the technology behind web-based simulations, and argue the need for demonstrating the application of web-based simulations for major projects. Fishwick and Miller (2004) examine the use of ontologies for modelling and simulation. The authors were involved in the RUBE project that developed a system for battle simulations, illustrated in Fishwick and Miller (2004). The RUBE project uses open standards and Protégé for the ontology, and outputs some code automatically. Kuljis and Paul (2001) evaluate progress in this field of web simulation. They argue the need for web-based simulations to be focussed on solving real-world problems in order to be successful. Kim et al. (2002) describe their approach to modelling and simulation and how a Web-based solution can be applied to distributed process planning. Kim et al. also explain how techniques of generating executable code from documents specified in standardised XML can be used to create simulations. Reed et al. (2000) examine possibilities for improving the aircraft design process with web-based modelling and simulation. Simulations could also be used for optimization and Chen and Yücesan (2001) investigate this. So web based simulation is an area of research worth exploring. The use of process models can allow accurate manufacturing times to be generated. This requires dynamic models of factories, cells and processes. Also it is necessary for users of a system to be able to gather information from various computer systems such as databases and spreadsheets. There is a conflict between the aim to develop an ideal representation of knowledge using an ontology editor, and the practical need to edit the data in the database or application it is currently held in. The research examined has undertaken so far, prototypes ways of creating information and of finding it. Other researchers such as Aragones et al., (2006) and Crapo et al. (2000) and (2002) have also investigated this problem.
Shim et al. (2002) discuss user interface issues for this kind of problem, they investigate techniques for "powerful, yet simple user interface designs that enable interactive queries, reporting, and graphing functions". They also examine end user computing history - "The evolution of the human-computer interface is the evolution of computing. The graphical user interface (GUI) that was refined at Xerox, popularized by Macintosh, and later incorporated into Windows". Recent developments in the use of Meta languages for platform independence should make the development of end-user programming quicker and easier. Bishop (2006) explains current problems "The current practice is for GUIs to be specified by creating objects, calling methods to place them in the correct places in a window, and then linking them to code that will process any actions required. If hand-coded, such a process is tedious and error-prone; if a builder or designer program is used, hundreds of lines of code are generated and incorporated into one's program, often labeled 'do not touch'. Either approach violates the software engineering principles of efficiency and maintainability." The author investigates, evaluates and advocates the use of platform independent programming languages.
The solution to these problems involves programming with Semantic Web languages rather than just using them for information representation. This will make translation for interoperability easier and more reliable, and further improve the maintainability of software systems.
This research is a test case for a whole new approach that could be possible, of collaborative end user programming by domain experts. The end user programmers can use a visual interface where the visualization of the software exactly matches the structure of the software itself, making translation between user and computer, and vice versa, much more practical. Jackiw and Finzer (1993) describe an example where a diagram is translated to a graph representation, the authors explain this as 'spatial programming'. Jackiw and Finzer explain that this type of programming removes the distinction between programmers and users. I have tended to work the opposite way around, translating graph and tree representations to diagrammatic visualisations, but this translation is valid in either direction. Semantic Web languages are ideal for representing graphs and trees in an open standard way. The spatial, and tree/graph forms both have the same underlying semantics, and therefore can both be translated to computer languages. In fact it would be much better in the long run to use the Semantic Web languages as standardised programming languages for such problems as this would avoid the need to further translate into other programming languages, and systems.
Aragones, A., Bruno, J., Crapo, A., Garbiras M., 2006. An Ontology-Based Architecture for Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology. In: Jena User Conference, 2006, Bristol, UK.
Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Weitzner, D. J., 2006. Web Science Publications - Creating a Science of the Web. Science 11 August 2006:Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 769 - 771.
Bishop, J., 2006. Multi-platform user interface construction: a challenge for software engineering-in-the-small. In: International Conference on Software Engineering, Proceeding of the 28th international conference on Software engineering pp 751-760.
Burnett, M. M., Engels, G, Myers, B. A., Rothermel, G., 2007. End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
Chen, C.-H., Yücesan, E., 2001. Distributed Web-Based Simulation Experiments For Optimization. Journal of Simulation Practice and Theory, 9, pp 73-90.
Cheung, W. M., Maropoulos, P. G., Gao, J. X., Aziz, H., 2005. Ontological Approach for Organisational Knowledge Re-use in Product Developing Environments. In: 11th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising - ICE 2005, University BW Munich, Germany.
Cheung, W. M., Matthews, P. C., Gao, J. X., Maropoulos, P. G., 2007. Advanced product development integration architecture: an out-of-box solution to support distributed production networks. International Journal of Production Research March 2007.
Ciocoiu, M., Gruninger, M., Nau, D. S., 2000. Ontologies for Integrating Engineering Applications. Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 1(1) pp 12-22.
Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.
Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2000. Visualization and the process of modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view. In: Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data - Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining pp 218-226.
Eklund, P., Roberts, N., Green, S., 2002. OntoRama: Browsing RDF Ontologies using a Hyperbolic-style Browser. In: The First International Symposium on Cyber Worlds, CW02, Theory and Practices, IEEE Press. (2002) pp 405-411.
Elenius, D., 2005. The OWL-S Editor - A Domain-Specific Extension to Protégé. In: 8th Intl. Protégé Conference - July 18-21, 2005 - Madrid, Spain.
Ernst, N. A., Storey, M., Allen, P., Musen, M., 2003. Addressing cognitive issues in knowledge engineering with Jambalaya. In: Workshop on Visualization in Knowledge Engineering at KCAP http://www.neilernst.net/docs/pubs/ernst-kcap03.pdf.
Fishwick, P. A., Miller, J. A., 2004. Ontologies for Modeling and Simulation: Issues and Approaches. In: Proceedings of the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference, Orlando, Fla, pp 259-264.
Garcia-Castro R, Gomez-Perez A, 2006. Interoperability of Protégé using RDF(S) as interchange language. In: 9th Intl. Protégé Conference, July 23-26, 2006 - Stanford, California - http://protege.stanford.edu/conference/2006/submissions/abstracts/3.4_Garcia-Castro_Gomez-Perez_Protege2006.pdf.
Horrocks, I., 2002. DAML+OIL: a Reason-able Web Ontology Language. In: proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2002) March 24-28 2002, Prague. http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2002/edbt02.pdf.
Horrocks, I., Patel-Schneider, P. F., van Harmelen, F., 2003. From SHIQ and RDF to OWL: The making of a web ontology language. Journal of Web Semantics, Vol 1(1), pp 7-26.
Jakiw, R. N., Finzer, W. F., 1993. The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry. In: A. Cypher, ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. MIT Press, Chapter 1 [online]. Available from: http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html.
Johnson, P., 2004. Interactions, Collaborations and breakdowns. In: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Task models and diagrams Vol 86 Prague, Czech Republic.
Johnson, P., May, J., Johnson, H., 2003. Introduction to Multiple Collaborative Tasks. In: ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 10 (4) December 2003 pp 277-280.
Kim, T., Lee, T., Fishwick, P., 2002. A Two Stage Modeling and Simulation Process for Web-Based Modeling and Simulation. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 12(3), 230-248.
Kuljis, J., Paul, R. J., 2001. An appraisal of web-based simulation: whither we wander?. Simulation Practice and Theory, 9, pp 37-54.
Lacy, L., Gerber, W., 2004, Potential Modeling and Simulation Applications of the Web Ontology Language - OWL. Proceedings of the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference pp 265-270.
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Miller, J. A., Baramidze, G., 2005. Simulation and the Semantic Web. In. Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference.
Miller, J., Fishwick, P. A., Taylor, S. J. E., Benjamin, P., Szymanski, B., 2001. Research and commercial opportunities in Web-Based Simulation. Simulation Practice and Theory, 9, pp 55-72.
Page, E. H., Buss, A., Fishwick, P. A., Healy, K. J., Nance, R. E., Paul, R. J., 2000. Web-Based Simulation: Revolution or Evolution?. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 10(1), pp 3-17.
Page, E. H., Opper, J. M., 2000. Investigating the application of web-based simulation principles within the architecture for a next-generation computer generated forces model. Future Generation Computer Systems Volume 17(2) pp 159-169.
Reed, J. A., Follen, G. J., Afjeh, A. A., 2000. Improving the Aircraft Design Process Using Web-Based Modeling and Simulation. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 10(1), pp 58-83.
Semantic Web Environmental directory SWED, 2006. Summary http://www.swed.org.uk/swed/about/.
Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, Past, present, and future of decision support technology. Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.
Spahn, M., Scheidl, S., Stoitsev, T., 2007, End-User Development Techniques for Enterprise Resource Planning Software Systems - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2007/1097/pdf/07081.SpahnMichael.Paper.1097.pdf - SAP AG, SAP Research CEC Darmstadt, End-User Software Engineering M. H. Burnett, G. Engels, B. A. Myers, G. Rothermel (Eds.) - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/portals/index.php?semnr=07081.
Storey, M., Lintern, R., Ernst, N., Perrin, D., 2004, Visualization and Protégé In: 7th International Protégé Conference - July 2004 - Bethesda, Maryland.
University of Victoria, 2006. Model Driven Visualization (MDV) http://www.thechiselgroup.org/?q=mdv.
Wikipedia, 2007. Welcome to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
Zhang, Z., 2005. Ontology Query Languages for the Semantic Web: A Performance Evaluation. MSc Thesis, (Under the Direction of John.A.Miller).
Semantic Web Programming would allow searching the Semantics within programs rather than just outputs. This would be a step on from open source programming, this would allow open semantics programming. The code could then be visualised and interacted with using all the tools available for visualising semantic web languages. The whole tree/graph structure of a program could be visualised and searched easily.
Programming with XML is already enabled, and progress can now be made in using those languages such as RDF and OWL which are higher in the Semantic Web stack.
Programming with XML is possible using XForms, XQuery, Simkin, Metal, and many Rich Internet Application development environments.
Programming is becoming possible using OWL and OWL-S (OWL for Web Services). Visualisation of OWL structures enables editing by using UML Activity Diagrams, and OWL models programming structures such as if-then-else, and while loops.
Useful Links
Berners-Lee, T., Semantic Web - XML2000 - Architecture - http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/slide10-0.html.
Dmitriev, S., Jetbrains - Meta Programming System - http://www.onboard.jetbrains.com/is1/articles/04/10/lop/ - Language Oriented Programming: The Next Programming Paradigm - Sergey Dmitriev.
MetaL - http://www.meta-language.net/ - MetaL: An XML based Meta-Programming language.
OWL - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htmOWL.
Programming with XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htmProgrammingwithXML.
Rich Internet Applications - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htmRichInternetApplications.
Simkin - http://www.simkin.co.uk/ - A high-level lightweight embeddable scripting language which works with Java or C++ and XML.
XForms - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htmXForms.
XQuery - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htmXQuery.
Dagstuhl Seminar End - User Software Engineering Article - Ezine.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 1 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 1 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 2 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 2 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_26.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 3 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 3 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_27.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 4 - Information about linking Meta Programming Model Driven Programming, Service Oriented Architecture and UML for End-User Programming - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_28.html.
Drag and Drop Programming - Example and Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming.
Drag and Drop Programming - Post - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/08/drag-and-drop-programming.html.
End User Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.
End User Programming - Example Interfaces - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#ExampleInterfaces.
End-User Programming Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#EndUserProgrammingResearch.
Meta-Programming, Translation, Semantic Web - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#MetaProgrammingTranslationSemanticWeb.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Programming with XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#ProgrammingwithXML.
Semantic Web - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm.
Semantic Web Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
Semantic Web research relevant for Translation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#SemanticWebresearchrelevantforTranslation.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Systems Engineering and Simulation Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm.
It is possible to create an end-user programming environment using Semantic Web technologies, especially for modelling of information, where this approach is well suited. This can make translation from humans to computers easier and more reliable than current software systems and languages. The use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems. To provide this solution, a translator will be created using pure XML or RDF/XML (Resource Description Framework) (World Wide Web Consortium, 2007) programming so the entire solution would be in XML based languages. This needs to be combined into a comprehensive application that is usable for end user programming of a large range of modelling problems. This involves programming with Semantic Web languages rather than just using them for information representation. This will make translation from humans to computers easier and more reliable than current software systems and languages, and further improve the maintainability of the whole system. The use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems. A flexible interface built with Semantic Web Languages will provide an interactive programming environment for computer literate non-programmers to manipulate information and construct their own solution oriented models.
The metaphor behind the provision of this End-User programming environment is that of visual representation of interlinked information snippets. These snippets will be visualised as nodes or translated to other views. The nodes can be linked via equations. An example of this is an engineering component, which can be viewed as interconnected nodes of information or as a diagram. The same information can be viewed and translated both ways. The information can be further translated into computer languages to make use of compilers and interpreters that can run models that perform calculation. This research is a test case for a whole new approach that could be possible, of collaborative end user programming by domain experts. The end user programmers will be enabled to use a visual interface where the visualization of the software exactly matches the structure of the software itself, making translation between user and computer, and vice versa, much more practical. Berners-Lee and Fischetti (1999) stated "the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. A piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to and how it's related." He also writes "There is really little else to meaning. The structure is everything." So connectivity and structure are the crucial factors, enabling users to create and follow the information connections that are required for solving a problem and specify this to the computer. These are the main factors in taking this research and enabling end user programming.
This research is a test case for a whole new approach that could be possible, of collaborative end user programming by domain experts. The end user programmers can use a visual interface where the visualization of the software exactly matches the structure of the software itself, making translation between user and computer, and vice versa, much more practical. Jackiw and Finzer (1993) describe an example where a diagram is translated to a graph representation, the authors explain this as 'spatial programming'. Jackiw and Finzer explain that this type of programming removes the distinction between programmers and users, and helps people to 'understand how a geometric construction can be defined by a system of dependencies'. The thesis research has tended to work the opposite way around, translating graph and tree representations to diagrammatic visualisations, but this translation is valid in either direction. Semantic Web languages are ideal for representing graphs and trees in an open standard way. The spatial, and tree/graph forms both have the same underlying semantics, and therefore can both be translated to computer languages. In fact it would be much better in the long run to use the Semantic Web languages as standardised programming languages for such problems as this would avoid the need to further translate into other programming languages, and systems. The advantage to this is in using Semantic Web languages for representation of information, meta programming, and translation to a visual display for users. The use of Semantic Web languages as a connectivity environment for connecting information, and for connecting users to the information held in Semantic Web data sources enables an environment that could be made easy to use, install and maintain.
Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1999. Weaving the Web. http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Weaving/ - Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X.
Jakiw, R. N., Finzer, W. F., 1993. The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry. In: A. Cypher, ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. MIT Press, Chapter 1 - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html - ISBN:0262032139.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Resource Description Framework (RDF) - http://www.w3.org/RDF/.
Semantic Web Languages can be a useful programming tool, and be used for creation and editing of E-Learning objects (Stutt and Motta, 2004). For enabling User Driven Programming, it was necessary to experiment with using Semantic Web Languages as programming languages. The two main approaches used in the previous examples were:-
Option 1 - To put all the data in Semantic Web languages e.g. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) (W3C, 2007a), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) (W3C, 2007c), RDF/XML (Resource Description Framework) (W3C, 2007b), OWL (Web Ontology Language) (Bechhofer and Carrol, 2004), and then display them using a programming language such as Flash, or Java (applets).
Option 2 - To use the above languages as meta languages for actual programming, including the display interface.
It was also possible to use aspects of both approaches, such as to program mainly in Semantic Web languages, then add some extra interactive capabilities using JavaScript. It is becoming increasingly practical to program completely in the Semantic Web languages (option 1). These languages enable declarative programming, and a translation is performed either using languages such as JavaScript or Java, or into JavaScript or Java. This is different from the AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) approach, which is more like option 1.
The advantages of this (option 2) form of declarative programming are that it is possible to use a language that is at a much higher level of abstraction, closer to the way people think. It was possible to create these programs by editing them in Protégé (ontology editor) and using a translator to convert them to whatever code was needed. This made it possible to perform visual programming in a meta language (OWL) Web Ontology Language (option 2), without needing to be concerned about how it was implemented. The possibilities for this are that it becomes sufficiently intuitive, so that people can create their own software for a wide variety of tasks, in a point and click way and using similar tools to web page editors. This would enable anyone who is computer literate to program the computer themselves to do their tasks, and if this is of interest to others, they can release their solution over the web.
Technologies such as XForms (Bruchez, 2006), XQuery (W3C, 2007e), and SPARQL (W3C, 2007d) make it possible to provide the sort of collaborative interactivity that Tim Berners-Lee calls 'Intercreativity' in Weaving the Web (Berners-Lee, 1999). In this book he also discussed the use of Semantic Web Languages as programming languages. He makes the point that it is not the power of the language that is important in providing this intercreativity. The simplicity of a language such as RDF makes it easier to provide interconnected solutions to complex problems, without becoming bogged down with the complexity of the language itself, and interoperability problems. Tim Berners-Lee sums up the advantage of a Semantic Web program over programs in other languages. He writes "The advantage of putting the rules in RDF is that in doing so, all the reasoning is exposed, whereas a program is a black box: you don't see what happens inside it." If these rules are also visualised, they are exposed to everyone, including non-programmers.
These advances make it practical to develop a high level visual interface that can allow people to develop open source, open standard, interoperable programs and share them. This can allow the development of open source communities similar to those developing software currently, but only requiring the level of skill it takes to get started in visual collaboration tools such as MySpace. In Weaving the Web Tim Berners-Lee writes "The Semantic Web, like the Web already, will make many things previously impossible just obvious". Visual Semantic Web programming is one of those obvious things.
Bechhofer, S., Carrol, J., 2004. Parsing owl dl: trees or triples?. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web, NY, USA, pp 266-275.
Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1999. Weaving the Web. http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Weaving/ - Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X.
Stutt, A., Motta, E., 2004. Semantic Learning Webs. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2004 (10). Special Issue on the Educational Semantic Web. ISSN:1365-893X - http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2004/10.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2007. Extensible Markup Language (XML) http://www.w3.org/XML/.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2007. Resource Description Framework (RDF) http://www.w3.org/RDF/.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2007. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) XML Graphics for the Web http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2006. SPARQL Query Language for RDF http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2006. XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/.
Semantic Web research relevant for Translation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#SemanticWebresearchrelevantforTranslation.
Translation involves non programmers in development of systems that are not a 'black box', Begel (2007) recommends this approach.
An important area of research is a technique for End User Programming, that of allowing visual modelling of information. This corresponds to the type of work normally undertaken using spreadsheets. This research involves using Semantic Web technologies to enable end user programming.
The intention is to examine tools and technologies that can translate from a domain representation and/or abstract representation of a problem into program code, and examine a systematic way to make this possible. The translation process is shown in the figure below; this process makes use of open standards languages, hence the interest in structured representation and open standards.
Translation Process
This section illustrates how visualisation is to be incorporated into the translation process.
The translation from a high-level abstraction to code involves visualisation of chains of equations, which are common in cost modelling. This visualisation enables people to add and manage information in large models, and identify cost information. A cost modelling example is used, but this work is relevant to modelling in general. To model complex problems a structured approach is needed, for representing explicit and implicit knowledge. A translation will be provided in 3 steps, and the roles and skills of people who would make use of this translation are shown :-
| Step | Person Role | Skills | Tool Type |
| Step 1 | System Creator | Programmer | Ontology and System Translator |
| Step 2 | Model Builder | End-User Programmer | Modelling Tool and System Translator |
| Step 3 | Model User | End-User | Interactive Visualisation |
Step 3 visualises results and enables interaction with the information to establish the meaning of the results. The translation uses Semantic Web standards to enable widespread applicability and ensure this is a generic solution. The visualisation and interactions can be tree/graph based, spreadsheet type, and CAD style as necessary. Another option is translation to programming or Meta-programming languages so the information can be re-used by developers who are creating systems with these languages.
This stepped translation solved problems of the spreadsheet approach as indicated in the table below :-
| Improvement | Achieved By |
| Maintenance | Structuring and Translation |
| Extensibility | Structuring and Visualisation |
| Ease of Use | Visualisation, Interaction, and Translation |
| Sharing of Information | Shared Ontology and Interoperability |
The 3 step translation process created ensures translation of domain level modelling into open standard representation and software and vice versa. The approach takes a representation of a problem and breaks this down into subsets to repeatedly simplify the problem until a result subset is produced that represents a reasonable solution to the user. Logic languages might enable getting to this subset quicker but would involve much more research and work to design and implement a solution, so these are reserved for future work. This does lead to a problem in that some other representations may be at a more structured level in the stack of possible ontologies, and others higher, so this requires translation between levels in order to integrate with other ontology systems.
Further information is at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#ProgramTransformation, and http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#UsersandDeabstractionforTranslation.
A major benefit of encouraging end user programming is saving the cost of delivery, distribution and support of software, by allowing end-user programming using web based services. Philippe Courtot explains this in an article by Mark Ward (2007). 'You cannot keep on developing software the old ways, The costs of distribution and support are higher and higher and the customers are less and less satisfied. Instead of buying a licence for a program and developing applications themselves, companies will move in great numbers towards firms offering software as a service via the web browser. It's going to be much more visible than it has at any other time.'
Web users driving change in 2007 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6198125.stm - By Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website.
My work involves allowing non-programmers to model complex problems visually and without having to use programming languages. Information is created in a visual tree using an Ontology editor, the information is then transformed, and all calculations performed. Further transformations can be performed into any programming language or open standard information representation language, and this can be displayed on the web. Also transformations can be performed between a tree representation and other styles of representation e.g. an interactive CAD style representation, using SVG.
A related area of research is that of Semantic Web and Web 2.0 techniques to enable online interaction with the results visualisation. The intention of this is to enable end user programming, by always allowing the person to see the context of the information and to get immediate feedback on any changes.
The theory behind this is that of showing examples of a program in whatever way most puts across the information in an understandable way. This must illustrate the concept that the information represents. This allows a user to manipulate the information and get immediate feedback on what has changed. This is related to Programming by Example, which is explained below.
In the mid 1970s Smith introduced the technique of Programming by Example with a program called Pygmalion. Smith elaborated on this in Chapter 1 of Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. This links with the theme of the thesis of translating from an abstract to a concret representation, Green et al. (2007) explain this distinction between abstract and concrete models. This distinction is more gradual than the distinction between classes and objects for object-oriented programming. This demonstrated the need to describe algorithms through concrete examples rather than abstractly. 'Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program' University of Poitiers explains and expands on Smiths' work with an example demonstrating how numbers fail to reveal the concept behind them. The example is a numerical representation of a triangle. This representation is 'fregean' because it does not show the concept of a triangle. Next to this is a diagram of the triangle that does show the concept. (Hanna, 2005) and (Elliott, 2006) provide an interface for direct manipulation of shapes in this analogical way by creating an interactive triangle manipulation example using the Haskell functional programming language.
More Information on Program Transformation is available at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ProgramTransformation.htm.
Model-Driven Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#ModelDrivenProgramming.
Programming by Example - Links
Alan Kay, Allen Cypher - Watch What I Do: - Programming by Demonstration.
Begel A 2007, End User Programming for Scientists: Modeling Complex Systems, End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar, http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1077.
Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program (2004) - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
Hanna, K., 2005. A document-centered environment for Haskell. 17th International Workshop on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages IFL 2005 Dublin, Ireland - September 19-21 2005.
Elliott C., - Functional Programming by Interacting with Tangible Values - http://conal.net/papers/Eros/ - Conal Elliott - April 8, 2006.
