Using Wikipedia to improve web service discovery

Building and maintaining software are not easy tasks. However, thanks to advances in web technologies, a new paradigm is emerging in software development. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a relatively new approach that helps bridge the gap between business and IT and also helps systems remain exible. However, there are still several challenges with SOA. As the number of available services grows, developers are faced with the problem of discovering the services they need. Public service repositories such as Programmable Web provide only limited search capabilities. Several mechanisms have been proposed to improve web service discovery by using semantics. However, most of these require manually tagging the services with concepts in an ontology. Adding semantic annotations is a non-trivial process that requires a certain skill-set from the annotator and also the availability of domain ontologies that include the concepts related to the topics of the service. These issues have prevented these mechanisms becoming widespread. This thesis focuses on two main problems. First, to avoid the overhead of manually adding semantics to web services, several automatic methods to include semantics in the discovery process are explored. Although experimentation with some of these strategies has been conducted in the past, the results reported in the literature are mixed. Second, Wikipedia is explored as a general-purpose ontology. The benefit of using it as an ontology is assessed by comparing these semantics-based methods to classic term-based information retrieval approaches. The contribution of this research is significant because, to the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive analysis of the impact of using Wikipedia as a source of semantics in web service discovery does not exist. The main output of this research is a web service discovery engine that implements these methods and a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and trade-offs of these semantics-based discovery approaches.

Discovering interesting information with advances in web technology

The Web is a steadily evolving resource comprising much more than mere HTML pages. With its ever-growing data sources in a variety of formats, it provides great potential for knowledge discovery. In this article, we shed light on some interesting phenomena of the Web: the deep Web, which surfaces database records as Web pages; the Semantic Web, which de�nes meaningful data exchange formats; XML, which has established itself as a lingua franca for Web data exchange; and domain-speci�c markup languages, which are designed based on XML syntax with the goal of preserving semantics in targeted domains. We detail these four developments in Web technology, and explain how they can be used for data mining. Our goal is to show that all these areas can be as useful for knowledge discovery as the HTML-based part of the Web.

Cross-cultural web user interface design for Indigenous internet users

This project investigated 1) Australian web designers’ cultural perceptions towards Australian Indigenous users and 2) Australian Indigenous cultural features in terms of user interface design. In doing so, it reviews the literature of cross-cultural user interface design by focusing on feasible models and arguments to articulate and integrate Australian Indigenous Internet users’ cultural needs of web user interface. The online survey results collected from 101 Indigenous users and 126 Web designers showed a distinctive difference between them on the integration of Indigenous users' cultural in Web sites. The interview data collected from 14 Indigenous users and 14 web designers suggested practical approaches to the design implications of Indigenous culture.

Literacies on the Web : Co-Production of Literary Texts on Fan Fiction Sites

In this chapter the authors discuss and informal learning settings such as fan fiction sites and their relations to teaching and learning within formal learning settings. Young people today spend a lot of time with social media built on user generated content. These media are often characterized by participatory culture which offers a good environment for developing skills and identity work. In this chapter the authors problematize fan fiction sites as informal learning settings where the possibilities to learn are powerful and significant. They also discuss the learning processes connected to the development of literacies. Here the rhetoric principle of “imitatio” plays a vital part as well as the co-production of texts on the sites, strongly supported by the beta reader and the power of positive feedback. They also display that some fans, through the online publication of fan fiction, are able to develop their craft in a way which previously have been impossible.

Users’ perception of using web search engines and their impact on the perceived intention to reuse the systems

In today’s world of information-driven society, many studies are exploring usefulness and ease of use of the technology. The research into personalizing next-generation user interface is also ever increasing. A better understanding of factors that influence users’ perception of web search engine performance would contribute in achieving this. This study measures and examines how users’ perceived level of prior knowledge and experience influence their perceived level of satisfaction of using the web search engines, and how their perceived level of satisfaction affects their perceived intention to reuse the system. 50 participants from an Australian university participated in the current study, where they performed three search tasks and completed survey questionnaires. A research model was constructed to test the proposed hypotheses. Correlation and regression analyses results indicated a significant correlation between (1) users’ prior level of experience and their perceived level of satisfaction in using the web search engines, and (2) their perceived level of satisfaction in using the systems and their perceived intention to reuse the systems. A theoretical model is proposed to illustrate the causal relationships. The implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.