Green, S., Beeson, I., Kamm, R., 2007. Process architectures and process models: opportunities for reuse. In: 8th Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development, and Support BPMDS07 and CAiSE'07 11-15 June 2007, Trondheim, Norway.
Pivotal - An interactive, document-centered presentation of Haskell - http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/pivotal/index.html - Pivotal is a document-centered presentation of Haskell. It aims to provide a user-friendly environment in which Haskell documents can be interactively developed and manipulated.
Pivotal Example - http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/pivotal/adt-manip.html - Direct manipulation of ADT values.
Programming by Demonstration - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/PBE/index.html - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Lab.
Pygmalion: A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. Stuttgart, Basel - http://sern.ucalgary.ca/courses/SENG/611/F99/ConceptMaps/slides/tsld004.htm - University of Calgary Summary - Smith, D. C. 1977.
Smith, D. C. (1977) A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. Basel: Birkhauser. 187p.
Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - Cypher, A, 1993, MIT Press, ISBN:0262032139.
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/ - Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - The entire text of this book is included on this web site. Access it through the Table of Contents.
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html.
Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Your-Wish/ - Henry Lieberman, editor.
Other Information
Constructionism - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/Logo.htm - Constructionism and Logo Programming.
End User Programming - End User Programming Research.
History of End User Programming - End User Research Information and Links.
Model-Driven Programming - http://ezinearticles.com/?Model-Driven-Programming&id=1350655 - Spahn et al. (2007) explain that end-users are domain experts not IT professionals, and because they cannot program their own solution, this is requiring them to communicate their needs to IT developers. Spahn et al. argue for the empowerment of users to customise software by providing an abstraction layer to hide technical details and allow for concentrating on business needs. Model-Driven Programming and the Semantic Web are explained by Frankel et al. (2004), and they discuss how these techniques can be combined. Bringing together model-driven programming with the Semantic Web can enable diagrammatic programming, and translation to structured and searchable Semantic Web output, this eases visualisation and interaction problems at each stage of translation. Visualisation and interaction with ontologies is important for model-driven programming research in this thesis. Frankel et al. investigate translation of UML and entity relationship diagrams that use graphical notations and store in formats such as XMI into OWL.
More information in this article - Dagstuhl Seminar End - User Software Engineering - Summary - Peter Hale.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
UWE HCI Group - HCI Group - Human Computer Interaction.
This graph shows that users are by far the biggest group many of these develop their own programs, there are two intermediate groups, and a small group of professional programmers.
Based on data from US bureau of Labour Statistics.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language based representation of the chart above - End User Development.
Sources - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/papers/EUPchi2006overviewColor.pdf - Myers et al.
Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B. (2005). Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cscaffid/papers/eu_20050923_vlhcc.pdf - Scaffidi et al.
Myers, B., Ko, A., Burnett M. (2006). Invited Research Overview: End-User Programming Extended Abstracts, CHI'2006: pp. 75-80, Montreal, Canada.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~natprog/EUPchi2006overview.pdf - Myers et al.
An explanation of my End User Programming Research is available as a post Research Summary - Enabling End User Programming on my Blog.
End User Conferences past and future
End User Programming - Conferences.
History of End User Programming - Conferences.
20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering - http://ase.cs.uni-essen.de/ase/past/ase2005/ - Long Beach, California, USA, November 7-11, 2005 - papers, demonstrations, tutorials.
2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://vlhcc07.eecs.wsu.edu/ - Coeur d'Alène, Idaho, USA - 22-26 September 2007.
20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering - http://ase.cs.uni-essen.de/ase/past/ase2005/ - Long Beach, California, USA, November 7-11, 2005 - papers, demonstrations, tutorials.
Code Generation 2008 - http://www.codegeneration.net/conference/index.php - 25th-28th June 2008 - Cambridge, UK - A growing number of developers are using or planning to use model-based code generation - are you ready for the next evolutionary step in software? - WHO'S CG2008 FOR? - CG2008 is for software practitioners and those with a stake in the future of their development organisation..
Final Call for Speakers:
Submission Deadline: Friday January 18th 2008
We are seeking high-quality session proposals covering topics on model-driven software development (including Software Factories, Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs), Generative Programming, Software Product Lines and related areas).
Sessions could cover topics such as:
- Code Generation and Model Transformation tools and approaches
- Defining and implementing modelling languages
- Domain Analysis and Domain Engineering
- Language evolution and modularization
- Meta Modelling
- Runtime virtual machines versus direct code generation
- Tool and technology adoption
http://www.codegeneration.net/conference/index.php.
End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
HCI 2007 - http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/hci2007/ - Happy 21st HCI! - 3-7 September 2007 - at Lancaster University - Our field is constantly changing, with useful and ground breaking research being conducted in such areas as design methodology, tangible user interfaces and collaborative interaction, to name but a few. The desire to improve and innovate, coupled with the drive to keep moving forward and 'explore new frontiers', in human-computer interaction, will be constant throughout this conference and so is reflected in the title 'not as we know it'.
History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) - http://research.ihost.com/hopl/ - The Third ACM SIGPLAN - History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) - San Diego, California, June 9-10, 2007 - (co-located with FCRC 2007, June 9-16, 2007) - in cooperation with ACM SIGSOFT.
IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/vlhcc/ - 2006 - Brighton, UK.
IFAC/IFIP/IFORS IEA Symposium - Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems - http://www.ifac-hms-2007.com/ - Sheraton Grande Walkerhill Hotel Seoul Korea - September 4-6th 2007 - International Federation of Automatic Control.
Model-Driven User-Centric Design and Engineering - MDUCDE 2007 - http://www.zmmi.de/MDUCDE2007/ - Sheraton Grande Walkerhill Hotel Seoul Korea - September 5th 2007 - The workshop aims to: - Bring together a community integrating people and knowledge from human-computer interaction as well as human-machine interaction - Discuss issues on advanced and future user interface design, engineering, and automatic generation - Leveraging model-driven and automatic application of ergonomic knowledge in software and system engineering - Identify needs, goals, and future research areas in user-centric design.
SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard - Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
USAB 2007 - Usability & HCI for Medicine and Health Care - http://www.meduni-graz.at/imi/usab-symposium/ - 22nd November 2007 - 3rd Symposium of the Austrian Computer Society, HCI&UE Group. Technological performance increases exponentially and Medical Information Systems and Decision Support Systems are extremely sophisticated. However, human cognitive performance does not advance at the same speed. USAB 07 further promotes the collaboration between Psychology and Computer Science.
User Experience 2007 Conference - http://www.nngroup.com/events/ - Barcelona - 4-9th November - Las Vegas - 2nd-7th December - In place of scattered, shallow talks, UE offers up to 6 days of deep learning as international experts lead 31 full-day tutorials on topics such as:
Turning usability data into interaction design
Improving usability for complex applications
Writing for the Web
Applying information architecture (IA) principles
Managing user experience strategy.
VL/HCC'08 - 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://vlhcc08.cs.unibw.de/cfp.php - Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany - 16-20th September 2008 - From the beginning of the computer age, researchers and computing practitioners have sought ways to make interactions with computers more human-oriented. For example, visual languages have long been used to provide effective communication between humans and computers. Visual languages have been successfully employed for end-user programming, modeling, and rapid prototyping; they have supported design activities by people of many disciplines and backgrounds including architects, artists, children, engineers, and scientists. In addition, visual languages and technologies are increasingly being used to facilitate human-human communication through Internet/Web technology and electronic mobile devices. - SOFTVIS'08 - ACM Symposium on Software Visualization - http://www.st.uni-trier.de/~diehl/softvis/org/softvis08/ - September 16-17 2008, Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany. - Diagrams '08 - Fifth International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams - Diagrams is an international and interdisciplinary conference series on the theory and application of diagrams in any scientific field of enquiry. - http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/diagrams2008/.
End User Programming links
Acadia University - Support for End-User Programming in a Cooperative Environment - Ivan Tomek, Rebecca Gong, Elhadi Shakshuki, Rick Giles.
Alan Blackwell - University of Cambridge - Human Computer Interaction - End User Programming.
Alice v2.0, v3.0 - http://www.alice.org/ - Learn to Program Interactive 3D Graphics.
An Enduring Legacy - Randy Pausch Inspired Millions - http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml - Randy Pausch, the professor at Carnegie Mellon University who inspired countless students in the classroom and others worldwide through his highly acclaimed last lecture, has died of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47. - Also a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, Pausch co-founded the Entertainment Technology Center and led researchers who created Alice, a revolutionary way to teach computer programming. He was widely respected in academic circles for a unique interdisciplinary approach, bringing together artists, dramatists and designers to break new ground by working in collaboration with computer scientists. - Outside the classroom, he gained public fame for delivering what would come to be known as "The Last Lecture." On Sept. 18, 2007, only a month after doctors told him that he had three-to-six months to live following a recurrence of pancreatic cancer, he presented a lecture called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" to a packed auditorium at Carnegie Mellon. - Carnegie Mellon - Human-Computer Interaction Institute - http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/ - Our Mission: To understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities, goals, and social environments through interdisciplinary research and education in design, computer science, and behavioral and social sciences. - Alice - http://www.alice.org/ - Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
An EUD Approach for Making MBUI Practical. Macías, J. A., Castells, P., - http://astreo.ii.uam.es/%7Eatlas/desk/cadui2004.pdf - Intelligent User Interfaces and Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces Conference (IUI/CADUI'2004). Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal, 13-16 January.
An Introduction to Haskell, Part 1: Why Haskell - http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/05/21/an-introduction-to-haskell---part-1-why-haskell.html - Adam Turoff - 24th May 2007.
Bath University - HCI Group - http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/department/hci/ - Research is concerned with theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the design, development and evaluation of computer systems to support work and leisure activities of individuals and groups.
Bath University - Peter Johnson - http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/dept/people/p.johnson.html - Professor of Computing Science - Head of Department of Computer Science Head of HCI Group.
BBC Technology news - Free tool offers 'easy' coding - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6647011.stm - A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed - Jonathan Fildes - 14 May 2007.
BBC Technology news - Who will write tomorrow's code? - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7324556.stm - Bill Thompson puts out a call for more programmers. - 1 April 2008.
Bournemouth University - Software Systems Modelling Group - School of Design, Engineering and Computing - http://www.sosym.co.uk/ - The Software Systems Modelling Group (SoSyM) is a multi-disciplinary computing group focussing on the research, development and application of innovative modelling, tools and technologies for software systems.
British HCI Group - http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/ - The web site of the British HCI Group offers a service to practitioners, researchers, consumers, students and anyone with an interest in highly usable computing and communications systems.
Carnegie Mellon - Human-Computer Interaction Institute - http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/ - Our Mission: To understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities, goals, and social environments through interdisciplinary research and education in design, computer science, and behavioral and social sciences. - Alice - http://www.alice.org/ - Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
Catherine Letondal - http://www.pasteur.fr/~letondal/ - Pasteur Institute, Computing Center.
Distributed Constructionism - http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) - This paper introduces the concept of distributed constructionism, building on previous research on constructionism and on distributed cognition. It focuses particularly on the use of computer networks to support students working together on design and construction activities, and it argues that these types of activities are particularly effective in supporting the development of knowledge-building communities. The paper describes three main categories of distributed constructionist activities: discussing constructions, sharing constructions, and collaborating on constructions. In each category, it describes ongoing research projects at the MIT Media Lab and discusses how these projects support new ways of thinking and learning.
Dmoz Open Directory Project - Programming Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Alphabetic List of Programming Languages - Definitions and Links.
Dmoz Open Directory Project - Visual Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Visual Languages.
End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
Euses End Users Shaping Effective Software research collaboration - Welcome to EUSES - Research Collaboration.
Euses Presentation - End User Programming - Invited Research Overview - Brad Myers, Andrew Co, Margaret Burnett - Carnegie Mellon, Oregon State Universities.
Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - 2004 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
Generative Programming - Generative Programming - Methods, Tools, and Applications - Krzysztof Czarnecki and Ulrich W. Eisenecker - Addison-Wesley, June 2000.
Hackety Hack - http://hacketyhack.net/ - In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!!
Henry Lieberman - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/ - Research Scientist - MIT Media Laboratory.
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
IBM developerWorks Interviews: Rod Smith - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int062806.html - IBM vice president of Emerging Internet Technologies on the business of watching, encouraging, and leveraging new technologies.
IBM - Ease of Use - http://www-03.ibm.com/easy/page/558 - User Engineering.
IBM - End User Development Tools - https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/sites/dublin/dsl.shtml - IBM Dublin.
IBM QED Wiki - IBM eyes programming for the masses - By Martin LaMonica - CNET News.com.
IPGems - Strategic Design to Improve Knowledge and Performance - http://www.ipgems.com/ - IPGems explores the integration of concepts from various professional disciplines in the fields of user-centered system design, information and knowledge management, semantic integration, and performance improvement.
IPGems - The Usability Imperative Inherent in the Semantic Web Duane Degler and Renee Lewis - http://www.ipgems.com/writing/usability_imperative_in_semweb_6-2004.pdf - A tremendous amount of hope - and hype - has been attached to Tim Berners-Lee's concept of the Semantic Web, where machine-readable 'meaning' enriches the promise of the web. Creating a positive, successful, trust-worthy experience for users is crucial to its success. What does that mean? What is imperative for it to become the 'next generation' web? Most importantly, why must the usability community play a leading role to shape the Semantic Web in a positive, user-centered way?
IPGems - The Usability Professional as Visionary / Strategist - The following is a summary of ideas presented at the UPA DC usability conference, October 2006. - http://www.ipgems.com/present/degler_visiontalk_upadc2006.pdf - This talk is not prescriptive - I can't really tell you how to be "visionary" or even "strategic" - although I will try to offer some suggestions and hopefully instill a sense of purpose. My goal is to explore what it means to consider both vision and strategy in the practice of user-centered design and usability, and through this exploration to identify some practical things we can do to take on a "thought leadership" role within organizations and projects.
IPGems - User-Centered Design and Usability for XML and e-Government - http://www.ipgems.com/present/xmlwg03-2004ucd.pdf - Duane Degler, IPGems - XML Working Group, March 17, 2004.
IPGems - User Interaction with the Semantic Web - http://www.ipgems.com/swui/ - Academics and practitioners from the semantic web community are seeking the involvement of usability professionals as they define the "next generation web." Recently, workshops at various conferences have focused on user needs and user interaction.
IPGems - What is "usable" software? - http://www.ipgems.com/pcd-hci.asp - Usable software is the kind of software you can use effectively and understand easily -- where it is clear what you can do, your goals and tasks are supported, controls are consistently presented, the view is pleasing to the eye and uncluttered, feedback is relevant and helpful, and your questions are answered simply and immediately -- in other words, something that helps you be successful, and that you would enjoy and find easy to use.
Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The Chronicles of End User Computing... http://www.ieuc.org/home/chronicles.html as edited on Saturday, January 22, 2005.
Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The IEUC Homepage - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html - as edited on Wednesday, May 17, 2006.
Institute for End User Computing - The Market's Failure to Meet End User Needs - http://www.ieuc.org/home/market-failure.html.
ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy - Model-based Tools for Pervasive Usability - Fabio Paternn.
Knowledge Management Research Group - http://kmr.nada.kth.se/ - The KMR group is a research group at Media Technology, CSC, KTH. We are driven by a desire to create new and powerful ways to structure and communicate information in order to support its exformation into knowledge and transmutation into understanding. Our problem domains include educational, industrial as well as administrative settings.
LPA VisiRule 1.0 - http://www.lpa.co.uk/vsr.htm - LPA VisiRule 1.0 - VisiRule is a graphical tool for developing and delivering business rules systems and components simply by drawing the decision logic.
MediaDoc Project - http://www.isi.edu/isd/media-doc/media-doc-body.html - At USC's Information Sciences Institute we have been studying the process that people go through when they are trying to understand software, and have developed a tool called MediaDoc that generates software explanations to support this understanding process.
MOdel driven MOdernisation of Complex Systems - http://www.viewzone.org/momocs/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=20&Itemid=17 -MOMOCS aims at studying a methodology and related tools for fast reengineering complex systems. The project is studying how to solve the dilemma between rigorous methodologies and agile and unstructured one, allowing the modernisation engineer to concentrate on what to do and not how to do it.
Network of Excellence on End User Development - Network of Excellence on End User Development - EUD-Net
Oregan State and Houston University - Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets - Martin Erwig, Robin Abraham, Irene Cooperstein, Steve Kollmansberger, 2005, ICSE 2005 27th International Conference on Software Engineering p 136- 145.
Participatory Programming: Developing programmable bioinformatics tools for end-users. Letondal C, 2005. In H. Lieberman, F. Paterno, & V. Wulf (Eds.), End-User Development. Springer/Kluwer Academic Publishers - http://www.pasteur.fr/~letondal/Papers/EUD-letondal.pdf.
Raskin Center - http://rchi.raskincenter.org/index.php?title=Home - Exploting New Interface Directions.
Simon Price - Institute for Learning & Research Technology - Bristol University.
Socratic Arts - http://www.socraticarts.com/ - Online learning services.
The Tech Lab: Greg Papadopoulos - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6225398.stm - As part of a series inviting some of the world's leading technologists to speculate about the future, Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems, calls for technology and design to be married to people's needs. - 21 June 2007.
Tinderbox - http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ - Tinderbox is a personal content management assistant.
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - Dr José A. Macías - publications - Research - End User Development (EUD).
Usability News - http://www.usabilitynews.com/ - British HCI Group.
VIDE - VIsualize all moDel drivEn programming - http://vide.tnmsoft.de/ - To enable the development of flexible, robust and evolvable software based on UML. Build a fully visual action programming platform.
HCI Psychology Links
Bristol University - Department of Experimental Psychology - BS8 Human Factors Group - http://human-factors.psy.bris.ac.uk/.
Bristol University - Martin Groen - http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~psmgmg/research.htm.
Visualization and the process of modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view - Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data - Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining - Andrew W. Crapo, Laurie B. Waisel, William A. Wallace, Thomas R. Willemain.
AOSD.net - http://aosd.net/ - aosd.net is home to the annual Aspect-Oriented Software Development conference and is intended to provide a comprehensive source of information about AOSD.
AspectXML - This research is especially useful where software functions can't be neatly attached to particilar objects or nodes in a hierarchy. These are known as cross-cutting concerns as they may affect several nodes.
These are useful links to an renowned researcher and writer on XML, XSLT, XUL, SVG, Java, and on the general direction of software and web research.
An Introduction to the AspectXML Concept - http://www.aspectxml.org/downloads/aspectXML_concept.doc - Object Orientation (OO) has been a favoured approach in software development for some years now, with its roots in the early 80's. OO gave the developer the opportunity to manage some of the complexity of software development by formalizing the concepts of encapsulation. However, some problems in software do not easily lend themselves to the strict hierarchical nature of good OO design.
Kurt Cagle - Kurt Cagle - Web site
Kurt Cagle - Kurt Cagle - Article - Thoughts on Complexity
M. David Peterson - User Driven Programming and AspectXML - O'Reilly Blog.
Russ Miles - O'Reilly Blog - AspectXML, AspectJ, Java.
Russ Miles - SOA Ranch - Service-oriented architecture.
Russ Miles - UML Ranch - Unified Modeling Language.
The AspectXML site is being developed by this team also including M. David Peterson, and Russel Miles
Explanation
AspectXML - Article - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/09/part_3_assets_atom_feeds_and_a.html - [Part 3] Assets, Atom Feeds, and AspectXML - The Triple Threat of Web Development? - O'Reilly XML.com - M. David Peterson - Part 1 - Part 2.
Community site
AspectXML - http://www.aspectxml.org/ - Community Open Source Project.
Implementation based on Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Project for Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for these History of Computing stories - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=3Iki_m8p3RGWAfM2jknRlg.
Code Explanataion/Tutorial Freshblog - Blogger Hacks, Categories, Tips & Tricks - http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2007/03/pipes-json-and-code-for-your-website.html.
Meta-Programming, Translation, Semantic Web
Internal
Drag and Drop Programming - Example and Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming.
Meta Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#MetaProgramming.
Model-Driven Programming - http://ezinearticles.com/?Model-Driven-Programming&id=1350655 - Spahn et al. (2007) explain that end-users are domain experts not IT professionals, and because they cannot program their own solution, this is requiring them to communicate their needs to IT developers. Spahn et al. argue for the empowerment of users to customise software by providing an abstraction layer to hide technical details and allow for concentrating on business needs. Model-Driven Programming and the Semantic Web are explained by Frankel et al. (2004), and they discuss how these techniques can be combined. Bringing together model-driven programming with the Semantic Web can enable diagrammatic programming, and translation to structured and searchable Semantic Web output, this eases visualisation and interaction problems at each stage of translation. Visualisation and interaction with ontologies is important for model-driven programming research in this thesis. Frankel et al. investigate translation of UML and entity relationship diagrams that use graphical notations and store in formats such as XMI into OWL.
Program Transformation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ProgramTransformation.htm.
Programming with XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#ProgrammingwithXML.
External
British Computer Society - Ubiquitous computing: experience, design and science - Grand Challenges in Computing.
British Computer Society - 2006 Grand Challenges Conference: Blue Skies Research over 15 years - Grand Challenges Conference.
EXist - http://exist.sourceforge.net/ - Open Source Native XML Database.
Google Web Toolkit - XML.com - Google Web Toolkit - Brusce Perry - Translates from Java to Ajax - Highly Interactive Web Pages can be good user interface for User Driven Programming.
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
Jeffrey G. Gray, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham - Home Page - Department of Computer and Information Sciences - Software Composition and Modeling Laboratory.
Jetbrains - Meta Programming System - http://www.onboard.jetbrains.com/is1/articles/04/10/lop/ - Language Oriented Programming: The Next Programming Paradigm - Sergey Dmitriev.
Jetbrains - Meta Programming System - http://www.jetbrains.com/mps/ - MPS is an implementation of Language Oriented Programming.
Meta Programming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaprogramming - Wikipedia.
Metaphorical Web - http://www.xforms.org/metaweb/ - Mental Perambulations by Kurt Cagle - What is the Metaphorical Web? - A Statement of Purpose.
MetaL - http://www.meta-language.net/ - MetaL: An XML based Meta-Programming language.
Model-Driven Program Transformation of a Large Avionics Framework - http://www.cis.uab.edu/gray/Pubs/gpce-2004.pdf - Jeff Gray, Jing Zhang, Yuehua Lin, Suman Roychoudhury, Hui Wu, Rajesh Sudarsan, Aniruddha Gokhale, Sandeep Neema, Feng Shi, and Ted Bapty - Third International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering GPCE.
NLP (Natural Language Processing) for NLP (Natural Language Programming) - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Publications/NLP4NLP.pdf - Rada Mihalcea, Hugo Liu, and Henry Lieberman.
OpenLaszlo - http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/OpenLaszlo - Developer Zone.
Orbeon - http://www.orbeon.com/ - Orbeon XForms Presentation Server.
program-transformation.org - Home Page - Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki.
program-transformation.org - Program Transformation - Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki.
program-transformation.org - Model Transformation - Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki.
Rats - Softpedia - Rats! is an easily extensible parser generator for C-like languages.
Service-Oriented Architecture - XML.com - Service-oriented architecture - Hao He.
Service-Oriented Architecture - Wikipedia - Service-oriented architecture.
Simkin - http://www.simkin.co.uk/ - A high-level lightweight embeddable scripting language which works with Java or C++ and XML.
The Model Driven Semantic Web - 1st International Workshop on the Model-Driven Semantic Web (MDSW2004) - Enabling Knowledge Representation and MDA® Technologies to Work Together.
The Semantic Discovery System - http://www.insilicodiscovery.com/v2/index.php - We aim to Accelerate Research in Information Discovery focused Organisations. - The Semantic Web will put enormous new power in the hands of everyone trying to get valuable answers from the web - instead of frustrating Google searches, people will get fast, accurate and highly valuable answers - because they will finally be able to ask the exact questions they really want. Our product - SDS - focuses this new Semantic Web power not just on the 'Web' but also on the valuable information locked inside organisational databases - for the first time, ordinary people will be able to get answers that would otherwise have taken impossible amounts of programming. - http://www.meaning2go.com/ - Ian Goldsmid - http://www.linkedin.com/in/iangoldsmid.
The diagram shows a plan for weaving Aspect-Oriented Programming http://aosd.net/ into translation for end-user to computer communication. Aspect-Oriented Programming can be used where certain tasks or properties do not fall within a natural hierarchy. These are called Cross-Cutting Concerns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-cutting_concern, these Cross-Cutting Concerns could be tasks the program needs to perform such as providing printing or security. This same technique could also be used for attributes that the program is to model for example if the program is to model an aircraft wings, a user with sufficient computer literacy skills can model the representation of the wing as a hierarchical diagram. The user can specify relationships between these items that make it possible to make calculations and decisions. For this model some parameters such as efficiency, weight and cost might not fit well in this hierarchical representation. So these parameters could be weaved into the program as cross-cutting concerns in a similar way to the computing parameters.
Once all parameters are weaved into the program it can be translated from a format most suitable for holding user's information (e.g. OWL Web Ontology Language), into a computer language such as Java for implementation. The program would calculate results, and these could be translated back to the user. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) can also be used in the translation as either an XML based programming language, or a language for representing results. The results would be fed back in the language used for user interaction and visualisation. Results could be visualised using stylesheets and interactive software, and where useful translated further into kinds of representations other than trees e.g. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) diagrams and graphs.
Highly interactive web pages that act like programs to provide a user interface can be used to provide an interactive user driven programming environment.
Shim et al. (2002) examine translation from a user's model to equations and explain "converting a decision-makers' specification of a decision problem into an algebraic form and then into a form understandable by an algorithm is a key step in the use of a model".
Solutions are needed to enable translation for modelling systems to aid decision support, and collabration. Shim et al. (2006) emphasize that modern decision support systems need to support teams. This section discusses how Semantic Web/ontology based collaboration can enable cohesive ontology and model editing.
Eng and Salustri (2006) talk of cohesion in software systems, and the ultimate aim of transparent systems that allow people to concentrate on the problem they want to solve, with minimal need for awareness of the systems and interfaces they are using. The Semantic Web has massive potential that is as yet only partially realised, and can be a useful technology to allow us to move towards domain level software development. The problem that needs to be solved is that of creating or using Semantic Web applications in large highly complex organisations, or collaborations to pull together information from diverse sources, and enable it to be used for modelling problems. The research for this thesis examines ways of structuring information, and enabling processing and searching of the information to provide a modelling capability. The thesis also investigates increasing user involvement in software, and the possibility of providing templates to enable non-programmers to develop modelling software for the purposes that interest them. It is very important to involve users in software development (Olsson, 2004). To assist in this project, it is essential that new ways of enabling collaboration between all those involved in software creation and use are investigated. Johnson et al. (2003) and Johnson (2004) examine how this kind of collaboration can be achieved and tested. The main advantage of open standard representation of information provided by the Semantic Web is that information can be transferred from one application to another. Additionally it provides a layered architecture that allows for a stepped translation from user to computer and back to the user for conveying results of a modelling run.
Crapo et al. (2002) citing Jones (1996) "observes that representations suitable for a computer algorithm are often impenetrable to humans and vice versa, and that experts in modeling and optimization may prefer different representations than do experts in the problems domain. Representation will be central to any attempt to enhance the creation and use of models." The purpose of the research into this problem for this thesis is to find a way of translating the conceptual model, as defined by a visual and human language representation into a structured representation. The requirement of this structured representation is that it can be made use of by computers in order to generate program code. This involves the use of model-driven programming as a technique to assist this. Scanlan et al. (2002) and Hale et al. (2003) explain about levels of abstraction in cost modelling, the intention here is to apply this to more general modelling problems relevant to this thesis. Spahn et al. (2007) explains that end-users are domain experts not IT professionals, and this is forcing them to communicate their needs to IT developers. Spahn et al. argue for the empowerment of users to customise software by providing an abstraction layer to hide technical details and allow for concentrating on business needs. Model Driven Programming can assist this.
The research aim is to ensure that users who are computer literate, but have little time to program, or knowledge of programming languages, can create software to represent a problem they want solved. Users should not have to write any computer code. Instead diagrams, natural language, and formulae would be used to define the source model. As far as possible the tools and techniques used should be open standard for ease of use, re-use or transformation on other hardware or software systems.
The main advantage of the open standard representation of information provided by the Semantic Web is that information can be transferred from one application to another. Additionally it provides a layered architecture that allows for a stepped translation from users to computer and back for conveying results of a modelling run. This approach to modelling is explained in more detail at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
A model as defined by the user could be translated to a model that is more suitable for a computer to interpret. Software can then follow any relationships defined in the model, make any calculations or decisions, and so provide the results. Recursion can be used to enable the computer to follow a diagrammatic representation of the problem without having to care about the names of objects. This is particularly true for tree representations. Trees are defined recursively because their structure is recursive so it is natural to traverse them recursively. This approach deals with hierarchies and relationships, but for requirements outside this scope Aspect Oriented Programming (Elrad et al., 2001a and 2001b) and (Murphy et al., 2001) could be used to capture and translate these requirements. Aspect Oriented Programming can be used where software functions cannot be neatly attached to particular objects or nodes in a hierarchy. These are known as cross-cutting concerns as they may affect several nodes. A diagrammatic representation of the cross-cutting concerns can then be translated into a computer language representation such as AspectJ for Java (Kiczales et al., 2001) and AspectXML for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) (Peterson, 2005). Aspect Oriented Programming makes use of XML as a programming language not just an information format. Collaborations involving Aspect Oriented Programming can be found at (Aosd.net, 2007) and (AspectXML, 2007). More information on AspectXML is at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#AspectOrientedProgramming.
A further translation is likely to be necessary from the decision support program/model (step 2) to a result model (step 3) that should be created to express the results to a user. This model would be a categorized full description of all the results from the program. This should be represented using open standard information languages such as XML or languages derived from these. This enables the widest possible re-use of the information on different hardware and software systems. The result model could be represented diagrammatically or as categorized and linked web pages. The full translation is as below :-
Source Model (Human Friendly Representation) - Source Model (Computer Friendly Representation) - Computer Program - Result Model (Human Friendly Representation)
If users can define the source model, remain largely unaware of how the result model is produced, can understand the result model, and this meets their expectations, the translation will be successful. Decisions a user makes can affect both the content and the presentation style of the results received. The approached used for this is demonstrated here - Demo.
AOSD.net - http://aosd.net/ - aosd.net is home to the annual Aspect-Oriented Software Development conference and is intended to provide a comprehensive source of information about AOSD.
AspectXML - Article - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/09/part_3_assets_atom_feeds_and_a.html - [Part 3] Assets, Atom Feeds, and AspectXML - The Triple Threat of Web Development? - O'Reilly XML.com - M. David Peterson - Part 1 - Part 2.
Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain T. R., Visualization and the process of modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view - Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data - Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining.
Elrad,T., Filman, R. E., Bader, A., 2001. Aspect-oriented programming: Introduction. Communications of the ACM, 44(10), pp 28-32.
Elrad, T., Aksit, M., Kiczales, G., Lieberherr, K., Ossher, H., 2001. Discussing aspects of AOP. Communications of the ACM, 44(10) pp 33-38.
Eng, N., Salustri, F. A., 2006. "Rugplot" Visualization for Preliminary Design - http://www.cden2006.utoronto.ca/data/10042.pdf or http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/I/Papers/cden06rugplot.pdf - CDEN AGM and "Crossing Design Boundaries" Conference in July 2006 - Wiki to go with this paper - http://deseng.ryerson.ca/xiki/View/Oplm/RugPlotPaper.
Hale P, Scanlan J, Bru C, 2003, Design and Prototyping of Knowledge Management Software for Aerospace Manufacturing, 10th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering - HTML HTML Word doc Adobe PDF
Johnson, P., May, J., Johnson, H., 2003. Introduction to Multiple and Collaborative Tasks - ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction - ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 10 (4) December 2003 pp 277-280.
Johnson, P., 2004. Interactions, collaborations and breakdowns - TAMODIA 2004 INVITED TALKS - Peter Johnson - 15-16 November - Prague, Czech Republic.
Jones, C.V., 1996. Visualization and Optimization, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA.
Kiczales, G., Hilsdale, E., Hugunin, J., Kersten, M., Palm, J., Griswold, W. G., 2001. Getting started with ASPECTJ - Communications of the ACM - Volume 44 , Issue 10 (October 2001) Pages: 59 - 65.
Murphy, G. C., Walker, R. J., Baniassad, E. L. A., Robillard, M. P., Lai, A., Kersten, M. A., 2001. Does aspect-oriented programming work?, Communications of the ACM, Vol 44(10) (October 2001) pp 75 - 77, ISSN:0001-0782.
Olsson, E., 2004. What active users and designers contribute in the design process, Interacting with Computers 16 (2004) 377-401.
Peterson M. D., 2005. - User Driven Programming and AspectXML - O'Reilly Blog.
Scanlan J, Rao A, Bru C, Hale P, Marsh R, DATUM Project: Cost Estimating Environment for Support of Aerospace Design Decision Making, 2006, Journal of Aircraft - 2006 vol. 43 no. 4.
Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, Past, present, and future of decision support technology. Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.
Spahn, M., Scheidl, S., Stoitsev, T., 2007, End-User Development Techniques for Enterprise Resource Planning Software Systems - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2007/1097/pdf/07081.SpahnMichael.Paper.1097.pdf - SAP AG, SAP Research CEC Darmstadt, End-User Software Engineering M. H. Burnett, G. Engels, B. A. Myers, G. Rothermel (Eds.) - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/portals/index.php?semnr=07081.
End User Programming - End User Programming Research.
Model Driven Programming and User Driven Model Driven Programming.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Program Transformation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ProgramTransformation.htm.
Semantic Web - RDF information/Semantic Web.
Semantic Web Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Using Open Source and Open Standards to Enable Transformational Government
The Hawthorns, Woodland Road, Clifton, Bristol
British Computer Society BCS Bristol Branch
Transformational Government is intended to be an intensive, structural and fundamental change in the operational processes of Government bodies, enabled by the use of Information Systems & Technology in the back-office. It is expected to deliver major efficiency savings across the public sector without any further investment beyond existing budgets.
What does Transformational Government look like in practice within a Local Authority? How can it be implemented without any additional funding? How can intensely technical subjects like open source and open standards contribute to business change? Gavin Beckett, ICT Strategy Manager at Bristol City Council, will attempt to answer these questions and give an overview of Bristol's successes and challenges to date.
Gavin has been a central figure in Bristol's strategic use of Open Source and Open Standards since 2002; was a founder of the Open Source Academy; and works actively with a variety of EU interest groups and government bodies on the adoption of ODF.
Further Information - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/44.
VoCampOxford2008 - http://vocamp.org/wiki/VoCampOxford2008 - Weds 24th and Thurs 25th September 2008. - Wolfson College, Oxford, UK - WhatIsVoCamp - What's the Problem? - Continued growth of the Web of Data/Semantic Web is heavily dependent on the availability of vocabularies/ontologies that can be used to publish data. While a number of key vocabularies are in widespread use, there are also many areas with little or no vocabulary coverage, hindering the ability to publish data in these domains. - What is VoCamp? - VoCamp is a series (hopefully) of informal events where people can spend some dedicated time creating lightweight vocabularies/ontologies for the Semantic Web/Web of Data. The emphasis of the event(s) is not on creating the perfect ontology in a particular domain, but on creating vocabs that are good enough for people to start using for publishing data on the Web. The intention is to follow a "paper first, laptops second" format, where the modelling is done initially on paper and only later committed to code. The VoCamp idea is heavily influenced by BarCamp, although the VoCamp should only have presentations where strictly necessary. - What Next? - The first VoCamp event will take place in Oxford, UK in September 2008 (VoCampOxford2008). But you can run your own VoCamp too...
Extending Collaboration with Social Software
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Paula Dantas Senior IT Specialist for Lotus at IBM UK Ltd
Summary
The days when "Collaboration" meant "E-Mail" are well and truly over. Not only is real time collaboration becoming an accepted part of office life, but it is being extended to deliver Unified Communications and Collaboration.
However this is just the start. Web 2.0 is extending traditional Team Collaboration and Document Sharing solutions with Social Software designed to run within an enterprise and encourage better dissemination of information and faster decision making, as well as empowering employees to deliver the innovation companies need to maintain their competitive advantage.
This session looks at IBM's internal experiences from our research into social software and the impact it is having on the way we do business.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20505 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216.
November 11th 2008
Semantic Web Interest Group - SWIG-UK event
==== SWIG-UK - A Semantic Web Community Event
Hewlett-Packard Bristol
We would like to invite users and developers interested in the semantic web to attend a community event to be held at HP Labs Bristol, UK on Tuesday 11 November 2008. This will be an opportunity for you to meet other users and developers and to share experiences with semantic web applications.
The day will a mixture of discussion, demos, short presentations, with a few longer presentations if offered. The objective is to allow people to share experiences of using the semantic web. The agenda will be driven by the attendees; it is not limited to Jena applications nor limited to the UK.
Please register early so we know there is critical mass for the event.
Registration: swig-uk-2008@sparql.net
Further Information - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/semanticweb-southwest/ - Directions: http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/directions.html.
I'm interested mainly in lightweight ontologies that can be used to structure information that may exist already, or be created outside the ontology developers' control. This could make it possible to provide some structure to information provided by a diverse community.
A project was created by Leaver (2008) to enable End-User functionality for web based ontology construction and search. This was also used within my research to create an online wing ontology and search this.
Leaver, N., (2008) Using RDF as an Enabling Technology. MSc. Dissertation, University of the West of England, Bristol.
SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard - Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
RDF Resource Description Framework/Semantic Web - RDF information/Semantic Web.
BBC Radio 4 - Material World - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20070125.shtml - Carl Linnaeus - Taxonomies, also Space Exploration - 25 January 2007.
BBC Radio 4 - Material World - Encyclopedia Of Life - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20070517.shtml - As the tercentenary of the Swedish botanist, and father of taxonomy, Carolus Linnaeus approaches, a global consortium has promised to catalogue all 1.2 million known living species on an online Encyclopaedia of Life - 17 May 2007.
General Electric Release ACUITy software - Open Source - Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology (ACUITy) is an open-source framework and architecture for developing semantically-enabled mixed initiative user interfaces - Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology (ACUITy) - September 22 2006.
Hewlett-Packard - HP Labs Semantic Web Research
Jena User Conference - Presentations and Papers - First Jena User Conference - Proceedings.
Protégé Home - http://protege.stanford.edu/
Protégé My Page - http://protege.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UserDrivenProgramming
Protégé allows storage of information in the semantic languages Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and the relational database Access. I am working on an example of a wing spar. The Protégé information from this example is read into Vanguard Studio decision support software.
TopBraid Composer - The Complete Semantic Modeling Toolset - a visual modeling environment from industry experts for creating and managing domain models and ontologies in the Semantic Web standards RDF Schema and OWL. Design and implementation of Composer are lead by Holger Knublauch, TopQuadrant's Product Technical Director. Holger was formerly the designer and developer of Protégé-OWL, the leading open-source ontology editor. TopBraid Composer leverages the experiences gained with Protégé and other tools into a professional ontology editor and knowledge-base framework. Composer is based on the Eclipse platform and uses Jena as its underlying API.
Visual Knowledge - http://www.visualknowledge.com - Semantic WIKI - Visual Knowledge build conventional applications that are driven by ontologies rather than by code. A great deal of our underlying systems and frameworks are also model driven.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
UWE Links
Dr Mark H. Butler (Now at Hewlett-Packard) - http://www.linkedin.com/in/butlermh - Research and Advanced Development Engineer.
Dr Peter Bloodsworth - http://www.agent-research.co.uk/ - The main focus of my research program is to apply multi-agent systems to real-world problems, finding novel solutions where necessary to overcome important challenges. Interdisciplinary research is central to my aims, I have already applied my research in the area of Healthcare and envisage future collaboration in other domains.
Modelling and Semantic Web Methodology - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
Olive, M., Rahmouni, H., Solomonides, T., From HealthGrid to SHARE: A Selective Review of Projects - http://geneva2007.healthgrid.org/proceedings/proceedings/pdf/32.pdf - Mark OLIVE, Hanene RAHMOUNI and Tony SOLOMONIDES - CCCS - CEMS Faculty - UWE, Bristol - Proceedings of Healthgrid 2007 - Geneva, Switzerland. April 2007 - also available - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/publications.php?menu=off - PDF.
OntoREM: Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology - This research aims to investigate and develop an Ontology driven Requirements Engineering Methodology (OntoREM) that addresses the needs of complex, trans-national and multidisciplinary fields with particular reference but not limited to the aerospace industry.
Home page - http://agent-research.co.uk/ - Welcome to my homepage. I am Peter Bloodsworth a Research Fellow in the Centre for Complex Cooperative Systems at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Before that I was a Research Student within the CAP group at Oxford Brookes University. Prior to this I studied for a BSc in Computing and Mathematics at Bristol UWE - its nice to be back again. I also own a consultancy business - Agentsis Consulting (website pending still!!). - My research is mainly within the field of Artificial Intelligence, especially that involving:
Other areas of interest include:
Peter Bloodsworth Talks with Talis about multi-agent systems, Ontologies, and the Health-e-Child project - http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/11/peter_bloodsworth_talks_with_t.php - In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Dr Peter Bloodsworth of the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. We discuss his research background, and the evolution of his interests from multi-agent systems toward the use of Semantic Web Ontologies. We conclude by looking at the ways in which this research is being put into practice with the European Health-e-Child project. - 27th November 2007.
Peter Bloodsworth Talks with Talis about multi-agent systems, Ontologies, and the Health-e-Child project - http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/peter-bloodsworth-talks-with-talis-about-multi-agent-systems-ontologies-and-the-health-e-child-proje/4773248/ - Video from Talking with Talis.
RDF Resource Description Framework/Semantic Web - RDF information/Semantic Web.
Semantic Web - Semantic Web.
Semantic Web/Web 2.0 Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#SemanticWebandWeb2Research - Examples from Research.
Semantic Web Applications - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2008/05/semantic-web-applications.html - This article is about the need for provision of Semantic Web applications to increase the amount of Semantic Web information that could be searched. This could result in a virtuous circle of Semantic Web applications creating Semantic Web information, and so justifying the creation of more Semantic Web applications to access it. The article advocates the use of Semantic Web applications for modelling and end-user programming, and integration into business applications. - 5th May 2008
Semantic Web Collaboration - http://ezinearticles.com/?Semantic-Web-Collaboration&id=1160019 - This article discusses how Semantic Web/Web 2.0 collaboration can enable ontology editing. This helps reach agreement on the meaning of terms, and encourages end-user modelling/programming by enabling simplified development of online applications. This could be an efficient way of managing large ontologies with multiple users. - 9th May 2008.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
Systems Engineering and Simulation Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
UWE Student Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Web%20Semantic/Index.html - Investigating and implement the idea of 'ModConsWest' (Modelling and Constructionism with Web based E-Learning Semantic Tools)" - Lee Ediagbonya and Awaab Eltahir.
Semantic Web/Web 2.0 Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#SemanticWebandWeb2Research - Examples from Research.
XForms - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#XForms
Hewlett-Packard - HP Labs Semantic Web Research
Jena User Conference - First Jena User Conference - May 10-11 Bristol.
Jena User Conference - Presentations and Papers - First Jena User Conference - Proceedings.
Semantic Web History - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/Semanticweb.htm.
Tim Berners Lee - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/TimBernersLee.htm.
A local crawler for local people - WWW2006 conference - A new type of search engine is being created and it could change the way we look for things on the web.
Adiuri - http://www.adiuri.com - Founded in 2002, Adiuri was created to commercially develop the research work carried out by the Universities of Bath and Bristol - Faceted Classification and Adaptive Concept Matching.
AKT Advanced Knowledge Technologies - http://www.aktors.org/akt/ - University Research Collaboration.
AKT Doctoral Symposium, Aberdeen Univeristy, UK, 25 January 2006 - http://www.aktors.org/akt/events/docsympjan2006/ - Proceedings and Materials.
Altova - SemanticWorks - SemanticWorks - visual Semantic Web design tool for RDF and OWL.
Annotea Project - http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea/ - Annotea is a W3C LEAD (Live Early Adoption and Demonstration) project under Semantic Web Advanced Development (SWAD). The first client implementation of Annotea is W3C's Amaya editor/browser.
Berners-Lee Talks Up Linked Open Data Movement June 18, 2008 By Erin Joyce - NEW YORK -- Data isn't worth much until it's free -- freed from the silo it's locked up in, and used in a mashup that creates valuable new resources for you and others. Freeing data is also behind a fast-growing movement around Linked Open Data -- or what many call Web 3.0 for short, said the founder of the World Wide Web. - During a keynote address at the Linked Data Planet conference here, Sir Tim Berners-Lee stumped for the next vision of the Web - dubbed Web 3.0 -- and the linked open data movement that is behind the forming Semantic Web. - June 18, 2008.
Building a Semantic Web accessible image publication repository - http://imageweb.zoo.ox.ac.uk/drupal/files/20071002-SWeb-applications.pdf - Graham Klyne, Graham Klyne - Image Bioinformatics Research Group - Zoology Department - Oxford University.
Carroll, Jeremy J., 2008, An OWL Full Interpretation - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2008May/att-0053/60.pdf - HP Labs, Bristol, UK - Abstract - This report is an appendix to report HPL-2008-59. It gives a worked example of the construction used in the proof from that report. For finiteness, a reduced datatype map consisting of only xsd:boolean is used. Each of the graphs in the construction is listed explicitly, with some redundancy eliminated. The final Herbrand graph contains about 15,000 triples.
Clockwork - http://clockwork.open.ac.uk/ - Open - University - Knowledge Media Institute - Creating Learning Organisations with Contextualised Knowledge-Rich work Artifacts.
Devon Portal - http://www.devonline.gov.uk/ - Adam Retter is responsible for the use of XML and eXist technologies for this.
Discrete-Event Modeling Ontology (DeMO): - http://www.cs.uga.edu/~jam/jsim/DeMO/ - DeMO is an ontology for discrete-event modeling (DEM) (system dynamics for discrete-event systems (DES)). The models in the ontology focus on how state evolves over time.
General Electric - ACUITy enterprise modelling tool - Paper - ACUITy semantic web application - An Ontology-Based Architecture for Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology - A Aragones, J Bruno, A Crapo, M Garbias.
General Electric - ACUITy enterprise modelling tool - Presentation - Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology (ACUITy) - Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology (ACUITy) - Hewlett-Packard Jena Conference Presentation - Andrew W Crapo.
General Electric Release ACUITy software - Open Source - Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology (ACUITy) is an open-source framework and architecture for developing semantically-enabled mixed initiative user interfaces - Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology (ACUITy) - September 22 2006.
http://www.ihop-net.org/UniPub/iHOP/ - Information hyperlinked over Proteins - A gene network for navigating the literature - A network of genes and proteins extends through the scientific literature, touching on phenotypes, pathologies and gene function. We report the development of an information system that provides this network as a natural way of accessing the more than ten million abstracts in PubMed. By using genes and proteins as hyperlinks between sentences and abstracts, we convert the information in PubMed into one navigable resource and bring all the advantages of the internet to scientific literature investigation. - PubMed Medline and Tools - http://mybio.net/biowiki/PubMed_Medline_and_Tools.