Medical semantic similarity with a neural language model

Advances in neural network language models have demonstrated that these models can effectively learn representations of words meaning. In this paper, we explore a variation of neural language models that can learn on concepts taken from structured ontologies and extracted from free-text, rather than directly from terms in free-text. This model is employed for the task of measuring semantic similarity between medical concepts, a task that is central to a number of techniques in medical informatics and information retrieval. The model is built with two medical corpora (journal abstracts and patient records) and empirically validated on two ground-truth datasets of human-judged concept pairs assessed by medical professionals. Empirically, our approach correlates closely with expert human assessors ($\approx$ 0.9) and outperforms a number of state-of-the-art benchmarks for medical semantic similarity. The demonstrated superiority of this model for providing an effective semantic similarity measure is promising in that this may translate into effectiveness gains for techniques in medical information retrieval and medical informatics (e.g., query expansion and literature-based discovery).

User centred design for engineering e-government web usability

E-government provides a platform for governments to implement web enabled services that facilitate communication between citizens and the government. However, technology driven design approach and limited understanding of citizens' requirements, have led to a number of critical usability problems on the government websites. Hitherto, there has been no systematic attempt to analyse the way in which theory of User Centred Design (UCD) can contribute to address the usability issues of government websites. This research seeks to fill this gap by synthesising perspectives drawn from the study of User Centred Design and examining them based on the empirical data derived from case study of the Scottish Executive website. The research employs a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of data. The triangulated analysis of the findings reveals that e-government web designers take commercial development approach and focus only on technical implementations which lead to websites that do not meet citizens' expectations. The research identifies that e-government practitioners can overcome web usability issues by transferring the theory of UCD to practice.

A Tutorial on Integrating CDS/ISIS Databases with the World Wide Web

With the emergence of Internet, the global connectivity of computers has become a reality. Internet has progressed to provide many user-friendly tools like Gopher, WAIS, WWW etc. for information publishing and access. The WWW, which integrates all other access tools, also provides a very convenient means for publishing and accessing multimedia and hypertext linked documents stored in computers spread across the world. With the emergence of WWW technology, most of the information activities are becoming Web-centric. Once the information is published on the Web, a user can access this information from any part of the world. A Web browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer is used as a common user interface for accessing information/databases. This will greatly relieve a user from learning the search syntax of individual information systems. Libraries are taking advantage of these developments to provide access to their resources on the Web. CDS/ISIS is a very popular bibliographic information management software used in India. In this tutorial we present details of integrating CDS/ISIS with the WWW. A number of tools are now available for making CDS/ISIS database accessible on the Internet/Web. Some of these are 1) the WAIS_ISIS Server. 2) the WWWISIS Server 3) the IQUERY Server. In this tutorial, we have explained in detail the steps involved in providing Web access to an existing CDS/ISIS database using the freely available software, WWWISIS. This software is developed, maintained and distributed by BIREME, the Latin American & Caribbean Centre on Health Sciences Information. WWWISIS acts as a server for CDS/ISIS databases in a WWW client/server environment. It supports functions for searching, formatting and data entry operations over CDS/ISIS databases. WWWISIS is available for various operating systems. We have tested this software on Windows '95, Windows NT and Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Appolo) Kernel 2. 0. 36 on an i686. The testing was carried out using IISc's main library's OPAC containing more than 80,000 records and Current Contents issues (bibliographic data) containing more than 25,000 records. WWWISIS is fully compatible with CDS/ISIS 3.07 file structure. However, on a system running Unix or its variant, there is no guarantee of this compatibility. It is therefore safe to recreate the master and the inverted files, using utilities provided by BIREME, under Unix environment.