Knowledge Web - The KnowledgeWeb Project - http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/kweb/ - Knowledge Web is a Network of Excellence that aims to support the transition of Ontology technology from Academia to Industry. The current consortium is integrated by 18 participants including leading partners in Semantic Web, Multimedia, Human Language Technology, Workflow and Agents. The NoE will concentrate its efforts around the outreach of this technology to industry. Naturally, this includes education and research efforts to ensure the durability of impact and support of industry.
Knowledge Web FP6-507482 - http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/semanticportal/sewView/frames.jsp - Knowledge Web (KW) is a 4 year Network of Excellence project funded by the European Commission 6th Framework Programme. Knowledge Web began on January 1st, 2004. Supporting the transition process of Ontology technology from Academia to Industry is the main and major goal of Knowledge Web.
Magpie - http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/magpie/main.html - Magpie uses our ontology infrastructure to semantically markup web documents on-the-fly. The existing technologies in this problem domain tend to be rather heavyweight, and often modify the appearance of the actual webpage.
Martin Dzbor - http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/dzbor/enter.html - I am a research scientist and manager of the NeOn project, and also help managing the KnowledgeWeb project. In the past I have also worked in climateprediction.net project. I am the author of KMi's flagship semantic tool called Magpie - a plugin for web browsers and application development framework for the emerging Semantic Web tools.
McGuinness D. L., 2003. Ontologies Come of Age. In: Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, ed. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2003.
Metatomix - m3t4 - http://www.metatomix.com/news/060307.html - Metatomix Provides Free Semantic Toolkit for Eclipse Developers Worldwide - Wiki - Explanations and Examples - Wiki.
NeOn - http://www.neon-project.org/web-content/ -NeOn is a 14.7 million Euros project involving 14 European partners and co-funded by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme under grant number IST-2005-027595. NeOn started in March 2006 and has a duration of 4 years. Our aim is to advance the state of the art in using ontologies for large-scale semantic applications in the distributed organizations.
OntoWorld Semantic MediaWiki - OntoWorld - Semantic Wiki - an extension to the MediaWiki-Software (which powers Wikipedia).
OpenCyc - http://www.opencyc.org/ - OpenCyc.org - OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the world's largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine.
Open University - Open University Knowledge Media Institute - John Domingue - Research Interests.
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) - Palo Alto - People and Technology in Use - Knowledge Sharing.
REASE - the repository of EASE for learning units in the area of Semantic Web! - http://ubp.l3s.uni-hannover.de/ubp - REASE supports sharing knowledge for Higher Education as well as for industrial education in the area of Semantic Web and is open to any member of the academic, research, or professional community.
Semanlink - http://www.semanlink.net - François-Paul Servant - Renault.
Simon Price - Institute for Learning & Research Technology - Bristol University.
Sunderland University - e-Commerce and Agent Technologies - Justus Obwoge.
SWED - Semantic Web Environmental Directory - http://www.swed.org.uk/swed/index.html - Collaborative Project Bristo University - Hewlett-Packard.
Swoogle - Semantic Web Search - http://swoogle.umbc.edu/ - Searching over 10,000 ontologies.
Swoogle - http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/project/html/id/53/ - Swoogle - Project Home.
Technische Universiät München - SweS Semantic Web Search - Walid Maalej and Patrick Renner.
Talis Engage - http://www.talis.com/engage/ - Community information at your fingertips - Talis Engage is an online community information solution that allows citizens to organise, create and publish details of their events, organisations and groups. - Engage - with Semantic Web - http://blogs.talis.com/panlibus/archives/2007/12/engage_with_sem.php - A Platform for Talis and others to simply build powerful applications upon, that has Semantic Web Technologies at its core - Richard Wallis at December 3, 2007.
Talis Engage - Welcome to your new Talis Engage tenancy! - Talis Engage allows you to organise, create and publish details of community events, organisations, groups and resources. Citizens can discover, subscribe to and suggest changes to information. Talis Engage is based on Talis' Platform APIs so you can mash up the data contained within Engage with the rest of the web.
Talis Platform and Semantic Web Podcasts - http://www.talis.com/platform/resources/podcasts.shtml - Podcasts.
The Road to SPARQL - http://gearon.blogspot.com/ - Thursday, October 25, 2007 - Paul Gearon.
The Semantic Discovery System - http://www.insilicodiscovery.com/v2/index.php - We aim to Accelerate Research in Information Discovery focused Organisations. - The Semantic Web will put enormous new power in the hands of everyone trying to get valuable answers from the web - instead of frustrating Google searches, people will get fast, accurate and highly valuable answers - because they will finally be able to ask the exact questions they really want. Our product - SDS - focuses this new Semantic Web power not just on the 'Web' but also on the valuable information locked inside organisational databases - for the first time, ordinary people will be able to get answers that would otherwise have taken impossible amounts of programming. - http://www.meaning2go.com/ - Ian Goldsmid - http://www.linkedin.com/in/iangoldsmid.
TopBraid Composer - The Complete Semantic Modeling Toolset - a visual modeling environment from industry experts for creating and managing domain models and ontologies in the Semantic Web standards RDF Schema and OWL. Design and implementation of Composer are lead by Holger Knublauch, TopQuadrant's Product Technical Director. Holger was formerly the designer and developer of Protégé-OWL, the leading open-source ontology editor. TopBraid Composer leverages the experiences gained with Protégé and other tools into a professional ontology editor and knowledge-base framework. Composer is based on the Eclipse platform and uses Jena as its underlying API.
UKOLN - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ - News - A centre of expertise in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information, education and cultural heritage communities. UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.
University of Aberdeen - Semantic Web Blackboard project - Craig McKenzie.
University of Zurich, Department of Informatics - Talking to the Semantic Web - Talking to the Semantic Web: Query Interfaces to Ontologies for the Rest of Us.
Visual Knowledge - http://www.visualknowledge.com - Semantic WIKI - Visual Knowledge build conventional applications that are driven by ontologies rather than by code. A great deal of our underlying systems and frameworks are also model driven.
Web of intrigue - British Computer Society - Sir Tim Berners-Lee - This year's Lovelace lecture was given by internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee. His subject was the web: looking forward, looking back. - March 2007.
The Yahoo! Search Open Ecosystem - http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000527.html - March 13, 2008 - The Yahoo! Search Open Ecosystem - A few weeks ago, we began talking about the new Yahoo! Search open platform. Today, we're releasing more details about two important components of the initiative -- the developer platform as well as our support of a number of semantic web standards. - The Data Web in Action - While there has been remarkable progress made toward understanding the semantics of web content, the benefits of a data web have not reached the mainstream consumer. Without a killer semantic web app for consumers, site owners have been reluctant to support standards like RDF, or even microformats. We believe that app can be web search. - By supporting semantic web standards, Yahoo! Search and site owners can bring a far richer and more useful search experience to consumers. For example, by marking up its profile pages with microformats, LinkedIn can allow Yahoo! Search and others to understand the semantic content and the relationships of the many components of its site. With a richer understanding of LinkedIn's structured data included in our index, we will be able to present users with more compelling and useful search results for their site. The benefit to LinkedIn is, of course, increased traffic quality and quantity from sites like Yahoo! Search that utilize its structured data.
Semantic Web Commentators
Danny Ayers - Danny Ayers - Planet RDF.
Tim Berners-Lee - Tim Berners-Lee.
Kurt Cagle - Understanding XML.
Codewok.com - Articles and blog.
Brian Kelly - UKOLN - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/ - UK Web Focus.
O'Reilly - XML.com - XML Articles.
XTech Conference - Building Rich, Encapsulated Widgets Using XBL, XForms and SVG - Mark Birbeck, x-port.net Ltd.
Semantic Web Articles
BBC Radio 4 - Euro Everything - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20060518.shtml - Radio 4 Broadcast - In Business - Peter Day - 18 May 2006.
BBC Radio 4 - Jonathan Edwards looks into - Programme 3 - Artificial Intelligence - http://www.bbc.co.uk//radio4/science/jonathanedwardsseries2.shtml - Radio 4 Broadcast - In the final programme in the series, Jonathan looks into Artificial Intelligence. A keen fan of science fiction, especially films like The Matrix, Jonathan wants to know how much science fact there is in AI. - Jonathan Edwards - 28 March 2007.
BBC Radio 4 - New Wave Computing - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20070111.shtml - Peter Day talks to some of the rising stars of the new revolution and finds out how the computer industry is changing yet again 11th January 2007.
BBC Radio 4 - Searching Questions - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/5222356.stm - Analysis - The dream is powerful: the world's information at everyone's fingertips. - 27 July 2006.
BBC Radio 4 - Tangled Web - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20060615.shtml - Radio 4 Broadcast - In Business - Peter Day - Six years after the dot-com bubble burst companies are falling over themselves to get involved with the next big thing on the internet. They call it Web 2.0. - 15 June 2006.
BBC Technology News - France to develop Google 'rival' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4358871.stm - 17 March, 2005.
BBC Technology News - Global web celebrations under way - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5368190.stm - 22 September 2006.
BBC Technology News - Helping the web become world wide - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6230426.stm - 22 June 2007.
BBC Technology News - How the web went world wide - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5242252.stm - Mark Ward - 3 August 2006.
BBC Technology News - Privacy worries over web's future - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5009774.stm - Jonathan Fildes - 24 May 2006.
BBC Technology News - Smart sites to power semantic web - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5013146.stm - Jonathan Fildes. - 24 May 2006
BBC Technology News - Tagging 'takes off for web users' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6318531.stm - Tagging or labelling online content is becoming the new search tool of choice among web users, shows research. - 1 February 2007
BBC Technology News - The evolution of the web - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6708491.stm - David Reid - Reporter, BBC Click - The term Web 2.0 was dreamed up to describe community-driven phenomena such as blogs and wikis and the enormously priced businesses they inspired. 1 June 2007.
BBC Technology News - Web inventor fears for the future - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5019394.stm - Pallab Ghosh interviews Sir Tim Berners-Lee - 2 November 2006.
BBC Technology News - Web inventor warns of 'dark' net - BBC article - Jonathan Fildes - Tim Berners-Lee - Edinburg Web Conference - 23 May 2006.
BBC Technology News - Wide open future for the web - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5019394.stm - Jonathan Fildes - 26 May 2006.
BBC Technology News - Yahoo makes semantic search shift - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7296056.stm - Yahoo has announced its adoption of some of the key standards of the "semantic web". - The technology is widely seen as the next step for the world wide web and it involves a much richer understanding of the masses of data placed online. - The company said it would start to include some semantic web identifiers when indexing the web for Yahoo search. - The move could mean a big boost for semantic web technologies which have struggled to win a big audience. - 14 March 2008.
Dave De Roure - Building on the future of the web - BBC article - Southampton University.
Giant Global Graph - timbl's blog - Tim Berners-Lee - http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4 - So The Graph word has been creeping in. BradFitz talks of the Social Graph as does Alex Iskold, who discusses social graphs and network theory in general, points out that users want to own their own social graphs. He alo points out that examples of graphs are the Internet and the Web. So what's with the Graph word?.
IT Now - Time to jump on the SOA bandwagon? - Ian Cartwright and Erik Doernenburg - Consultants at ThoughtWorks.
Peter Bloodsworth Talks with Talis about multi-agent systems, Ontologies, and the Health-e-Child project - http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/11/peter_bloodsworth_talks_with_t.php - In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Dr Peter Bloodsworth of the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. We discuss his research background, and the evolution of his interests from multi-agent systems toward the use of Semantic Web Ontologies. We conclude by looking at the ways in which this research is being put into practice with the European Health-e-Child project. - 27th November 2007.
Peter Bloodsworth Talks with Talis about multi-agent systems, Ontologies, and the Health-e-Child project - http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/peter-bloodsworth-talks-with-talis-about-multi-agent-systems-ontologies-and-the-health-e-child-proje/4773248/ - Video from Talking with Talis.
Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference - http://www.informs-cs.org/wsc05papers/297.pdf - Simulation and the Semantic Web - M. E. Kuhl, N. M. Steiger, F. B. Armstrong, and J. A. Joines, eds.
The Future of the Web - http://www.nesta.org.uk/future-of-web-jonathan-kestenbaum-nesta/?playaudio=1 - Podcast - Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO, NESTA, introduces the event and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
Ontology Links
Internal
A paper whose lead author is a doctoral graduate from UWE Haya El-Ghalayini was presented to the 2005 CEMS Graduate School conference - Reverse engineering ontology to conceptual data models page 114-119 and a poster presentation is available Poster.
This paper also explains the above research - Engineering Conceptual Data Models from Domain Ontologies: A Critical Evaluation - El-Ghalayini, H., Odeh, M., McClatchey, R. (2005) Engineering Conceptual Data Models from Domain Ontologies: A Critical Evaluation - IASTED International Conference on Databases and Applications, part of the 23rd Multi-Conference on Applied Informatics, Innsbruck, Austria pp 222-227.
CEMS Graduate School poster presentation - Summer 2006 - Deriving Conceptual Data Models from Domain Ontologies for Bioinformatics - Haya El-Ghalayini, Mohammed Odeh, Richard McClatchey, and Dawn Arnold.
Interoperability - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#Interoperability.
External
Boeing - Michael Uschold - Ontologies: An Emerging Discipline - http://courses.washington.edu/imt530/schedule/8b.pdf - Boeing - Phantom Works - Invited lecture at University of Washington, Feb 21, 2006.
Boeing - Michael Uschold - Univerity of Maryland - Michael Gruninger - Ontologies and Semantics for Seamless Connectivity - http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/record/issues/0412/12.uschold-9.pdf - Boeing - Phantom Works - Association for Computer Machinery - Special Interest Group on Management of Data - SIGMOD Record December 2004 Vol 33 Number 4.
Boeing - Michael Uschold - Ontologies Ontologies Everywhere - but Who Knows What to Think? - http://protege.stanford.edu/conference/2006/submissions/slides/1.2_Uschold.pdf - Boeing - Phantom Works - 9th Intl. Protégé Conference - July 23-26, 2006 - Stanford, California - July 24 Morning Session.
Interop Events - http://interop-vlab.eu/Events - Presentation of events around Enterprise Interoperability.
INTEROP - Interoperability Research for Networked Enterprises Applications and Software - INTEROP is a Network of Excellence supported by the European Commission for a three-year-period - INTEROP aims to create the conditions of an innovative and competitive research in the domain of Interoperability for Enterprise Applications and Software.
INTEROP Portal - http://www.interop-noe.org/ - Interoperability Research for Networked Enterprises Applications and Software.
Ontology Links Listing - Ontology Engineering & Management Resources
Implementation based on Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Project for Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for these Semantic Web stories - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=64c6de278ded50ad5a2458a73cf6205e.
Code Explanataion/Tutorial Freshblog - Blogger Hacks, Categories, Tips & Tricks - http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2007/03/pipes-json-and-code-for-your-website.html.
Users can specify a calculation in mathematical terms using a formula. The spreadsheet then calculates the result of the formula. Users can change the formula if it is incorrect without any need to write code or re-compile. This accounts for the popularity of spreadsheets. So it is necessary to create collaborative tools that allow users to develop software in a way they will be familiar with from their use of spreadsheets. Burnett et al. (2007) state "end-users are using various languages and programming systems to create software in forms such as spreadsheets, dynamic web applications, and scientific simulations. This software needs to be sufficiently dependable, but substantial evidence suggests that it is not." Crapo et al. (2002) argue that many users of spreadsheet software can model problems accurately if they are provided with visualisation capabilities to help them build, track, and understand the information relationships, and therefore the problem modelled. Crapo explains that visualisation helps users maintain a hierarchy of sub models at different stages of development and to navigate effectively between them. The way spreadsheets are defined by formulae can aid in allowing editing and tracking of information in models, provided that the relationships between formulae are adequately represented. Hanna (2005) explains that a spreadsheet program is defined by formulae and has purely declarative semantics with the order of evaluation determined purely by the dependencies between cells. However, Hanna criticises the impoverished semantics of spreadsheets that "severely limit the ability of programmers (even expert ones) to construct reliable, correct, maintainable programs with well known consequences". One possible solution, demonstrated by Erwig et al. (2006) is automatic generation of correct spreadsheets, and solving of errors of meaning (semantic errors); though in this thesis the main concentration is on visualising the semantics and structure of models/programs.
This thesis concentrates on visualisation in order to make the meaning clearer to the human modellers. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the information structuring, and visualisation capabilities of spreadsheets in order to encourage more reliable modelling and collaboration. Spreadsheets are a useful application of the technique of ‘Programming by Example (or Demonstration)’, this is used in the 'Record Macro' functionality. Programming by Example is expanded on by Cypher et al. (1993) and Lieberman (2000).
Burnett, M. M., Engels, G, Myers, B. A., Rothermel, G., 2007. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081.
Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.
Cypher, A., Halbert D. C., Kurlander D., Lieberman, H., Maulsby, D., Myers, B. A., Turransky A., 1993. Watch What I Do Programming by Demonstration. MIT Press, http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/01Pygmalion.html - ISBN:0262032139. - Cypher, A. 1993. - Watch What I Do - Programming by Example.
Erwig, M., Abraham, R., Cooperstein, I., Kollmansberger S., Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets - 2005, Oregan State and Houston University - ICSE 2005 27th International Conference on Software Engineering p 136- 145.
Hanna, K., 2005. A document-centered environment for Haskell. 17th International Workshop on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages IFL 2005 Dublin, Ireland - September 19-21 2005.
Lieberman, H., 2000. Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Your-Wish/ - Henry Lieberman, editor.
Economic Models - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm.
Engineering Examples - Aerospace - http://wiki.vanguardsw.com/bin/browse.dsb?dir/Engineering/Aerospace/ - These examples illustrate creation of component tree definitions that are then transformed to Web based representations. The information is translated from Protégé to DecisionPro (Vanguard System) to other software as required. Another type of transformation performed is that from a tree based to interactive diagrammatic representation. Further calculations can then be performed in whatever software represents the results to the user.
Model-Driven Programming - http://ezinearticles.com/?Model-Driven-Programming&id=1350655 - Spahn et al. (2007) explain that end-users are domain experts not IT professionals, and because they cannot program their own solution, this is requiring them to communicate their needs to IT developers. Spahn et al. argue for the empowerment of users to customise software by providing an abstraction layer to hide technical details and allow for concentrating on business needs. Model-Driven Programming and the Semantic Web are explained by Frankel et al. (2004), and they discuss how these techniques can be combined. Bringing together model-driven programming with the Semantic Web can enable diagrammatic programming, and translation to structured and searchable Semantic Web output, this eases visualisation and interaction problems at each stage of translation. Visualisation and interaction with ontologies is important for model-driven programming research in this thesis. Frankel et al. investigate translation of UML and entity relationship diagrams that use graphical notations and store in formats such as XMI into OWL.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Modelling and Semantic Web Methodology - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
Models for Visualisation and/or calculation - Semantic Web Modelling Examples Page - Semantic Web Examples.
Early Research - MSc Research Summary - The earliest research was into providing a user driven model development example that would provide the kind of user interface and visualisation required for interactive costing.
Modelling Processes Using RAD and UML Activity Diagrams:an Exploratory Study - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~sjgreen/RAD&AD_V2.pdf - M. Odeh, I. Beeson, S. Green and J. Sa - In Software Engineering and Information Systems, increasing attention has been focused lately upon modelling organizational processes - as a starting point for developing computer-based systems to support (or control) such processes. A number of process modelling methods are available, but it is not yet clear what the relative merits of these are, nor whether they might be more or less useful in particular contexts. We have applied two well-known process modelling techniques, Role Activity Diagramming and UML Activity Diagramming, to a particular process in our own organization, that of managing the registration of research students. We developed an RAD first and then translated it into a UML AD, to compare the two techniques and check the feasibility of such translation. We conclude that translation from RAD to UML AD is likely to be feasible in particular cases, but will rely on the ability of the translators to establish and maintain the equivalence between the two (i.e. the equivalence will be partly a matter of local interpretation).
Models Visualised - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm - Table of visualisation of the translated models.
OntoREM: Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology - This research aims to investigate and develop an Ontology driven Requirements Engineering Methodology (OntoREM) that addresses the needs of complex, trans-national and multidisciplinary fields with particular reference but not limited to the aerospace industry.
PMXML Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/PMXML.htm.
Process Modelling - PSL - Process Specification Language and XML (Extensible Markup Language) - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/ProcessSpecificationLanguage.htm.
Representation of Equations - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#RepresentationofEquations.
SoAgile: Adaptive Model-Driven Service-Oriented Architectures for Agile Cyber-Enterprise Processes - The SoAgile project aims to design, develop, demonstrate, and disseminate a service-adaptable virtualisation layer and an encompassing evolutionary service-oriented and model-driven engineering environment.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
STEPml Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/STEPml.htm.
Systems Engineering and Simulation Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
UWE Student Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Web%20Semantic/Index.html - Investigating and implement the idea of 'ModConsWest' (Modelling and Constructionism with Web based E-Learning Semantic Tools)" - Lee Ediagbonya and Awaab Eltahir.
A Theory of Compatible Versions - http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1684 - XML.com - David Orchard - December 20, 2006.
Advanced Knowledge - AKT - http://www.aktors.org/akt/events/docsympjan2006/material/slides/aber.ppt - Acquisition and Maintenance of Constraints in Enginering Design - Suraj Ajit - University of Aberdeen.
Aeronautical Information (AICM/AIXM) - http://www.eurocontrol.int/aim/public/standard_page/interop_aicm.html - AICM is a conceptual/logical model that uses entities, attributes and relationships in order to describe aeronautical features such as airports, runways, navaids, obstacles, routes, terminal procedures, airspace structures, services and related aeronautical data.
Alistair Clark - Principal Lecturer in Operational Research (OR) - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~arclark/ - Production Planning and Scheduling.
Alloy Analyzer - 3.0 Beta - Alloy Analyzer Home Page - The Alloy Analyzer is a tool developed by the Software Design Group for analyzing models written in Alloy, a simple structural modeling language based on first-order logic.
Alloy - Chris Wallace Page - Alloy related links - Information and Papers on the Alloy Modelling Language.
BBC Radio 4 - From the production line to the NHS - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20070104.shtml - Peter Day finds out how some NHS pioneers are trying to apply the mysteries of "lean" operating systems to hospitals and doctors' practices. Japanese management techniques have revolutionised the car industry, but what do waste-averse production lines have to do with the delicate business of health care? - 2 November 2006.
BBC Radio 4 - Material World - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20061214.shtml - 2nd item - Complexity Science 14th December 2nd Item - Complexity Science is a broad and multi-disciplinary subject covering biology, mathematics, chemistry and physics. Complexity Scientists study large and complex systems, often turning to the natural world for inspiration on how these systems operate.
BBC Radio 4 - Material World - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20070125.shtml - Carl Linnaeus - Taxonomies, also Space Exploration - 25 January 2007.
BBC Radio 4 - Material World - Managing Uncertainty in Complex Models - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20070419.shtml - Radio 4 Broadcast - Thursday 19 April 2007 - In many branches of science, more and more predictions are made by running computer models. But as these models get increasingly complex, a better understanding of the mathematics of uncertainty is becoming essential, especially when important policy decisions hinge on the scientists' predictions.