Using resource discovery techniques to create a user friendly web presence

Implementing resource discovery techniques at the Museum of English Rural Life and Special Collections, University of Reading Using resource discovery techniques to create a user friendly web presence

Ontologia de notícias: um modelo para classificação do conteúdo dos jornais on-line brasileiros, segundo a lógica da Web Semântica

Este trabalho tem por objetivo propor um modelo de ontologia simples e generalista, capaz de descrever os conceitos mais básicos que permeiam o domínio de conhecimento dos jornais on-line brasileiros não especializados, fundamentado tanto na prática quanto conceitualmente, em conformidade com os princípios da Web Semântica. A partir de uma nova forma de classificação e organização do conteúdo, a ontologia proposta deve ter condições de atender as necessidades comuns de ambas as partes, jornal e leitor, que são, resumidamente, a busca e a recuperação das informações.

semantic oriented ontology cohesion metrics for ontology-based systems

Ontologies play a core role to provide shared knowledge models to semantic-driven applications targeted by Semantic Web. Ontology metrics become an important area because they can help ontology engineers to assess ontology and better control project management and development of ontology based systems, and therefore reduce the risk of project failures. In this paper, we propose a set of ontology cohesion metrics which focuses on measuring (possibly inconsistent) ontologies in the context of dynamic and changing Web. They are: Number of Ontology Partitions (NOP), Number of Minimally Inconsistent Subsets (NMIS) and Average Value of Axiom Inconsistencies (AVAI). These ontology metrics are used to measure ontological semantics rather than ontological structure. They are theoretically validated for ensuring their theoretical soundness, and further empirically validated by a standard test set of debugging ontologies. The related algorithms to compute these ontology metrics also are discussed. These metrics proposed in this paper can be used as a very useful complementarity of existing ontology cohesion metrics.

语义Web规则标记语言OWLRule+的设计与实现

语义Web是对未来Web体系结构的一个伟大设想 ,其研究分层次进行 目前足够成熟的最高层是以OWL语言为代表的ontology层 但它的语义仅限于描述逻辑 ,该逻辑主要表示对象和类的层次结构 ,而规则的表达能力弱 因此在其之上需要一种表达力更丰富的逻辑语言 设计了一种新的语义Web规则标记语言OWLRule+:其语法扩展了OWL ;语义基于CARIN ,一种结合描述逻辑和Horn规则的表示语言 ;实现基于Jess规则推理机 实例学习展示了它对目前的Webontology语言在规则表示和推理能力上的扩展

基于进化分布式本体的语义Web服务动态发现

在语义Web服务中, 确认分布式本体变动、维护其一致性并实现基于进化的分布式本体的Web服务语义查询成为了一个重要挑战.该文使用SHOQ(D)的分布式描述逻辑扩展 (DDL) 描述相互关联的异构分布式本体,提出了优先分布式知识库(PDK)的概念,探讨了PDK方法的一些重要属性.PDK用来描述分布式本体的进化和更新, 它适用于语义Web服务环境.基于PDK, 文中还给出了相应的语义查询方法,Web服务的语义查询可以归结为检测同这个查询对应的概念在最优先PDK中的p -可满足性.