BBC Radio 4 - Searching Questions - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/5222356.stm - Analysis - The dream is powerful: the world's information at everyone's fingertips. - 27 July 2006.
Bournemouth University - Software Systems Modelling Group - School of Design, Engineering and Computing - http://www.sosym.co.uk/ - The Software Systems Modelling Group (SoSyM) is a multi-disciplinary computing group focussing on the research, development and application of innovative modelling, tools and technologies for software systems.
British Computer Society - Computational thinking - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.11837 - 'Teaching students and young professionals to think is more important than teaching them professionalism' said one of the delegates at a recent BCS Thought Leadership debate, which aimed to discuss what computational thinking is and how it impacts upon our everyday lives. Justin Richards reports.
Business Process Execution Language - http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-10-13-a.html - XML Cover Pages - IBM and SAP AG Release WS-BPEL Extension for Sub-Processes (BPEL-SPE) - October 13, 2005.
Clockwork - http://clockwork.open.ac.uk/ - Open - University - Knowledge Media Institute - Creating Learning Organisations with Contextualised Knowledge-Rich work Artifacts.
Code Generation 2008 - http://www.codegeneration.net/conference/index.php - 25th-28th June 2008 - Cambridge, UK - A growing number of developers are using or planning to use model-based code generation - are you ready for the next evolutionary step in software? - WHO'S CG2008 FOR? - CG2008 is for software practitioners and those with a stake in the future of their development organisation..
Cost Engineering Capability Study (South West Aerospace & Defence) - http://www.knowledgewest.org.uk/news/archive.asp?id=42 - A scoping report into Cost Engineering practices in the South West region discussing the issues of moving towards open book tendering and cost estimating practices within the supply chain. - Knowledge West - 12/12/2006 - Researchers - Mr David Evans (University of the West of England, Bristol) - Dr Richard McIntosh (University of Bath) from the Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre - With assistance from: Professor A R Mileham and Dr L B Newnes (University of Bath) - Dr J Lanham and Dr R Marsh (University of the West of England, Bristol)
Cost Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/CostModelling.htm.
Cost Modelling References - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/costreferences.xml.
Crossing State Lines: Adapting Object-Oriented Frameworks to Functional Reactive Languages - http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/ick-adapt-oo-fwk-frp/paper.pdf - Functional and Logic Programming Symposium, 2006 - Daniel Ignatoff, Gregory H. Cooper, and Shriram Krishnamurthi - Computer Science Department, Brown University.
Design Analysis Tool for Unit cost Modelling - http://argos.e-science.soton.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=project:project_description - Executive Summary - The DATUM project seeks to exploit work that was carried out by UWE for the EPSRC ICES (Implied Cost Evaluation System) project for which Rolls Royce was a research partner. - The DATUM project has prototyped a number of software architectures, user interfaces and data models. Furthermore, a thorough world-wide survey of possible software tools has been carried out and a short-list of these has been compiled. All of the tools on this short-list have been evaluated. - In addition, an extensive evaluation of existing RR tools has been carried out (including CAPPe).
DATUM Project: Cost Estimating Environment for Support of Aerospace Design Decision Making - Preview - JOURNAL OF AIRCRAFT - 2006 vol. 43 no. 4 - James Scanlan and Abhijit Rao - Southampton University - Christophe Bru, Peter Hale, and Rob Marsh - UWE.
Decision Support Systems - http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journalimpactfactors.cws_home/505540/description#impactfactor - and Electronic Commerce - Journal.
Decision Support System Resources - http://www.DSSResources.COM/ - DSSResources.COM (Decision Support Systems Resources) is a web-based knowledge repository. The mission of this site is to help people who are interested in learning about how to use information technologies and software to improve decision making.
Distributed Constructionism - http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) - This paper introduces the concept of distributed constructionism, building on previous research on constructionism and on distributed cognition. It focuses particularly on the use of computer networks to support students working together on design and construction activities, and it argues that these types of activities are particularly effective in supporting the development of knowledge-building communities. The paper describes three main categories of distributed constructionist activities: discussing constructions, sharing constructions, and collaborating on constructions. In each category, it describes ongoing research projects at the MIT Media Lab and discusses how these projects support new ways of thinking and learning.
EquMath.Net - http://equmath.net - EquMath is resource for math lessons from Algebra to Differential Equations!.
Equplus - http://equplus.net - Science and Math Equations.
Engineering ontologies - http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/a.hunter/tradepress/eng.html - Anthony Hunter.
FIPER and Cost Estimator - http://www.engineous.com/product_FIPER_specifications.htm
Gartner Group Report - Gartner Says Business Application Vendors Face Challenge to Move to ' The Process of Me' - http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_152638_11.html - Person to Process Interaction is the Next Innovation Step in Business Software Press Release 2006.
General Electric - ACUITy enterprise modelling tool - Paper about ACUITy semantic web application - An Ontology-Based Architecture for Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology - A Aragones, J Bruno, A Crapo, M Garbias
Generative Programming - Generative Programming - Methods, Tools, and Applications - Krzysztof Czarnecki and Ulrich W. Eisenecker - Addison-Wesley, June 2000.
Haskell - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction - Haskell is a computer programming language. The language is named for Haskell Brooks Curry, whose work in mathematical logic serves as a foundation for functional languages.
Health Informatics Forum - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.8951 - The Way Forward for NHS Health Informatics - Where should NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) go from here? A report on behalf of the British Computer Society (BCS) by the BCS Health Informatics Forum Strategic Panel. Published: 15th December 2006.
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
IBM Academic Resources - http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/academic - New from alphaWorks, this collection of technologies of interest to the academic community is now being provided with special licensing terms suited for educational purposes.
ISC 2007 - Industrial Simulation Conference - Delft University of Technology - Delft, The Netherlands.
Jeffrey G. Gray, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham - Home Page - Department of Computer and Information Sciences - Software Composition and Modeling Laboratory.
Knowledge Based Systems Inc - http://www.idef.com/pdf/IDEFFAMI.pdf - IDEF Family of Methods for Concurrent Engineering and Business Re-Engineering Applications.
Learning inexpensive parametric design models using an augmented genetic programming technique - PETER C. MATTHEWS, DAVID W.F. STANDINGFORD, CARREN M.E. HOLDEN, KEN M. WALLACE, - AI EDAM (2006), 20: 1-18 Cambridge University Press.
Logic Programming Associates - http://www.lpa.co.uk/ - We design and support world-class products for Artificial Intelligence, including state-of-the-art Prolog compilers, Chimera Agents, the flex expert system and VisiRule graphical business rules.
LPA Resources - http://home.btconnect.com/lpa_resources/ - Powerpoint Presentations.
LPA VisiRule 1.0 - http://www.lpa.co.uk/vsr.htm - LPA VisiRule 1.0 - VisiRule is a graphical tool for developing and delivering business rules systems and components simply by drawing the decision logic.
MathLang: experience-driven development of a new mathematical language - http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/kamareddine04mathlang.html - F. Kamareddine, et al., 2004 - Abstract: In this paper we report on the design of a new mathematical language and our method of designing it, driven by the encoding of mathematical texts. MathLang is intended to provide support for checking basic well-formedness of mathematical text without requiring the heavy and dicult-to-use machinery of full type theory or other forms of full formalization. At the same time, it is intended to allow the addition of fuller formalization to a document as time and e ort permits.
Matlab - Improving an Engine Cooling Fan Using Design for Six Sigma Techniques - http://www.mathworks.co.uk/company/newsletters/digest/2006/july/cooling.html?s_cid=MLD0706ukTA2 - MATLAB Digest - July 2006 - Stuart Koxala and Dan Doherty.
MetaEdit+ DSM environment - http://www.metacase.com/ - MetaEdit+ is aimed at the expert developer looking to gain productivity by generating full code directly from models. First you design the modeling language with MetaEdit+ Workbench and then other developers model with the language in MetaEdit+.
MOdel driven MOdernisation of Complex Systems - http://www.viewzone.org/momocs/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=20&Itemid=17 -MOMOCS aims at studying a methodology and related tools for fast reengineering complex systems. The project is studying how to solve the dilemma between rigorous methodologies and agile and unstructured one, allowing the modernisation engineer to concentrate on what to do and not how to do it.
Model-Driven Program Transformation of a Large Avionics Framework - http://www.cis.uab.edu/gray/Pubs/gpce-2004.pdf - Jeff Gray1, Jing Zhang1, Yuehua Lin1, Suman Roychoudhury, Hui Wu, Rajesh Sudarsan, Aniruddha Gokhale, Sandeep Neema, Feng Shi, and Ted Bapty.
The Mozart Programming System - http://www.mozart-oz.org/ - The Mozart Programming System is an advanced development platform for intelligent, distributed applications.
NASA - Cost Estimating Web Site - http://cost.jsc.nasa.gov/models.htm - Online Cost Models.
Nasa - Engine Simulation - EngineSim Version 1.7a .
NASA Open Source Software - http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/ - AMES Research Center.
Nasa - Parametric Cost Estimating Handbook - http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/bu2/PCEHHTML/pceh.htm.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - Process Specification Language (PSL) - A Few PSL Basics....
Past, present, and future of decision support technology - Decision Support Systems - Volume 33, Issue 2 , June 2002, Pages 111-126 - J.P. Shim, Merrill Warkentin, James F. Courtney, Daniel J. Power.
PLT Scheme - http://www.plt-scheme.org/ - PLT Scheme is an umbrella name for a family of implementations of the Scheme programming language.
Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference - http://www.informs-cs.org/wsc05papers/297.pdf - Simulation and the Semantic Web - M. E. Kuhl, N. M. Steiger, F. B. Armstrong, and J. A. Joines, eds.
Quantrix - http://www.quantrix.com/ - Quantrix delivers financial and quantitative modeling software for professionals pushing the limits of traditional spreadsheets.
QSEE Technologies - QSEE Technologies - Modelling Tools.
QSEE use at UWE CEMS - QSEE at CEMS - Chris Wallace.
Rolls-Royce - Securing the Future at Rolls-Royce - http://www.e-steel.com/resources/pdfs/Rolls-Royce_A_Closer_Look.pdf - Managing Materials Risk for the Extended Supply Chain.
Software Abstractions - Resources and Additional Materials - Book with sample chapters online - Daniel Jackson.
Spime - Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spime - a currently-theoretical object that can be tracked through space and time throughout the lifetime of the object. The convergence of six emerging technologies, related to both the manufacturing process for consumer goods, and through identification and location technologies.
Systems Modelling research Group - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/research/groups/smrg.html - The primary research focus of the Systems Modelling Research Group (SMRG) is processes. In particular, we are engaged in investigating, modelling, analysing, re-engineering, designing, and simulating processes. We also research how processes may best be supported by IT. Within the group, members have a range of research interests, including: process enactment with mobile devices, enactable declarative process models, language action and process models, narratives and processes in organisations, multi-agent support for business processes, process modelling and health informatics, and process architectures.
The Pragmatic Programmer - The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master - Andrew Hunt and David Thomas.
The Semantic Discovery System - http://www.insilicodiscovery.com/v2/index.php - We aim to Accelerate Research in Information Discovery focused Organisations. - The Semantic Web will put enormous new power in the hands of everyone trying to get valuable answers from the web - instead of frustrating Google searches, people will get fast, accurate and highly valuable answers - because they will finally be able to ask the exact questions they really want. Our product - SDS - focuses this new Semantic Web power not just on the 'Web' but also on the valuable information locked inside organisational databases - for the first time, ordinary people will be able to get answers that would otherwise have taken impossible amounts of programming. - http://www.meaning2go.com/ - Ian Goldsmid - http://www.linkedin.com/in/iangoldsmid.
UML for Interactive Systems: What is Missing, Palanque, P., Bastide R., 2003. http://www.se-hci.org/bridging/interact/p96-99.pdf - INTERACT 2003 Closing the Gaps: Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction Zürich, Switzerland.
University of Victoria, University of Grenoble - Visualization in the Context of Model Driven Engineering - R. Ian Bull, Jean-Marie Favre.
Vanguard - http://www.lean-service.com/home.asp - The Toyota System for Service Organisations.
Vanguard Home Page - http://www.vanguardsw.com/
Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - http://wiki.vanguardsw.com/ - Iris - Global Knowledge Portal - network of example models - to provide solutions to common problems.
Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - Spar Example - Wing Spar Example - Spar - Translated from Protégé Ontology - outputs results to other languages - e.g. XML, SVG, Java.
Vanguard Studio performs costing and decision support calculations based on equations entered in Protégé. The resultant calculated tree is then output into a variety of visualation tools that read and display semantic XML based languages, or translated into other languages such as Java for Cost Estimator.
Vanguard System - Web-based Collaborative Modeling for Enterprise Simulation and Planning - http://www.vanguardsw.com/vanguard-system/vanguard-system.pdf.
VIDE - VIsualize all moDel drivEn programming - http://vide.tnmsoft.de/ - To enable the development of flexible, robust and evolvable software based on UML. Build a fully visual action programming platform.
Visual Exploration of Time-Series Data - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher/ - University of Maryland - Human Computer Interaction Lab.
Visual Knowledge - http://www.visualknowledge.com - Semantic WIKI - Visual Knowledge build conventional applications that are driven by ontologies rather than by code. A great deal of our underlying systems and frameworks are also model driven.
Visualization and the process of modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view - Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data - Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining - Andrew W. Crapo, Laurie B. Waisel, William A. Wallace, Thomas R. Willemain.
In the early stages of design of a component or a system there may not be enough information for the designer to create a structured diagram(s) to represent the problem.
The Advanced Computation in Design and Decision-making group at UWE aims to assist with this by a combination of human decision making and computing technology to assist the designer in evaluating options.
This is explained further on these pages of the group, and the Institute for People-Centred Computation IP-CC collaboration that includes UWE.
Advanced Computation in Design and Decision-making (ACDDM)Advanced Computation in Design and Decision-making (ACDDM) - Home Page - ACDDM Information.
UWE Graduate School - Supporting software design with interactive, evolutionary search - C. L. Simons and I. C. Parmee - ACDDM.
Institute for People-Centred ComputationInstitute for People-Centred Computation (IP-CC) - http://www.ip-cc.org.uk/ - IP-CC Information.
Alistair Clark - Principal Lecturer in Operational Research (OR) - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~arclark/ - Production Planning and Scheduling.
Free (or nearly-free) software for OR - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/%7Earclark/free_or_software.htm - Compiled and maintained by Alistair Clark.
Implementation based on Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Project for Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for these computer modelling articles - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=e1be02dc831b1a4b7d9e9d0951aa4d4a.
The aim is to make it possible to provide a high level interface to software that represents a problem in a way that is meaningful to users, and that allows them to make changes to the representation and understand the impact of those changes.
Early Research - MSc Research Summary - The earliest research was into providing a user driven model development example that would provide the kind of user interface and visualisation required for interactive costing.
Economic Models - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm.
Engineering Examples - Aerospace - http://wiki.vanguardsw.com/bin/browse.dsb?dir/Engineering/Aerospace/ - These examples illustrate creation of component tree definitions that are then transformed to Web based representations. The information is translated from Protégé to DecisionPro (Vanguard System) to other software as required. Another type of transformation performed is that from a tree based to interactive diagrammatic representation. Further calculations can then be performed in whatever software represents the results to the user.
Explanation of Examples - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/NewPaper/Explanation.htm.
Models Visualised - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm - Table of visualisation of the translated models.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
Visualisation and Interaction Page - Visualisation and Interaction
My current research approach builds on previous work undertaken for a large aerospace company to allow designers and manufacturers to visualise and share cost information. During this project one task was to automatically produce tree representations of information requested by the user. Information held in a relational database was visualised and exported in structured languages.
The theory behind this is that of showing examples of a program in whatever way most puts across the information in an understandable way. This must illustrate the concept that the information represents. This allows a user to manipulate the information and get immediate feedback on what has changed. This is related to Programming by Demonstration, which is explained below.
In the mid 1970s Smith introduced the technique of Programming by Demonstration with a program called Pygmalion. This demonstrated the need to describe algorithms through concrete examples rather than abstractly. 'Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program' University of Poitiers explains and expands on Smiths work with an example demonstrating how numbers fail to reveal the concept behind them. The example is a numerical representation of a triangle. This representation is 'fregean' because it does not show the concept of a triangle. Next to this is a diagram of the triangle that does show the concept.
Examples both my own and those of others in this research field and explanations are categorised according to the technology used - SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) - Flash - Java - XML (eXtensible Markup Language) - web2.0/Ajax.
The examples take the tree representations of a component and according to the properties of each feature of the component, a conversion tree in Vanguard System transforms the tree representation e.g this Spar into an SVG interactive diagrammatic representation - Interactive SVG Examples - Wing Components.
Further research undertaken is on defining and visualising interactive diagrams of components based on the Protégé and Vanguard Studio wing information. This information is represented in the interactive diagram using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Javascript. An example is shown below, this is based on the wing box bottom skin.
The code for these examples is produced automatically. The taxonomy for this wing spar part definition is stored in the Protégé Onotology system. DecsionPro code we have written reads this taxonomy, performs the calculations and outputs the result as Java code.
So far this method has been used for outputting Java, Cost Estimator (Java Based), HTML, XML, and SVG. Other options currently being considered are MetaL http://www.meta-language.net/ and Simkin http://www.simkin.co.uk.
A Flash movie explains how this is achieved step by step Flash Movie.
A taxonomy representation is translated into a computer model. Relationships can be conveyed to a software model that evaluates them. Information is translated from the taxonomy and is visualised in tree form in a decision support tool with the example of spar manufacture information. The visualisation of the information of a tree can be further translated into visualisation as an interactive diagram. The representation can be translated into differennt languages, to allow for language independence.
This diagram explains the transformation process.
Information about Modelling and Visualisation is available here - Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Figure 1 - Translation Process
The process is also explained here - User Driven Programming, and here - Translation and Aspect-Oriented Programming, and Translation for De-abstraction.
Modelling and Semantic Web Methodology - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.
More Information on Program Transformation is available at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ProgramTransformation.htm.
Programming by Demonstration - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/Programmingbyexample.htm
Alan Kay, Allen Cypher - Watch What I Do: - Programming by Demonstration.
Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program (2004) - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
Programming by Demonstration - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/PBE/index.html - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Lab.
Programming by Demonstration Tutorial - http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/EUD-NET/slides-workshop/PBE-Tutorial2.ppt - Henry Lieberman - MIT Lab - EUD-Net.
Pygmalion: A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. Stuttgart, Basel - University of Calgary Summary - Smith, D. C. 1977.
Smith, D. C. (1977) A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. Basel: Birkhauser. 187p.
Teaching and Learning Programming with a Programming by Example System - International Symposium on End User Development - Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin (Bonn), Germany - October 6-7, 2003 - Nicolas Guibert, Patrick Girard.
Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - Cypher, A, 1993, MIT Press, ISBN:0262032139.
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/ - Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - The entire text of this book is included on this web site. Access it through the Table of Contents.
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html.
Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Your-Wish/ - Henry Lieberman, editor.
Other Information
ACM Computing Surveys - Strategic Directions in Computing Research Working Group on Computational Geometry - Graph Drawing and Information Visualization - I G Tollis.
Adiuri - http://www.adiuri.com - Founded in 2002, Adiuri was created to commercially develop the research work carried out by the Universities of Bath and Bristol - Faceted Classification and Adaptive Concept Matching.
Adobe Apollo - Apollo - From Adobe Labs - Apollo is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop RIA's (Rich Internet Applications.
Adobe Flex 2 - Review - Review: A Look Under The Hood At Adobe Flex 2 - By Mario Morejon, CRN Test Center.
Atlas of Cyberspaces - http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html - This is an atlas of maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the new electronic territories of the Internet, the World-Wide Web and other emerging Cyberspaces.
Automated Tool Support for a Large Scale Diagramming Tool - http://www.semdesigns.com/Company/Publications/GRACE-Quigley.pdf - Aaron J. Quigley - Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW.
Bournemouth University - Software Systems Modelling Group - School of Design, Engineering and Computing - http://www.sosym.co.uk/ - The Software Systems Modelling Group (SoSyM) is a multi-disciplinary computing group focussing on the research, development and application of innovative modelling, tools and technologies for software systems.
Cambridge University - Viewpoints and Views in Engineering Change Management - International Conference on Engineering Design - René Keller, Claudia M. Eckert, P. John Clarkson Engineering Design Centre.
Context sensitive provision and visualisation of enterprise information with a hypermedia based system 1999 Sternemann K H M Zelm Computers in Industry 40.
Dmoz Open Directory Project - Visual Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Visual Languages.
Flash and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) Article - Visual Editor for SVG? (Scalable Vector Graphics) - Peter Hale - Article from my Blog.
Flex 2 Example Application - A Demonstration application built on Flex 2 - Adobe Demonstration.
Flex 2: Rich Internet Applications in a Flash! - http://www.sitepoint.com/article/flex-2-internet-applications - By Josh Tynjala.
Flex 2 - UWE Example Built Using Sitepoint Tutorial - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/AMRCMembers/bin/AMRCMembers.html - Member Profile Viewer/Editor.
gary.cornelius.bz - XML and HCI - http://gary.cornelius.bz/topics.html - Tree and menu of Useful information about XML and HCI.
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
IBM - Visual Application Builder - http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/visualbuilder - A set of WebSphere Studio plug-ins that allow even non-expert programmers to quickly develop browser-based applications and application templates that target various devices.
IBM - Visualization - http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/topics/visualization - Visualization technologies transform information into a visual form, enabling the viewer to easily understand the information using interactive graphics and visual design.
iCampus - The MIT-Microsoft Alliance - http://icampus.mit.edu/projects/MagicPaper.shtml - Project - Magic Paper: drawing out ideas.
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing - Journal Home Page - Elsevier.
Lanner Group and Ford - http://www.lanner.com/products/whitepapers/virtualfactories.pdf - Anthony P. Waller, John Ladbrook - Experiencing Virtual Factories of the Future.
Logic Programming Associates - http://www.lpa.co.uk/ - We design and support world-class products for Artificial Intelligence, including state-of-the-art Prolog compilers, Chimera Agents, the flex expert system and VisiRule graphical business rules.
LPA VisiRule 1.0 - http://www.lpa.co.uk/vsr.htm - LPA VisiRule 1.0 - VisiRule is a graphical tool for developing and delivering business rules systems and components simply by drawing the decision logic.
Multi-platform user interface construction: a challenge for software engineering-in-the-small - Bishop, J., 2006 - International Conference on Software Engineering, Proceeding of the 28th international conference on Software engineering - SESSION: Software engineering: achievements & challenges: domain-specific challenges 751 - 760 - ISBN:1-59593-375-1.
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) - Palo Alto - People and Technology in Use - Information Visualization and Interaction.
Periodic Table: built with Flash, XML, webMathematica - http://www.galaxygoo.org/biochem/PeriodicTable.htm - GalaxyGoo - This project demonstrates the combination of Flash(MX), XML, and webMathematica. - In the flash application, cells for each element are dynamically generated and arranged on the stage. Basic information about each element (the atomic number, element symbol, and element name) is passed to the flash application from an XML document, and displayed. - by Kristin Henry and Brian Higgins.
Periodic table of Visualization Methods - http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html - Visual-Literacy.org has published this great Periodic Table of methods of visualisation. This displays around 100 diagram types, with examples and a multi-faceted classification by: - simple to complex - data/information/concept/strategy/metaphor/compound - process/structure - detail/overview - divergence/convergence - The web page uses a Javascript library to display an example of a diagram type when you mouse-over its box. A neat trick but perhaps not very accessible, so I took the liberty of massaging this table to create a full listing of all the diagram types in alphabetical order. This format is more convenient for my purpose when teaching, and is a nice example of XML-scraping using XQuery.
Periodic table of Visualization Methods - UWE Blog - http://dsa2006.blogspot.com/2007/02/periodic-table-of-visualisations.html - UWE Blog post - This blog supports the group of students taking Data, Schemas and Applications UFIEKG-20-3, a module taught in the Information Systems School at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK - Visual-Literacy.org has published this great Periodic Table of methods of visualisation. This displays around 100 diagram types, with examples and a multi-faceted classification by: - simple to complex - data/information/concept/strategy/metaphor/compound - process/structure - detail/overview - divergence/convergence - The web page uses a Javascript library to display an example of a diagram type when you mouse-over its box. A neat trick but perhaps not very accessible, so I took the liberty of massaging this table to create a full listing of all the diagram types in alphabetical order. This format is more convenient for my purpose when teaching, and is a nice example of XML-scraping using XQuery.
Photos transformed into 3D model - Microsoft's Photosynth - BBC News.
Piccolo - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/learn/publications.shtml - A revolutionary way to create robust, full-featured graphical applications in Java and C#, with striking visual effects such as zooming, animation and multiple representations.
Robert Bowdidge's Research Page - Research - Star Diagram - Restructuring tool and star diagrams for program code.
Software Visualization - Edited by John T. Stasko, John B. Domingue, Marc H. Brown and Blaine A. Price - The MIT Press.
Teaching Geoscience with Visualizations: Using Images, Animations, and Models Effectively - References about Teaching and Learning with Visualizations - Link to Visualization Resources.
Technische University - Eindhoven - SequoiaView Homepage - Tool for viewing large trees.
The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html - R. Nicholas Jackiw and William F. Finzer - from Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - edited by Allen Cypher co-edited by Daniel C. Halbert, David Kurlander, Henry Lieberman, David Maulsby, Brad A. Myers, and Alan Turransky.
Treemaps for space-constrained visualization of hierarchies - A History of Treemap Research at the University of Maryland - Ben Shneiderman.
The Tyranny of Evaluation - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Misc/Tyranny-Evaluation.html - Henry Lieberman - MIT Media Lab.
University of Maryland Java Applet Demonstration of Space Tree - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/spacetree/applet/applet.shtml - SpaceTree - Applet Version.
University of Victoria, University of Grenoble - Visualization in the Context of Model Driven Engineering - R. Ian Bull,Jean-Marie Favre.
Using Visualization Tools to Gain Insight Into Your Data - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/SPEplaisant-final.pdf - ChevronTexaco - the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., 5 - 8 October 2003.
VIDE - VIsualize all moDel drivEn programming - http://vide.tnmsoft.de/ - To enable the development of flexible, robust and evolvable software based on UML. Build a fully visual action programming platform.
Visual Exploration of Time-Series Data - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher/ - University of Maryland - Human Computer Interaction Lab.
Visualisation of Cost Information 2002 Bru Christophe Scanlan, J. & Hale, P. & Dunkley, M 9th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications, Cranfield University.
Visualization and the process of modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view - Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data - Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining - Andrew W. Crapo, Laurie B. Waisel, William A. Wallace, Thomas R. Willemain.
VizNET UK - http://www.viznet.ac.uk/ - Researchers in scientific, engineering, social sciences,and the arts and humanities communities are generating ever increasing amounts of complex data. Analysis and presentation of this data in meaningful and optimal manner relies on effective use of visualization techniques. vizNET (a UK National Visualization Network) a collaboration between a number of visualization centres in the UK has been established to share knowledge, communicate best practice between application domains, provide training and support to researchers in visualization. vizNET is in the process of establishing a Visualization Support Network spanning the UK Academic Research Community. vizNET will offer technical guidance to new users (entry level visualization) to advanced users (expert visualization users). Consolidating the strengths of major visualization centres and groups across the UK will help the UK to realize the full potential of emerging visualization techniques and resources at a National and Regional level. vizNET is funded by the JISC Support of Research Committee.
Why are geographic information systems hard to use? - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Carol Traynor and Marian Williams - Denver, Colorado, United States - Pages: 288 - 289 - Year of Publication: 1995 - ISBN:0-89791-755-3.
I created several of these examples by using Protégé as both an ontology and database store. I saved the ontology as an access database using the option available in Protégé. This creates a table with different keys for children, attributes, value etc, so preserves the OWL structure. I created code in Vanguard System that follows this structure and so creates a Vanguard tree from a Protégé tree using the Access relational database.
The diagram shows the stepped translation process implemented, to create models and visualisations.
Stepped Translation and Visualisation
This text is on the site of the Adobe SVG Player Download Page - 'Please note that Adobe has announced that it will discontinue support for Adobe SVG Viewer on January 1, 2008.'
Adobe to Discontinue Adobe SVG Viewer - http://www.adobe.com/svg/eol.html.
SVG expert Kurt Cagle's thoughts are mentioned in this article. -
Wherefore art thou, SVG? - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/09/wherefore_art_thou_svg.html - O'Reilly XML.com - Kurt Cagle - September 10, 2006.
I'm interested in any comments that people might have on this, and my email is -
Interactive SVG Examples - Interactive SVG Examples - Wing Components.
Scientific Visualisation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PublicScience.htm#UWEExamples.
SVG Interactive Wing Component - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm.
The link below shows the model and code behind the creation of this example.
Vanguard System to Protégé and Access database link instructions - Text File - with instructions for developers trying to to this.
Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - Spar Example - Spar SVG Generator - Spar - Translated from Protégé Ontology - outputs results to other languages - e.g. XML, SVG, Java.
SVG Page - Scalable Vector Graphics Information and Examples.
This is my MSc research that I've based this SVG approach on - MSc Research Summary - The earliest research was into providing a user driven model development example that would enable the kind of user interface and visualisation required for interactive costing.
State Transition Example - SVG State Transition Diagram.
Graph Examples - SVG, XML Graph Examples.
Koala Publishing Example Internet Explorer Version
Koala Publishing Ltd - SVG Example - Koala Airfield Example, this links to a page at Koala that has their SVG Examples.
Koala Samples
Koala Publishing Ltd - SVG Examples Page - SVG Examples - Airfield, Graphics, Animation - Koala SVG Examples Page.
Mozilla Version
Koala Publishing Ltd - SVG Example - Koala Airfield Example, Mozilla Firefox example - Native XML.
Mozilla SVG Link
Mozilla samples project - Mozilla Samples - croczilla.com.
UWE library - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/library/resources/general/info_study_skills/guideref.htm - Flow Chart Guide to referencing.
XML.com - SVG Parts catalog - http://www.xml.com/2000/03/22/style/parts-catalog.htm - Interactive Example - Explanation - Explanation of the Parts Catalog example.
SVG Articles
Berners-Lee not happy with IE - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.21549 - This is an interesting article that can be found on the BCS (British Computer Society) website - 12/09/2008.
Carto:Net - SVG Help, Papers, Projects, Authors.
Dotus Comus - Design and Development.
Graphical Stylesheets Using XSLT to Generate SVG - Philip A. Mansfield, Darryl W. Fuller.
Startpagina - Startpagina SVG and related examples, articles, and tutorials.
Stelt - http://steltenpower.com/SVG.html - SVG information.
SVG European Workshop - http://roitsystems.com/twiki/bin/view/SVGWorkshop/WebHome - SVG European Workshop.
Wherefore art thou, SVG? - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/09/wherefore_art_thou_svg.html - O'Reilly XML.com - Kurt Cagle - September 10, 2006.
SVG Conferences
SVG Open 2008 - http://svgopen.org/2008/index.php - 6th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics - 26th to 28th August - Nuremberg - Germany - The world conference on SVG will this year take place in the center of Nuremberg. Located in the south of Germany.
XTech Conference - Building Rich, Encapsulated Widgets Using XBL, XForms and SVG - Mark Birbeck, x-port.net Ltd.
SVG Tools
Adobe - Illustrator - SVG Editor.
Inkscape - Inkscape - SVG Editor.
Kiyut - Sketsa - SVG Editor.
Lewey Geselowitz's World - Ink AniEd - Ink Based Animation Editor
Simtel - Simtel - SVG Editor 3.0.
Virtualmechanics - Virtual Mechanics - Web Engine version 2.
An example shows a Flash Taxonomy viewer that can be used to view eXtensible Markup Language (XML) taxonomies. Flash XML Taxonomy Viewer Example - Flash HCI Example. This is based on an example from a book Flash MX Application and Interface Design (Rhodes, G. et al. (2002))
Clickable image of Flash dynamic tree viewer
Rhodes, G., Macdonald, J., Jokol, K., Prudence, P., Aylward, P., Shepherd, R., Yard, T., 2002. A Flash Family Tree, in: Flash MX Application and Interface Design Flash MX Application and Interface Design..
Flash Interactive Tree - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm.
Flash movie that presents the concepts behind my work - User Driven Modelling Demonstration.
Graph Examples - SVG, XML Graph Examples.
The link below shows the model and code behind the creation of this example.
Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - Spar Example - Flash Generator - Spar - Translated from Protégé Ontology - outputs results to other languages - e.g. XML for Flash tree, SVG, Java.
Flash demos/articles
A Flash Family Tree, in: Flash MX Application and Interface Design Flash MX Application and Interface Design. - Rhodes, G., Macdonald, J., Jokol, K., Prudence, P., Aylward, P., Shepherd, R., Yard, T., 2002.
Adobe Apollo - Apollo - From Adobe Labs - Apollo is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop RIA's (Rich Internet Applications.
Adobe Flex 2 - Review - Review: A Look Under The Hood At Adobe Flex 2 - By Mario Morejon, CRN Test Center.
Flash and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) Article - Visual Editor for SVG? (Scalable Vector Graphics) - Peter Hale - Article from my Blog.
Flash to the future - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6169853.stm - By Rami Tzabar - BBC World Service's Digital Planet - 12th December 2006 - Depending on how you see it, Flash is either the whizzy application that brings websites to life with fabulous animations, or the thing that makes websites annoyingly slow to download when all you really want is just to get a bit of information and move on.
Flex 2 Example Application - A Demonstration application built on Flex 2 - Adobe Demonstration.
Flex 2: Rich Internet Applications in a Flash! - http://www.sitepoint.com/article/flex-2-internet-applications - By Josh Tynjala.
Flex 2 - UWE Example Built Using Sitepoint Tutorial - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/AMRCMembers/bin/AMRCMembers.html - Member Profile Viewer/Editor.
Optimizing Flash files for the search engines - Site Reference - Michael Goldstein.
Periodic Table: built with Flash, XML, webMathematica - http://www.galaxygoo.org/biochem/PeriodicTable.htm - GalaxyGoo - This project demonstrates the combination of Flash(MX), XML, and webMathematica. - In the flash application, cells for each element are dynamically generated and arranged on the stage. Basic information about each element (the atomic number, element symbol, and element name) is passed to the flash application from an XML document, and displayed. - by Kristin Henry and Brian Higgins.
Robert Bowdidge's Research Page - Research - Star Diagram - Restructuring tool and star diagrams for program code.
Teaching Geoscience with Visualizations: Using Images, Animations, and Models Effectively - References about Teaching and Learning with Visualizations - Link to Visualization Resources.
University of Victoria, University of Grenoble - Visualization in the Context of Model Driven Engineering - R. Ian Bull,Jean-Marie Favre.
Using Visualization Tools to Gain Insight Into Your Data - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/SPEplaisant-final.pdf - ChevronTexaco - the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., 5 - 8 October 2003.
University of Maryland, College Park - http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2006/cmsc838s/viz4all/v4a_vis.html - Viz4All.
University of Maryland - Human Computer Interaction Lab - http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/research/visualization.shtml - Visualization.
Visual Complexity - http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/.
vizster - http://jheer.org/vizster/ - Visualizing Online social networks.
Java and Open Source Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Java.htm.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
A Java applet example shows the tree translated to Java - Java Applet Example.
The link below shows the model and code behind the creation of this Java example.
Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - Spar Example - Java Generator - Spar - Translated from Protege Ontology - outputs results to other languages - e.g. Java, XML for Flash tree, SVG.
A Java applet example shows a materials tree implemented in Java as a glossary - Java Glossary Applet Example.
Java applet example - Java Applet Example.
Java applet example - materials tree glossary - Java Glossary Applet Example.
Conferences - Events
Linux Boot Camp
University of the West of England
Bristol Institute of Technology
The Linux Boot Camp is aimed at those, normally doing or having done A Levels, who want to do practical technical computing. We want you to get in touch with your inner geek!
The event will involve two and a half days of technical workshops exploring many aspects of modern technology and the use of free open source software. During the workshops you will learn how to revitalize your PC (or even resuscitate a dead one!) by installing and configuring Linux on it. Useful skills such as how to set up a home network and web server will be given. You could learn how to make your own router, or how to hack into various set-top boxes. At the end of the Linux Boot Camp you will be able to tap into the world of open source computing and maybe set yourself on a profitable and worthwhile career!
Further Information - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/news/events/index.html.
Using Open Source and Open Standards to Enable Transformational Government
The Hawthorns, Woodland Road, Clifton, Bristol
British Computer Society BCS Bristol Branch
Transformational Government is intended to be an intensive, structural and fundamental change in the operational processes of Government bodies, enabled by the use of Information Systems & Technology in the back-office. It is expected to deliver major efficiency savings across the public sector without any further investment beyond existing budgets.
What does Transformational Government look like in practice within a Local Authority? How can it be implemented without any additional funding? How can intensely technical subjects like open source and open standards contribute to business change? Gavin Beckett, ICT Strategy Manager at Bristol City Council, will attempt to answer these questions and give an overview of Bristol's successes and challenges to date.
Gavin has been a central figure in Bristol's strategic use of Open Source and Open Standards since 2002; was a founder of the Open Source Academy; and works actively with a variety of EU interest groups and government bodies on the adoption of ODF.
Further Information - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/44.
Software Engineering Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#Conferences.
Programming with XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#ProgrammingwithXML.
XForms - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#XForms.
XML Events Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XMLTransformation.htm.
XML Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm.
XML Research Summary - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#XMLResearchSummary.
XML Transformation Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EventsLists/XMLExamplesSchemaandDTD.htm.
XQuery - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#XQuery.
UWE XML Examples
Aircraft Wing Modelling
Colour Coding
This XML example demonstrates a re-use of Christophe Bru's cost map where the colour coding is used to represent categories of information rather than cost. Clicking Spar Illustrates this best as it shows different colours. This doesn't render in Mozilla Firefox. XML Colour Categorised.
Drag and Drop
Components Drag and Drop AJAX Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/components.html - Based on Example from Scand dhtmlxTree.
Interactive XML and SVG Based Wing components
Flash Taxonomy viewer that can be used to view eXtensible Markup Language (XML) taxonomies. Flash XML Taxonomy Viewer Example - Flash HCI Example. This is based on an example from a book Flash MX Application and Interface Design (Rhodes, G. et al.)
Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - Spar Example - XML Generator - Spar - Translated from Protege Ontology - outputs results to other languages - e.g. XML, Java, SVG.
XML Based Tree Menu
An XML example links to an XSL stylesheet. This doesn't render in Mozilla Firefox. XML Example. - This HTML version has been tested in Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and links to XML files that will render in that browser. HTML Version.
This HTML menu has been tested in Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and links to XML files that will render in that browser. HTML Example.
The link below shows the model and code behind the creation of this XML example.
These outputs are based on the work of Emmanuele De Andreis.
http://manudea.duemetri.net/xtree/
XQuery and XForms Wingbox Examples
Components Example Using XQuery and XForms (FormFaces) Combined - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/FormFaces/Examples/WingBox/index.html - Adapted from research of Chris Wallace.
Wingbox Product Ordering Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/FormFaces/Examples/WingBox/index.html - Based on the FormFaces - BookStore example - http://www.formfaces.com/faces/Examples/index.html.
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/Charts/charts.htm.
Faculty Online Data (Fold) - Faculty Online Data (FOLD) - Studentsonline.
Tag Cloud - Programme Search by Tag Cloud - UWE - Faculty Online Data (FOLD).
Tag Cloud - Tag Cloud of Staff Keywords - Internal Only.
XQuery examples eXist XML Database (Chris Wallace) - XQuery examples.
XQuery Wikibook - XQuery Examples Collection - http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XQuery - This is a collaborative project and we encourage everyone who is using XQuery to contribute their XQuery examples.
This example shows a Flash Taxonomy viewer that can be used to view eXtensible Markup Language (XML) taxonomies. Flash XML Taxonomy Viewer Example - Flash HCI Example. This is based on an example from a book Flash MX Application and Interface Design (Rhodes, G. et al.)
Parametric Costing models are also demonstrated with 2 example models. Christophe Bru also worked on these models. These are Online Parametric Cost Estimation (PCE) models based on XML linked to an XSL stylesheet.
These examples are - engine and bolt
Other XML examples use the MSXML activeX object engine and bolt
Process Modelling - PSL - Process Specification Language and XML (Extensible Markup Language) - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/ProcessSpecificationLanguage.htm.
XML DTDs and Schema, stylesheet transformation - XML information and examples.
This example converts an - LDAP representation of a staff member (myself) to a representation required for the Faculty Information System Project of Chris Wallace. XSL Transformation Example.
XQuery examples eXist XML Database (Chris Wallace) - XQuery examples.
Web 2.0/AJAX page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm.
UWE Web 2.0 Examples
Components Drag and Drop Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/components.html - Based on Example from Scand dhtmlxTree.
Semantic Web/Web 2.0 Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#SemanticWebandWeb2Research - Examples from Research.
XForms - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#XForms
Further Information
BBC Technology news - The web's future is a 'village' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7562475.stm - By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley - Despite the desire to have the world of information at our fingertips and a social networking page that boasts of hundreds of so-called "friends", the reality is very different. - Researchers at Hewlett Packard have found that, in truth, we really only bother about a handful of friends and generally visit a small number of websites. - Bernardo Huberman, a senior fellow at HP labs has called this a return to the "dawn of the age of intimacy" following in-depth research into the intersection of social behaviour and technology. - Over the last six months he and his fellow researchers have focused on what people do when information becomes more available, cheap and valueless. - 9 September 2008.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 2 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 2 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_26.html.
Drag and Drop Programming - Example and Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming.
Drag and Drop Programming - Post - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/08/drag-and-drop-programming.html.
End User Programming - Example Interfaces - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm#ExampleInterfaces.
Programming with XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#ProgrammingwithXML.
Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ - Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. - Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs.
E-Learning Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning.htm.
UWE E-Learning Examples
Diagrammatic - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm.
DSA2006 - http://dsa2006.blogspot.com/ - This blog supports the group of students taking Data, Schemas and Applications UFIEKG-20-3, a module taught in the Information Systems School at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK.
E-Learning Development Unit - Examples - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/elearning/xmps.shtml - Resource-based Learning - E-learning Course Design - Computer Aided Assessment.
Flash Interactive Tree - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm.
Modelling Proposal - Examples Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/models.htm.
Research Observatory - http://ro.uwe.ac.uk/ - http://www.bath.ac.uk/ro/ - Collaborative project between the University of Bath and the University of the West of England, Bristol, to create an online research teaching and learning resource.
Richard Tann UWE - http://www.richtann.com/2dExamples/Roug%20Guide%20Template6.html - A template designed to outline the structure for a suite of self contained interactive learning modules.
Richard Tann UWE - http://www.richtann.com/2dExamples/pharos3.html - Interactive manual for new university students.
Richard Tann UWE - http://www.richtann.com/2dExamples/graph.html - Mathematical Functions - An Example using Actionscript to model functions and dynamically redraw according to user interaction.
Study skills - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/study/studySkills.shtml - An index of study skills support currently available to UWE students.
SVG Interactive Wing Component - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm.
Taxonomy - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm.
UWE Second Life E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning.htm#SecondLifeandVirtualWorlds.
This diagram is from an article by Ray Sims - AND AND AND AND (PLE) - http://blog.simslearningconnections.com/?p=50.
Learning in MarketPlace: Economic Objects to Think With and Talk About. Masters thesis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Media Laboratory. - Kimberly, G. (1995).
Distributed Constructionism - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Resnick, M., 1996.
Mitchel Resnick - http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/.
Semantic Learning Webs. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2004 (10). Special Issue on the Educational Semantic Web. ISSN:1365-893X http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2004/10 - Stutt, A. and Motta, E. (2004).
E-Learning Examples
E-Learning Development Unit - Examples - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/elearning/xmps.shtml - Resource-based Learning - E-learning Course Design - Computer Aided Assessment.
E-Learning Using Semantic Web and End-User Programming Techniques - Article - Although there are web modelling tools available it still needs considerable effort to adapt these tools for educational use. Research is needed into creation of Semantic Web models for educators to use in order to create learning objects and models.
Flash Interactive Tree - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm.
SVG Interactive Wing Component - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm.
Other Links
E-Learning Development Unit - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/elearning/ - These pages offer help and support to all members of UWE staff in designing, developing and running courses using electronic media. They are written and updated by members of the E-learning Development Unit
Research Observatory - http://ro.uwe.ac.uk/ - http://www.bath.ac.uk/ro/ - Collaborative project between the University of Bath and the University of the West of England, Bristol, to create an online research teaching and learning resource.
Simon Price - Institute for Learning & Research Technology - Bristol University.
Wider Horizons: an open online educational environment - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/aboutus/foi/bid22worcesteruniversity.pdf - University of Worcester - JISC Capital Programme - The project will lead the creation of an open online educational environment for students and the wider community in the region – Wider Horizons. It will serve as a paradigm for future development in other cities and represents a model of cross-sector working to widen horizons and raise aspirations. It will provide online places where academic and cultural communities can be supported, where there will be access to community resources, and connections into resources and courses within further and higher education institutions. Wider Horizons Portal: Exec Group. - Herefordshire & Worcestershire Lifelong Learning Network - http://hwlln.ac.uk/ - Further Information PDF - http://hwlln.ac.uk/documents/Wider_Horizons_(UW).pdf.
Clockwork - http://clockwork.open.ac.uk/ - Open University - Knowledge Media Institute - Creating Learning Organisations with Contextualised Knowledge-Rich work Artifacts.
Distributed Constructionism - http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) - This paper introduces the concept of distributed constructionism, building on previous research on constructionism and on distributed cognition. It focuses particularly on the use of computer networks to support students working together on design and construction activities, and it argues that these types of activities are particularly effective in supporting the development of knowledge-building communities. The paper describes three main categories of distributed constructionist activities: discussing constructions, sharing constructions, and collaborating on constructions. In each category, it describes ongoing research projects at the MIT Media Lab and discusses how these projects support new ways of thinking and learning.
Equplus - http://equplus.net - Science and Math Equations.
Erudix - http://www.erudix.com/ - Share your knowledge - today - Search theses, dissertations, papers, course notes and other learning documents.
Magpie - http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/magpie/main.html - Magpie uses our ontology infrastructure to semantically markup web documents on-the-fly. The existing technologies in this problem domain tend to be rather heavyweight, and often modify the appearance of the actual webpage.
NeOn - http://www.neon-project.org/web-content/ - NeOn is a 14.7 million Euros project involving 14 European partners and co-funded by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme under grant number IST-2005-027595. NeOn started in March 2006 and has a duration of 4 years. Our aim is to advance the state of the art in using ontologies for large-scale semantic applications in the distributed organizations.
OpenLearn - Open University - http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/ - Making Educational Resources Freely Available.
Open University - Open University Knowledge Media Institute - John Domingue - Research Interests.