语义Web服务匹配与发现技术研究

在开放的互联网环境中，面向服务的计算（Service-Oriented Computing, SOC）和面向服务的体系架构（Service-Oriented Architecture, SOA）使得信息资源和软件系统的主要形态发生了巨大变化，并引领着互联网计算技术和软件系统新的发展方向。服务是SOC和SOA的核心思想，服务的平台独立、高可重用和松散耦合等特性使之成为复杂分布式应用可行的解决方案。Web服务的出现和发展为实施与部署SOC和SOA提供了最佳支撑技术。目前web服务发现机制在服务描述的全面性和服务匹配方法的有效性方面存在不足之处，难以保证服务发现的性能。特别是在服务数量剧增的情况下，用户亟需一种自动快速而准确的服务发现机制。语义web技术不仅为web的表示内容提供了一种语义标识方法，推动了web内容的自动化和智能化搜索，也为web服务的描述提供了增加语义层次内容的有效方法，两者的结合形成了一个新的研究领域——语义web服务。该领域通过借鉴语义web的相关技术来增加web服务的语义描述，进而为web服务的发现、组合、调用和监控等环节提供语义层次的支持，增强web服务的自动化和智能化水平。 本文的研究目的就是利用语义web的思想，基于SOC和SOA的理念以及现有的web服务发现机制对web服务信息进行语义描述、组织，探索语义web服务匹配与发现的关键问题，提出有效的解决方案。本文的研究工作和贡献主要在以下四个方面： 1. 针对语义近似度的度量和计算问题基于OWL（Web Ontology Language）提出了一个语义近似度计算SSM模型，该模型中所有概念及概念之间的关系、所有的概念属性及属性之间的关系都被抽象定义并建模，根据概念、属性及其语义关系模型，构建了基于概念关系的拓扑近似度计算函数和属性近似度计算函数，从而进一步构建语义近似度计算函数。该语义近似度计算函数以代表OWL本体概念上下级关系和等价关系的树状结构为基础，利用概念间的拓扑关系和属性关系进行语义近似度的度量和计算。语义近似度函数的返回值为一个介于0与1之间的数值，代表函数的两个输入概念之间的语义近似度值。 2. 提出了一个基于概念语义近似度的以OWL-S为顶层本体的web服务语义匹配PSM模型。该模型将服务的匹配项分为服务能力、服务质量、服务名称和服务参数四个部分。基于该模型，提出了相应的PSM服务匹配算法。PSM算法能够对服务内部的服务流程及流程的组合进行与服务请求的语义匹配，并且避免了服务流程中互斥接口参数参与匹配。而且PSM匹配算法实现了服务接口的单射匹配，进一步提高服务发现的性能。在服务质量匹配计算上，提出了服务质量匹配模型PSM-QoS，为服务的QoS匹配建立了计算基础。PSM算法使用语义近似度计算函数度量和计算服务属性概念的语义近似度值，从而能够返回细粒度的服务匹配度值。 3. 在语义服务匹配PSM模型的基础上提出一种语义web服务发现架构系统PSM-SD模型。该模型将OWL-S语义元素引入UDDI服务描述，从而在UDDI中保存语义信息。通过PSM算法提高web服务匹配性能，并通过数据映射机制保证模型对于当前的服务发现标准UDDI基础架构的兼容以及UDDI标准操作接口的透明性。模型使用本体概念的索引机制提高服务发现的效率。在建立和维护索引的过程或服务的匹配过程中，模型使用近似概念搜寻算法进一步提高本体概念搜寻和服务匹配的效率。 4. 设计并开发了基于语义web服务发现架构模型的原型系统。该系统将语义近似度计算模型、语义web服务匹配模型和语义web服务发现架构模型进行软件实现。本文在该原型系统平台上对语义web服务发现的方法进行了实验，验证了方法的有效性。

语义Web中描述逻辑本体的可伸缩推理和非一致处理

随着Web信息的与日俱增，使用机器处理这种信息成为一种必然的趋势。语义Web应运而生，成为当前研究的热点之一。它以本体为核心，为不同领域提供共享的词汇，以便机器处理Web信息。表达本体的标准语言OWL以描述逻辑为基础。OWL本体的推理可伸缩性差，难以适应规模较大的本体应用，因此推理可伸缩性问题是一个重要的实际问题。此外，OWL本体是一个逻辑系统，在生成、维护和集成等过程中，都很容易出现非一致现象，导致标准的推理机制不能正常运作。因此本体非一致问题是另一个重要的实际问题。针对上述两个实际问题，本文分别在实现可伸缩推理、修复非一致本体、以及进行非一致容忍推理三个方面提出了解决办法。 [可伸缩推理方面] 本文提出了一种本体断言公理集的划分方法，使本体推理能够在独立的划分子集中进行，以此提高本体推理的可伸缩性。 [本体修复方面] 本文提出了一种计算具有最小删除代价的本体子集的方法；通过删除这种本体子集，可以恢复本体的一致性。该方法将计算上述本体子集的问题归约为在命题逻辑程序中计算某种最优模型的问题，以调用现有的可满足性问题求解器来解决。 [非一致容忍推理方面] 本文将命题逻辑中字典序推理方法应用到描述逻辑中，以提供针对非一致本体的查询机制。本文还提出了一种在描述逻辑本体中进行字典序推理的方法。该方法将字典序结论的判定问题归约为命题可满足性判定问题，以调用现有的可满足性问题求解器来解决。