Open University - http://www.open.ac.uk/research/ - Research is our cental mission.
REASE - the repository of EASE for learning units in the area of Semantic Web! - http://ubp.l3s.uni-hannover.de/ubp - REASE supports sharing knowledge for Higher Education as well as for industrial education in the area of Semantic Web and is open to any member of the academic, research, or professional community.
Simon Price - Institute for Learning & Research Technology - Bristol University.
Sims Learning Connections - http://blog.simslearningconnections.com/ - A personal learning journal about individual and organizational learning that improves workplace performance...
UWE Student Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Web%20Semantic/Index.html - Investigating and implement the idea of 'ModConsWest' (Modelling and Constructionism with Web based E-Learning Semantic Tools)" - Lee Ediagbonya and Awaab Eltahir.
What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education- http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf - JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Technology and Standards Watch, Feb. 2007 - Paul Anderson - Within 15 years the Web has grown from a group work tool for scientists at CERN into a global information space with more than a billion users. Currently, it is both returning to its roots as a read/write tool and also entering a new, more social and participatory phase. These trends have led to a feeling that the Web is entering a 'second phase' - a new, 'improved' Web version 2.0. But how justified is this perception?
Drag and Drop Programming - Example and Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming.
End User Programming - End User Programming Research.
History of End User Programming - End User Research Information and Links.
User Driven Modelling - Peter Hale Blog - MySpace Blog.
UWE Student Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Web%20Semantic/Index.html - Investigating and implement the idea of 'ModConsWest' (Modelling and Constructionism with Web based E-Learning Semantic Tools)" - Lee Ediagbonya and Awaab Eltahir.
Visualisation and Interaction Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Visualisation.htm.
Alice v2.0 - http://www.alice.org/ - Learn to Program Interactive 3D Graphics.
BBC H2G2 - Hitch Hikers Guide - Write an entry for our online Encyclopedia - and read what others have written - Maths, Science & Technology - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/C6 - Artificial Life & Genetics, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computers, Engineering, General Science, Inventions, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology.
BBC Technology news - Free tool offers 'easy' coding - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6647011.stm - A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed - Jonathan Fildes - 14 May 2007.
BBC Technology news - How to help users help themselves - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6270593.stm - Internet law professor Michael Geist describes how governments can help their citizens make the most of the web. Professor Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa - 17 January 2007.
BBC Technology news - Video searching uses people power - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7433142.stm - A new project on a parliamentary website could make video searching a lot simpler, says Bill Thompson. - 3 June 2008.
BBC Technology news - Web users driving change in 2007 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6198125.stm - Mark Ward Technology Correspondent - 1st January 2007.
BBC Technology news - 'You' named Time's person of 2006 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6187113.stm - "You" have been named as Time magazine's Person of the Year for the growth and influence of user-generated content on the internet. - 17 December 2006.
Big ideas - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20061012.shtml - BBC Radio 4 In Business Peter Day 12th October 2006 - Nathan Myhrvold used to be chief scientist at the computer software giant Microsoft. Now he's started a company - Intellectual Ventures - obsessed with ideas.
BlogScholar - BlogScholar - Academic Blogging Portal.
Clockwork - http://clockwork.open.ac.uk/ - Open University - Knowledge Media Institute - Creating Learning Organisations with Contextualised Knowledge-Rich work Artifacts.
Croquet - http://www.opencroquet.org/ - a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications.
Distributed Constructionism - http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) - This paper introduces the concept of distributed constructionism, building on previous research on constructionism and on distributed cognition. It focuses particularly on the use of computer networks to support students working together on design and construction activities, and it argues that these types of activities are particularly effective in supporting the development of knowledge-building communities. The paper describes three main categories of distributed constructionist activities: discussing constructions, sharing constructions, and collaborating on constructions. In each category, it describes ongoing research projects at the MIT Media Lab and discusses how these projects support new ways of thinking and learning.
Does happiness live in cyberspace? - BBC Programmes - Mark Easton.
Dr Dobb's Portal - Open Source - http://www.ddj.com/dept/opensource/.
Flapjax - http://www.flapjax-lang.org/ - What is Flapjax? - Flapjax is a new programming language designed around the demands of modern, client-based Web applications.
GM User Created Ad Contest Backfires - http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060404GMUserCreatedAdContestBackfires.html - WebPro News - David A. Utter.
Google launches web spreadsheet - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5051610.stm - BBC Technology News/Business News - 6 June 2006.
Google Competition - http://www.google.co.uk/doodle4google/rosssmele/index.html - Ross Smele, Age 14 - Speedwell Technology College - Winner for the South West Region - 14-18 Age Group - I am the Regional Winner for the South West (14-18 Age Group) in the Doodle 4 Google - My Britain Competition 2006 - http://www.google.co.uk/doodle4google/vote.
Hackety Hack - http://hacketyhack.net/ - In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!!
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
Inform 7 - http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Inform%207.html - Inform is a design system for interactive fiction.
IBM Academic Resources - http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/academic - New from alphaWorks, this collection of technologies of interest to the academic community is now being provided with special licensing terms suited for educational purposes.
The Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The Big Picture http://www.ieuc.org/home/the-big-picture.html as edited on Saturday, January 22, 2005.
Interactive Storytelling - http://www.ddj.com/dept/ai/192503697 - Dr Dobbs Portal - Michael Swaine article on Chris Crawford and http://www.storytron.com/ - Storytron - September 6th - 2006.
Internet Creativity Has Only Just Begun - SiteReference Article - Jesse S Somer.
Internet's future in 2020 debated - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5370688.stm - BBC News - Technology - 24 September 2006.
Brian Kelly - UKOLN - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/ - UK Web Focus.
Meeting the bloggers face to face - BBC Radio 4 - Mark Savage 25th August 2006.
Microsoft may offer web programs - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5370144.stm - BBC News - Technology - 22 September 2006.
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21E979E3-B8AE-4EA6-8E65-393EA7684D6C&displaylang=en - Create great video games, more easily for Windows-based PC systems using this first beta of Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express.
Not as wiki as it used to be - BBC Technology - Bill Thompson 29th August 2006.
Patent battle over teaching tools - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4790485.stm - BBC Technology News.
Plone - http://plone.org - Plone: A user-friendly and powerful open source Content Management System.
Sakai Portal - http://www.sakaiproject.org - Collaboration and Learning Environment for Education.
Sakai Conference - 5th Sakai Conference with OSP - Conference - May 30 - June 2.
Searching Questions - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/5222356.stm - BBC Radio 4 - The dream is powerful: the world's information at everyone's fingertips - 27 July 2006.
Simkin - Simkin XML based open source scripting language.
Social sites wrestle for top spot - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5012194.stm - BBC Technology - Social sites wrestle for top spot.
Tech guru O'Reilly on Web 2.0 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4414550.stm - BBC Technology - Bill Thompson, Tim O'Reilly.
Technology Feeds Grassroots Media - BBC article - BBC Technology News - Dan Gillmor.
The Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies - The Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies - studying the impact of new media and technologies on the business environment.
The growing market for blogs - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5037400.stm - BBC Technology News - James Cherkoff.
The viral video online revolution - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/5020364.stm - BBC Click Online Technology News - Ian Hardy.
The website of Bill Thompson technology critic and essayist - andfinally.com - Bill Thompson.
TiddlyWiki - http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ - TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook.
Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects, Polsani P R, 2003, Journal of Digital Information, Volume 3 Issue 4 - http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v03/i04/Polsani/.
User-generated future for gaming - BBC article - Users Creating Games - BBC Technology News - Tayfun King.
User pain may mean Windows cracks - Bill Thompson - BBC Technology News.
Wikipedia - UWE CEMS faculty on Wikipedia - University of the West of England CEMS The Faculty of Computing Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.
Yahoo homepage to get make-over - BBC article - BBC Technology News..
Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ - Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. - Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs.
8hop.com - http://8hop.com/ - The place to share your music, creative writing, and photography with your friends!
Academici - Knowledge Networks - https://www.academici.com - Network for Academics.
Acadia University - Support for End-User Programming in a Cooperative Environment - Ivan Tomek, Rebecca Gong, Elhadi Shakshuki, Rick Giles.
Alice v2.0 - http://www.alice.org/ - Learn to Program Interactive 3D Graphics.
Amaya - http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ - Welcome to Amaya - W3C's Editor/Browser - Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium.
AspectXML - http://www.aspectxml.org/ - Community Open Source Project.
BBC Technology news - Design win for Alzheimer's tool - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6701855.stm - An online screensaver and social network for people with Alzheimer's and their carers has won a Microsoft-led software design prize. - 29 May 2007.
BBC Technology news - Free tool offers 'easy' coding - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6647011.stm - A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed - Jonathan Fildes - 14 May 2007.
BBC Technology news - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5368190.stm - Global web celebrations under way - 22 September 2006.
BBC Technology news - IT giant founds carers' network - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7447020.stm - By Geoff Adams-Spink Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website - IT giant, Intel, has launched an online service so that carers in the UK can support each other and get advice from professionals. - The company says that the virtual network - ConnectingForCare.co.uk - is the first of its kind. - It will bring together family carers, healthcare professionals, social workers and others. - The aim is to "fill a void in today's healthcare system" by using technology to build a sense of community. - 12 June 2008.
BBC Technology news - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6198244.stm - Search engine aids rights workers - 30 November 2006.
BlogScholar - BlogScholar - Academic Blogging Portal.
British Computer Society - WrITe IT - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.9083 - Unleash your creative writing skills on the BCS 2000 word short story competition. There are prizes to the value of £750 worth computer equipment to be won. - 14/02/2007.
Bristol SkillSwap - http://groups.google.com/group/bristolskillswap/ - Free New Media Training - For the community, by the community - edmitchell.co.uk.
Cetus Links - Object-Orientation - Cetus Links - Thousands of Links on Objects and Components.
Citeulike - http://www.citeulike.org/ - Tagged Links to papers includes category of Computing - Engineering and several others.
Citizen Science - Episode 2: Computers - BBC Radio 4.
Click On - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/clickon/ - Whether you've embraced technology willingly, or you're someone who struggles to find the 'on' switch on a PC, this series will have something for you. Rajesh Mirchandani finds out how modern technology touches people's lives in this lively magazine programme.
Clockwork - http://clockwork.open.ac.uk/ - Open University - Knowledge Media Institute - Creating Learning Organisations with Contextualised Knowledge-Rich work Artifacts.
Community Information Systems Centre - Faculty Information System Profile - Community Information Systems Centre (CISC), UWE.
Community websites take wiki path - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6171399.stm - BBC News Technology 12th December 2006.
Computer Hope - http://www.computerhope.com/ - The location for free online computer support and computer related information. Computer Hope has been designed to assist all types of computer users with any of their computer related questions as well as a great location to learn more about your computer and its hardware and software.
Connecting Bristol - Mapping streets and networks - http://www.connectingbristol.org/ - On 24 and 25 February 2007, the OpenStreetMap team of volunteers will be adding Bristol to the global mapping revolution. Contributors to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project are meeting in Bristol with the aim of completely mapping the streets and other major features of the city.
Computor Companion - http://www.computorcompanion.com/ - The Practical Guide to Using Computers Effectively.
Could UWE's prize-winning e-tool spell the end for the CV? - UWE News 2006 - September 11th 2006.
Croquet - http://www.opencroquet.org/ - a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications.
Digital neighbourhood watch plan - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6364301.stm - BBC Technology News - 15 February 2007 - A neighbourhood watch for the digital age, utilising the power of social networking, has been proposed.
DSpace - http://www.dspace.org/ - The DSpace digital repository system captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and distributes digital research material.
E-Learn Magazine - http://elearnmag.org/ - Education and Technology in Perspective.
Energy Community - http://www.visualknowledge.com/vkgw/vk?ObjectKey=A23781S1028&ObjectMessage=renderForm:&formContext=A48011S3496911 - Let's look at our Networked Improvement Community (NIC) and ask ourselves: "What is our NIC's 'Improvement Vector'?" and "Can we work together on improving how we improve?".
E-Skills - http://www.e-skills.com/ - We unite industry, educators and government in collaborative employer-led action to ensure the UK has the technology related skills it needs to compete in the global economy.
Futurelab - http://www.futurelab.org.uk/ - By bringing together the creative, technical and educational communities, Futurelab is pioneering ways of using new technologies to transform the learning experience. - Social software and learning - http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/opening_education/social_software_01.htm - Futeurelab - An Opening Education report from Futurelab By Martin Owen, Lyndsay Grant, Steve Sayers and Keri Facer.
Future of science debate begins - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6294211.stm - The UK public is being invited to have its say on the future of science and technology.
H2O project - http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/index.jsp - The H2O project is building an interlocking collection of communities based on the free creation and exchange of ideas. The best way to learn more about how H2O works is to join some projects and participate in the discussions. Here are some interesting public projects that you might consider joining: Internet & Society Project.
Hackety Hack - http://hacketyhack.net/ - In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!!
Harold Rheingold - http://www.rheingold.com/ - Participatory Media/Collective Action: Berkeley School of Information Course.
IADIS - International Association for Development of the Information Society - http://www.iadis.org/what.asp - IADIS is a non-profit association.
ICT Hub - http://www.ictconsortium.org.uk/ - The ICT Hub is a group of voluntary sector organisations who have come together to plan and deliver a co-ordinated framework of ICT guidance, good practice, advice and support for voluntary and community organisations, accessible at a local level.
Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The IEUC Homepage - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html - as edited on Wednesday, May 17, 2006.
JISC - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/ - Joint Information Systems Committee - The mission of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of Information and Communications Technology to support education and research.
Leeds Metropolitan University - A Wiki for the future - Andy Mitchell - September 2006.
Moodle - http://moodle.org/ - Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University.
Null Hypothesis a web hit - The Journal of Unlikely Science - http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/ - In a pokey little room in the depths of Bristol University, three bright young academics work 14-hour days and talk passionately about their ideas. - Null Hypothesis a web hit - BBC News Science/Nature.
Observer Bristol - observertechnologystory.html - Technology is the Answer for students - Observer - Friday February 23rd 2007.
OpenAdvantage - http://www.openadvantage.org/ - If your company is in the West Midlands Region you could qualify for free help - West Midlands Open Source Solution Centre.
Open Knowledge Initiative - http://www.okiproject.org/ - MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
OpenLearn - Open University - http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/ - Making Educational Resources Freely Available.
OpenStreetMap - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Bristol - OpenStreetMap is a project aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.
Open University - Open University Knowledge Media Institute - John Domingue - Research Interests.
Open University - http://www.open.ac.uk/research/ - Research is our cental mission.
Paul O'Flaherty's domain - Paul O'Flaherty's domain - Home of all Paul O'Flaherty's projects!
Public 'needs to drive science' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5325190.stm - BBC News Science/Nature - By Elli Leadbeater - Norwich.
Raskin Center - http://rchi.raskincenter.org/index.php?title=Home - Exploting New Interface Directions.
REASE - the repository of EASE for learning units in the area of Semantic Web! - http://rease.semanticweb.org/ - REASE supports sharing knowledge for Higher Education as well as for industrial education in the area of Semantic Web and is open to any member of the academic, research, or professional community.
Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund - http://www.rafbf.org/ - The Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund exists to provide assistance to those of the extended Royal Air Force Family who need support as a consequence of poverty, sickness, disability, accident, infirmity or other adversity.
Saga Zone Making Contact - http://www.saga.co.uk/sagazone/ - SAGA Zone is a brand new service from Saga where you can discover new people with similar interests and easily stay in touch.
Science Horizons - http://www.sciencehorizons.org.uk/ - sciencehorizons is a national series of conversations about new technologies, the future and society. It has been set up by the UK government and will run during 2007.
Semantic Wikis and Disaster Relief Operations - http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1683 - XML.com - Soenke Ziesche - December 13, 2006.
Silver surfers conquer their fear - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6635273.stm - Seventeen years ago Jim Tuckwell quit his job as a clerical officer because he did not want to use computers. - BBC Education - Hannah Goff - 21 May 2007.
SmartMobs - Seedwiki - http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2004/09/24/seedwiki_fre.html - seedwiki - free wiki - Technologies of Cooperation.
South West of England Regional Development Agency (SWERDA) - Discovering Bristol Science City - http://www.southwestrda.org.uk/news/release.asp?ReleaseID=1839 - 2nd February 2007.
South West of England Regional Development Agency (SWERDA) - Innovation Initiatives - http://www.southwestrda.org.uk/what-we-do/innovation/innovationinitiative/inspire-sw-projects.shtm#eef- Inspire SW - Projects.
TONIC - http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/products/online/index.html - Netskills - The Free to Use Internet Course.
UKOLN - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ - News - A centre of expertise in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information, education and cultural heritage communities. UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.
UWE Technology Society - http://uwerobotics.co.uk/t-society/ - We strive to organize as many technology events as possible in the forthcoming year. We currently have a weekly electronics event to kick-start our society, and have started computer gaming sessions inside UWE. One of our major planned events will be our launch event. We want to involve you in our gaming, projects, competitions and socials all throughout this year. Anyone who wants to try out a new challenge is welcome to join the society team and help out with our activities.
Visualisation and Interaction Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Visualisation.htm.
Web Quality in the UK Voluntary Sector - User Evaluation Survey - At the end of the survey you may enter a draw for £50 to be donated to the charity of your choice.
Webwise - The BBC's guide to using the Internet - http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/.
Centre for Complex Cooperative Systems - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/.
Databases - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/databases.htm.
Java and Open Source Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Java.htm.
Program Transformation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ProgramTransformation.htm.
Software Engineering, Java, and Open Source
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
Software Engineering Research Group - Peter Hale - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/members.php?menu=off&expand=peterhale#peterhale.
Systems Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm.
Systems Modelling research Group - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/research/groups/smrg.html - The primary research focus of the Systems Modelling Research Group (SMRG) is processes. In particular, we are engaged in investigating, modelling, analysing, re-engineering, designing, and simulating processes. We also research how processes may best be supported by IT. Within the group, members have a range of research interests, including: process enactment with mobile devices, enactable declarative process models, language action and process models, narratives and processes in organisations, multi-agent support for business processes, process modelling and health informatics, and process architectures.
Projects
MammoGrid - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/project.php?menu=off&name=mammogrid - With the advent of the information age in radiology clinicians are being presented with analysis opportunities hitherto unforeseen, both in terms of data volumes and in data interpretation. Grids computing promises to resolve many of the difficulties in facilitating medical image analysis to allow clinicians to collaborate without having to co-locate.
OntoREM: Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology - This research aims to investigate and develop an Ontology driven Requirements Engineering Methodology (OntoREM) that addresses the needs of complex, trans-national and multidisciplinary fields with particular reference but not limited to the aerospace industry.
SoAgile: Adaptive Model-Driven Service-Oriented Architectures for Agile Cyber-Enterprise Processes - The SoAgile project aims to design, develop, demonstrate, and disseminate a service-adaptable virtualisation layer and an encompassing evolutionary service-oriented and model-driven engineering environment.
Related UWE Research
Dr Peter Bloodsworth - http://www.agent-research.co.uk/ - The main focus of my research program is to apply multi-agent systems to real-world problems, finding novel solutions where necessary to overcome important challenges. Interdisciplinary research is central to my aims, I have already applied my research in the area of Healthcare and envisage future collaboration in other domains.
Health-e-child - http://www.health-e-child.org/ - An integrated platform for European paediatrics based on a Grid-enabled network of leading clinical centres.
Alloy - Chris Wallace Page - Alloy related links - Information and Papers on the Alloy Modelling Language.
CEMS Graduate School conference - 2005 Page 114-119 - Reverse engineering ontology to conceptual data models page and a poster presentation is available Poster - Haya El-Ghalayini, Mohammed Odeh, Richard McClatchey, Tony Solomonides.
This paper is also explains the above research - Engineering Conceptual Data Models from Domain Ontologies: A Critical Evaluation - El-Ghalayini, H., Odeh, M., McClatchey, R. (2005) Engineering Conceptual Data Models from Domain Ontologies: A Critical Evaluation - IASTED International Conference on Databases and Applications, part of the 23rd Multi-Conference on Applied Informatics, Innsbruck, Austria pp 222-227.
CEMS Graduate School conference - 2005 Page 98-102 - Using Use Case Models to Generate Object Points - Ayman Issa, Mohammed Odeh, David Coward.
CEMS Graduate School poster presentation - Summer 2006 - Deriving Conceptual Data Models from Domain Ontologies for Bioinformatics - Haya El-Ghalayini, Mohammed Odeh, Richard McClatchey, and Dawn Arnold.
Bridging the Gap Between Business Process Models and Grid-Based Service Oriented Architectures' - Graduate Poster Presentation - Ali Maheri. - Autumn 2005 - Zaheer Abbas Kahan, Mohammed Odeh, Richard McClatchey
Conferences - Events
Linux Boot Camp
University of the West of England
Bristol Institute of Technology
The Linux Boot Camp is aimed at those, normally doing or having done A Levels, who want to do practical technical computing. We want you to get in touch with your inner geek!
The event will involve two and a half days of technical workshops exploring many aspects of modern technology and the use of free open source software. During the workshops you will learn how to revitalize your PC (or even resuscitate a dead one!) by installing and configuring Linux on it. Useful skills such as how to set up a home network and web server will be given. You could learn how to make your own router, or how to hack into various set-top boxes. At the end of the Linux Boot Camp you will be able to tap into the world of open source computing and maybe set yourself on a profitable and worthwhile career!
Further Information - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/news/events/index.html.
Software Engineering Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm#Conferences.
Alistair Clark - Principal Lecturer in Operational Research (OR) - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~arclark/ - Production Planning and Scheduling.
Software Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.
Systems Engineering Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm.
Systems Modelling research Group - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/research/groups/smrg.html - The primary research focus of the Systems Modelling Research Group (SMRG) is processes. In particular, we are engaged in investigating, modelling, analysing, re-engineering, designing, and simulating processes. We also research how processes may best be supported by IT. Within the group, members have a range of research interests, including: process enactment with mobile devices, enactable declarative process models, language action and process models, narratives and processes in organisations, multi-agent support for business processes, process modelling and health informatics, and process architectures.
Conferences - Events
Systems Engineering Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/systemsengineering.htm#Conferences.
Aerospace, Space and Astronomy Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/aerospace.htm.
Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Space Horizons is a project that aims to deliver ideas on space and any other related information. Based in the South-West of England, Space Horizons also promotes the idea of space tourism which we are very much involved with. It's the place to be for any space related news, events and information in the South West of England! - Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Space Horizons - UWE - JANS Student Group Project
For this project, we will provide a web environment to explain the business and economics of space, enable improved collaboration amongst space companies and OEMs (Original Engineering Manufacturers). This will help promote and develop the UK's space capability. There are growing opportunities for UK space industry in space tourism, moon and mars missions, satellites, and robotic missions. This project will build on the team members' extensive experience in decision support modelling and visualisation, especially within the aerospace industry. Our strategy is to make available the kind of systems we developed for aerospace companies' internal decision support systems to all industry, organisations and the public. Our partners for this are the West of England Aerospace Forum (WEAF) http://www.weaf.co.uk/ who will be allowing us to extract, visualise and extend the interactivity of their aerospace company network information. We will build an environment where individuals and companies can create their own models. The initial focus is on the space domain, though the techniques will be applicable to any domain. We will enable a wide range of people to create models as well as linking to and visualising server based models. The means to achieve this is provision of freely available, web-based, visual model creation tools that require the minimum possible code writing expertise from end-users. For the complex, interdependent space sector, simplicity of communication and access is essential.
The primary aim for this feasibility study is to establish a method to represent complex models and information in a way that is interactive, accessible and understandable by a wide range of users. This will enable space (and aerospace) industries in the SW region to access relevant information rapidly, and ensure efficient economic interactions throughout the supply chain. The focus for this system will be on using ICT to achieve a long-term aim of providing cheaper and more efficient space transport and so aid the development of this sector of the UK aerospace industry. This will be enabled by the capture and distribution of engineering knowledge for the space transport sector in a novel, and constructionist, 'e-science' environment. There are two main strands to this research:
A further objective will be to establish a forum for involvement of aerospace companies, organisations, and the public in furthering collaborative space expertise and investment. The space industry will be used as a test vehicle, though it is clear that this approach could be employed in many areas, including industrial, educational, scientific and business sectors. This feasibility study will enable validation of our approach prior to the application of modelling techniques to these other sectors.
The digital technologies used and the subject area of the space industry are economic opposites. Web software especially is a market where comparatively little acquisition investment is required. Space at present requires massive investment so there is a tendency towards monopoly/oligopoly. Though economic theory tells us that monopoly leads to abnormal profits, this is only sometimes the case with space efforts, this depends on the engineering and scientific difficulty, production techniques and the project aims scientific/commercial. Where the aims are mainly scientific, public money is usually required, through government led agencies, though suppliers may make profits. Simpler and clearer modelling would help to reduce space investment and operational costs. User driven programming assists in increasing the value of workers in relation to ICT, an aim of the World Bank Working Paper (Zhen-Wei Qiang et al., 2004). Thus, it addresses two areas of skill shortage, which are hampering the UK economy, and slowing growth.
Zhen-Wei Qiang C, Pitt A, Ayers S, 2004. Zhen-Wei Qiang C, Pitt A, Ayers S, 2004, Contribution of Information and Communication Technologies to Growth.
Conferences - Events
Space/Aerospace Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spaceconferences.htm.
Links
Aerospace, Space and Astronomy Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/aerospace.htm.
Aerospace Modelling and Visualisation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/aerospacemodellingandvisualisation.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - Mission Guide: Jules Verne - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6249578.stm - The "Jules Verne" is Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to fly to the International Space Station. Read on to find out more about its crucial mission. - 5 March 2008.
Source BBC - FOLLOW THE PATH OF THE ISS OR ATV
Astronomy - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomy.htm.
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml - THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES - This is the music of the spheres - the idea that the stars and planets as they travel through space make beautiful music together. - The music of the spheres played out of the classical world, through the medieval period and into the Renaissance. It affords us a glimpse into minds for whom the universe was full of meaning, of strange correspondences and grand harmonies. - Thursday 19 June 2008.
BBC Radio 4 - Leading Edge - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/leadingedge.shtml - Life's building blocks - from the stars - Tiny fragments that could be the pre-cursors to genetic material have been found in a carbon-rich meteorite. Does this mean that life on Earth has an extraterrestrial origin? - One of the researchers who’ve identified them is Zita Martins of Imperial College, London. She’s published the results in the latest issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters. - Thursday 19 June 2008.
Rockets and Spacecraft - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/rocketsandspacecraft.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - ATV: A truck engineered for space - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7268748.stm - The "Jules Verne" is Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to fly to the International Space Station. - Built for the European Space Agency (Esa), the ATV is a sophisticated, automated spacecraft that can find its own way to the orbiting platform. - 5 March 2008.
Satellites - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/satellites.htm.
Space Missions - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissions.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - Key ocean mission goes into orbit - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7457818.stm - By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News - A space mission that will be critical to our understanding of climate change has launched from California. - The Jason-2 satellite will become the primary means of measuring the shape of the world's oceans, taking readings with an accuracy of better than 4cm. - Its data will track not only sea level rise but reveal how the great mass of waters are moving around the globe. - This information will be fundamental in helping weather and climate agencies make better forecasts. - 20 June 2008.
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BBC - Changes in ocean height can be a key indicator of climate cycles |
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Space Planes/Spaceplanes - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spaceplanes.htm.
Bristol Spaceplanes - http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com/ - Bristol Spaceplanes Limited, based in Bristol, England, was formed in 1991 to provide technical assistance and consultancy to commercial organisations and aerospace companies interested in commercial opportunities in space. Since then it has prepared plans to develop the Ascender sub-orbital spaceplane, designed in-house from off-the-shelf technology by our experienced design team. Ascender operates like an aeroplane, however its rocket motor propels it to an altitude of 100km. During your Ascender flight, you will experience several minutes of weightlessness, see the earth below you, and bright stars against a black sky: a truly transforming experience.
Bristol Spaceplanes - Ascender - 
- http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com/.
Space Tourism - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacetourism.htm.
British Proposal for Space Station Modules - http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/sitesia.aspx/page/1668/l/en - UK engineers and scientists - with the support of the British Interplanetary Society - are urging the UK government to fire the public's imagination and catch the vision for future space exploration by joining the International Space Station (ISS) programme. - The British Interplanetary Society.
British Proposal for Space Station Modules - Source British Interplanetary Society
Space/Aerospace Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spaceconferences.htm.
Sun
Astronomy - Sun - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomySun.htm.
Space Missions - Sun - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsSolar.htm.
Universe Today - 2012: No Killer Solar Flare - Written by Ian O'Neill - We could be in for a huge firework display in 2012. The Sun will be approaching the peak of its 11-year cycle, called "solar maximum", so we can expect a lot of solar activity. Some predictions put the solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 even more energetic than the last solar maximum in 2002-2003 (remember all those record breaking X-class flares?). Solar physicists are already getting excited about this next cycle and new prediction methods are being put to good use. But should we be worried? - June 21st, 2008.
Universe Today - 2012: No Killer Solar Flare
Mercury
Astronomy - Mercury - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyMercury.htm.
Space Missions - Mercury - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsMercury.htm.
Venus
Astronomy - Venus - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyVenus.htm.
Space Missions - Venus - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsVenus.htm.
Earth
Astronomy - Earth - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyEarth.htm.
Space Missions - Earth - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsEarth.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - 'Space arrow' to map Earth's tug - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6919016.stm - A satellite that can measure tiny variations in the Earth's gravity field will be one of Europe's most challenging space missions to date. - 'Space arrow' to map Earth's tug - By Jonathan Amos - Science reporter, BBC News - 27 July 2007.
BBC Science/Technology News - 'Space arrow' to map Earth's tug - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6919016.stm - A satellite that can measure tiny variations in the Earth's gravity field will be one of Europe's most challenging space missions to date. - 'Space arrow' to map Earth's tug - By Jonathan Amos - Science reporter, BBC News - 27 July 2007.
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BBC - GRAVITY FIELD AND STEADY-STATE OCEAN CIRCULATION EXPLORER
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BBC - GRAVITY FIELD AND STEADY-STATE OCEAN CIRCULATION EXPLORER
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Mars
Astronomy - Mars - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyMars.htm.
Space Missions - Mars - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsMars.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - Mars probe makes 'ice discovery' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7465419.stm - Nasa's Phoenix lander has unearthed compelling evidence of ice on Mars, mission scientists believe. -Chunks of a bright material found in a trench dug by the craft have disappeared over four Martian days, suggesting they have vapourised. - While digging in another trench, the lander's arm connected with a hard surface at the same depth. - The finds lend weight to suggestions water is locked up in a permafrost layer close to the planet's surface. - 20 June 2008.
Universe Today - Phoenix Press Conference Update: Proof of Water Ice - Written by Nancy Atkinson - Phoenix's scientific team team held a press conference today to officially make their big announcement, which was fairly evident from pictures on the Phoenix website late yesterday: They found what they have been looking for. "It is with great pride and lot of joy that announce today we have found the proof that we have been seeking that show that this hard, white material is water ice," said the project's principle investigator Peter Smith. The image here shows a trench dug by Phoenix's robotic arm scoop that exposed a white area, and left a couple of small chunks of white material, which scientists thought could possibly be ice. A few days later, the ice is gone. "In the course of sitting through the cold and very dry Martian environment for several days, it sublimated," said Mark Lemmon, co-investigator on the Phoenix's Surface Stero Imager. "The ice went away into vapor without any melting taking place." But how do the scientists know for sure this is water ice? - June 20th, 2008.
Universe Today - Phoenix Press Conference Update: Proof of Water Ice
Universe Today - Podcast: Missions to Mars, Part 2 - I know last week was a bit of a dry history lesson, but we wanted to give you some understanding of past efforts to explore Mars. Now we'll look at the missions currently in orbit, and crawling around the surface of Mars, and help you understand the science that's happening right now. - June 21st, 2008.
Jupiter
Astronomy - Jupiter - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyJupiter.htm.
Space Missions - Jupiter - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsJupiter.htm.
Saturn
Astronomy - Saturn - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomySaturn.htm.
Space Missions - Saturn - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsSaturn.htm.
Universe Today - Saturn's "Dualing" Aurorae - Written by Tammy Plotner - Since it was first photographed by the Hubble telescope several years ago, the mystery of Saturn's aurorae has continued to puzzle scientists. At the beginning, this phenomena only occurred in ultraviolet images, but recent studies done with the ground-based NASA Infrared Telescope Facility show surprising new facets to this colorful display... More than one! - June 21st, 2008.
Universe Today - Saturn's "Dualing" Aurorae
Outer Solar System
Astronomy - Outer Solar System - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyOuterSolarSystem.htm.
Space Missions - Outer Solar System - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsOuterSolarSystem.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - Mission guide: New Horizons - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4599634.stm - The New Horizons mission has been launched to Pluto. It is the first time a spacecraft has been sent to an unexplored world since the Voyager 2 craft visited Neptune in the late 1980s. - New Horizons' trip to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt Objects will cover uncharted territory in the exploration of the Solar System. - The billions of kilometres New Horizons must cross to reach Pluto means it will not arrive until July 2015. - 27 February 2007.
Source BBC - Mission guide: New Horizons
General Solar System
Astronomy - General Solar System - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyGeneralSolarSystem.htm.
Space Missions - General Solar System - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsGeneralSolarSystem.htm.
General Solar System
Astronomy - General Solar System - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyGeneralSolarSystem.htm.
Space Missions - General Solar System - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsGeneralSolarSystem.htm.
ExoPlanets and Interstellar
Astronomy - ExoPlanets - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyExoplanets.htm.
Astronomy - Interstellar - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/astronomyInterstellar.htm.
Space Missions - ExoPlanets and Interstellar - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/spacemissionsExoPlanets.htm.
BBC Science/Technology News - Fix will give Hubble major boost - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7164139.stm - By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News, Austin - 9 January 2008.
Source BBC - Servicing the Hubble space telescope
Biofuels - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Energy.htm#Biofuels.
Biofuels - Research Writing Assignment - Are Biofuels Good or Bad for the Environment? - Word Document - Biofuels may have an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which lead to global warming and in a more general reduction of pollution. For chemical fuels, biofuels are currently the only realistic alternative to oil based varieties, and in the UK 25% of energy emissions result from such fuels being used for the transport sector (The Royal Society, 2008: 1). Of course oil based fuels are also used for energy in other sectors. The Royal Society reports biofuels may be regarded as part of the solution to these environmental problems. However, what part each individual biofuel takes needs to be assessed. - Whether biofuels are a solution depends on which types of biofuels and methods of production are used and judged most appropriate in providing environmental benefits in the most economical way. The Royal Society report (2008: 1) argues for the importance of biofuels in environmental mitigation but hedges this by explaining that biofuels cover a wide range of crops and production processes, that environmental and economic aspects of the complete ‘life-cycle’ must be considered, and that environmental and social aspects of land use must also be considered. The Royal Society report explains, however, that land use is an issue for all food or fuel crops (page 62). The report explains that each biofuel must be judged individually, that the environmental effect of the whole life-cycle of production and use must be taken into account, land use and the balance between biofuel production, agriculture, water, biodiversity, and the environment in general must be examined, and global effects must be addressed not just local effects.
Energy Research Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Energy.htm.
Public Understanding of Science - Environment - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Environment.htm.
Links
BBC Science/Technology news - Green energy push planned for UK - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7467336.stm - As many as a quarter of British homes could be fitted with solar heating panels under new government plans for a "green revolution". - Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the new proposals are "the most ambitious" such strategy that Britain has seen. - 21 June 2008.
Energy Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Energy.htm#Events.
Energy Lecture Presentations - Bristol - Slides from these lectures are available in Powerpoint format - Institute of Physics and Institution of Engineering and Technology IET Bristol Network - In November 2006 the Institute of Physics held a mini-series of lectures on the theme of energy.
Environmental Management - UWE - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/environment/ - Themes - Waste - Energy - Transport - Procurement - Biodiversity.
Environmental Protection UK and UWE Annual One-day Conference - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/aqm/ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH - PREVENTION BEFORE CURE - The 10th Annual Conference jointly organised by the South West Division of Environmental Protection UK (formerly the NSCA) and the University of the West of England, Bristol is on Thursday, 21st of February 2008 at the Watershed, Bristol. The theme for this one-day conference will focus on Environment and Health policy and research. There will be presentations from the Health Protection Agency, Barts and the London Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Bristol, University of Aberdeen, UKPHA, South West Public Health Observatory, and the University of the West of England.
Science for Environment Policy - DG Environment News Alert Service - Special Issue - Biofuels - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/scienceforenvironmentpolicybiofuels.htm - 29th February 2008 - European Commision DG Environmental News Service - Biofuels - the way forward? - Interest in biofuels is growing and the proposed EU target to increase the amount of biofuels used in transportation to 10 per cent is likely to drive further research and development in this field. - This thematic issue reports recent advances in biofuel research, focusing on research into the environmental and land use impacts of increases in biofuel crop production..
Sustainability Week - UWE - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/environment/sustainabilityweek.shtml - April 21 - 25th.
Project Summary
For this project, we will provide an interactive visual taxonomy management system. This will be part of our efforts to structure, manage and enable understanding of complex information. The main subject will be editing and display of phylogenetic knowledge, this could make possible new insights. The project will build on the extensive knowledge of the Faculty of Applied Sciences (FAS) in this biological field, the FAS Science Communication Unit's excellent public understanding work http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/, and the visualisation, modelling, and information management abilities of the SEEDS (Systems Engineering, Estimation and Decision Support Group. The SEEDS team will apply novel end-user programming research to enable the editing, management and representation of information including phylogenetic trees.
Public Understanding of Science - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PublicScience.htm.
BBC Radio 4 - Leading Edge - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/leadingedge.shtml - Science book prize - This week saw the announcement of the winner of this year's Royal Society annual prize for popular science books - Mark Lynas for his 'Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet'. - Professor Jonathan Ashmore of University College, London, chaired the judging panel; Professor Steve Jones, also of UCL, was among the clutch of short-listed entrants whose books didn't win the prize. - They reflect on the state of science book publishing and what judges of competitions like this are looking for. - Thursday 19 June 2008.
Public Understanding of Science - Taxonomies and Visualisation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Taxonomies.htm.
Public Understanding of Science - Autonomous Systems - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/AutonomousSystems.htm.
Public Understanding of Science - Environment - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Environment.htm.
Public Understanding of Science - Energy - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Energy.htm.
Public Understanding of Science - Events/Conferences - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PublicScienceEvents.htm.
Other Links
Bristol's universities take lead in public engagement - http://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/UWEnews/article.asp?item=1147 - The University of Bristol the University of the West of England have jointly won a £2 million bid to set up and operate a new National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement. - 09/11/2007.
Dr Darren Reynolds - http://science.uwe.ac.uk/StaffPages/DR/#Teaching%20Areas - Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sciences.
Environment and Research - Science for Environment Policy - DG Environment News Alert Service - http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/research_alert_en.htm - There is evidence that the results of research are not always fully exploited. It is thus important to improve the dissemination of research results so that they are both more usable for policy makers and help to communicate understanding of environmental issues to the general public. - That is the reason why DG Environment has decided to establish this service in order to reinforce the links between science and policy. - The target audience are policy makers as well as the wider public. - This service provides scientific information in the field of the main themes of the Environmental Action Programme and relevant to DG Environment policy priorities in support of the knowledge based approach.
Environmental Protection UK and UWE Annual One-day Conference - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/aqm/ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH - PREVENTION BEFORE CURE - The 10th Annual Conference jointly organised by the South West Division of Environmental Protection UK (formerly the NSCA) and the University of the West of England, Bristol is on Thursday, 21st of February 2008 at the Watershed, Bristol. The theme for this one-day conference will focus on Environment and Health policy and research. There will be presentations from the Health Protection Agency, Barts and the London Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Bristol, University of Aberdeen, UKPHA, South West Public Health Observatory, and the University of the West of England.
Public Engagement - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/projects/engagement/index.htm - Science Communication Unit.
Sciencehorizons - UWE Involvement - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/projects/engagement/sciencehorizons.htm - Sciencehorizons is a DTI project supported by a'Sciencewise', grant (an Office of Science and Innovation (OSI) funding stream). We are working on the project in collaboration with Dialogue by Design, DEMOS and BBC Worldwide Interactive Learning. - Further Information - http://www.sciencehorizons.org.uk/. - Public 'needs to drive science' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5325190.stm - BBC Science/Nature - By Elli Leadbeater - Norwich - Views are wanted on emerging areas of science and technology - A new project funded by the UK government aims to give the public a chance to drive science policy.
Science for Environment Policy - DG Environment News Alert Service - Special Issue - Biofuels - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/scienceforenvironmentpolicybiofuels.htm - 29th February 2008 - European Commision DG Environmental News Service - Biofuels - the way forward? - Interest in biofuels is growing and the proposed EU target to increase the amount of biofuels used in transportation to 10 per cent is likely to drive further research and development in this field. - This thematic issue reports recent advances in biofuel research, focusing on research into the environmental and land use impacts of increases in biofuel crop production..
The BA British Association for the Advancement of Science - Bristol and Bath Branch - Spring-Summer 2008 Programme of Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/FinalProgrammeSpringSummer2008.pdf - http://www.ba-west.org.uk/.
University of the West of England - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/index.htm - The Science Communication Unit at UWE is internationally renowned for its diverse and innovative activities, designed to engage the public with science. We are also committed to training would-be science communicators via dedicated workshops and our successful MSc Science Communication course. For further information, please visit our project pages.
UWE leads 'Visions conference' in London - 'Robots - by their future masters' - Tuesday 4 and Wednesday 5 December 2007The Royal Academy of Engineering - A group of thirty students from South London will have the chance this week to explore their aspirations for the future and the part robots will play in it, in a unique 'Visions Conference' at the Royal Academy of Engineering - UWE News 04/12/2007.
UWE manages news wire for environmental policy - http://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/UWENews/article.asp?item=1192 - The Science Communication Unit at the University of the West of England has won 200, 000 Euros from the European Commission Directorate General Environment to manage a news alert service called 'Science for Environment Policy'. The news service will consist of weekly e-news Bulletins that will target environmental policy makers to help them make informed decisions. - Issue date: 17/01/2008 - UWE News 2008.
UWE Science Communication Unit - Beacons National Co-ordinating Centre - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/ - UWE, in partnership with the University of Bristol, has been selected as National Co-ordinating Centre (NCC) for the RCUK's beacons for public engagement. The Beacons are university-based collaborative centres to help support, recognise, reward and build capacity for public engagement in the UK. Research Councils UK in partnership with the UK funding councils and in association with the Wellcome Trust are investing £9.2M into this initiative over the next four years in order to support a step-change in recognition for public engagement across the higher education sector.The Beacons and especially the NCC will be points of contact and support for all those interested in public engagement in all disciplines (not just science). They will be up and running from January 2008.
UWE Science Communication Unit - News Service - Science for Environment Policy http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/projects/engagement/news_service.htm - The Science Communication Unit at UWE has been commissioned by the European Commission to deliver a News Alert service covering environmental research with policy relevance. The News Alert service is delivered weekly by email to subscribers across Europe and is available through the DG Environment website, on dedicated 'Science for Environment Policy' pages. It will carry regular updates on science relevant to Environment Policy.
UWE Science Communication Unit - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience/ - The Science Communication Unit at UWE is internationally renowned for its diverse and innovative activities, designed to engage the public with science. We are also committed to training would-be science communicators via dedicated workshops and our successful MSc Science Communication course. For further information, please visit our project pages.
UWE Science Communication Unit - Subscribe to 'Science for Environment Policy'! The Unit is pleased to be running the Science for Environment Policy news service, on behalf of the European Commission. If you would like to receive news alerts, subscribe here - http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/research_alert_en.htm.
Conferences - Events
Public Science Conferences - Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PublicScience.htm#Events.
The BA British Association for the Advancement of Science - Bristol and Bath Branch - Spring-Summer 2008 Programme of Events - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/FinalProgrammeSpringSummer2008.pdf - http://www.ba-west.org.uk/.
BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216.
Using Open Source and Open Standards to Enable Transformational Government
The Hawthorns, Woodland Road, Clifton, Bristol
British Computer Society BCS Bristol Branch
Transformational Government is intended to be an intensive, structural and fundamental change in the operational processes of Government bodies, enabled by the use of Information Systems & Technology in the back-office. It is expected to deliver major efficiency savings across the public sector without any further investment beyond existing budgets.
What does Transformational Government look like in practice within a Local Authority? How can it be implemented without any additional funding? How can intensely technical subjects like open source and open standards contribute to business change? Gavin Beckett, ICT Strategy Manager at Bristol City Council, will attempt to answer these questions and give an overview of Bristol's successes and challenges to date.
Gavin has been a central figure in Bristol's strategic use of Open Source and Open Standards since 2002; was a founder of the Open Source Academy; and works actively with a variety of EU interest groups and government bodies on the adoption of ODF.
Further Information - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/44.
Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Professor Leela Damodaran, Loughborough University
Summary
In the present digital revolution we often seem trapped in a Kafkaesque world of technological advances, some desired, some disliked or even feared, which we cannot influence but must accept.
This talk discusses the urgent need to redress this situation. It will argue that technologies succeed or fail according to their relevance and value to people, who need to be actively engaged in order to create shared visions, and influence their implementation.
All too often ICT advances are regarded purely as a technical challenge where the designers believe that systems analysis will of itself yield complete and comprehensive functional specifications.
The talk will highlight the crucial benefits and added value to be gained from empowering citizens to shape ICT design decisions. Finally, it will provide specific practical guidance, based on sound academic research, for policy makers, administrators and ICT professionals on the strategies, methodologies, tools and techniques needed to change design practice.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20503 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216. - British Computer Society BCS Bristol page - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/49.
A Re-conceptualisation of the Interpretive Flexibility of Information Technologies: Redressing the balance between the Social and the Technical
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Professor Neil Doherty Loughborough University
Summary
Interpretive flexibility - the capacity of a specific technology to sustain divergent opinions - has long been recognised as playing an important role in explaining how technical artefacts are socially constructed. What is less clear is how a system's technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly.
This gap in the literature has largely arisen because recent contributions to this debate have tended to be rather one-sided, focussing almost solely upon the role of the human agent in shaping the technical artefact, and in so doing either downplaying or ignoring the artefact's shaping potential.
The broad aim of this presentation is to reappraise the nature and role of interpretive flexibility but giving as much consideration to how an information system's technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly, as we do to its potential for social construction.
In this presentation the results of two in-depth case studies, are used in order to propose a re-conceptualisation of the role of interpretive flexibility. In short, this model helps explain how the initial interpretations of stakeholders are significantly influenced by the scope and adaptability of the system's functionality.
Stakeholder interpretations will then, in turn, influence how the system's functionality is appropriated and exploited by users, to allow divergent interpretations to be realised and sustained.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20504 -
