Semantic Web Applications

In this report we describe the lessons and experiences from developing a substantial semantic web application in the domain of community knowledge management.

This demo presents RExplorator, an environment which allows nontechnically savvy users, but who understand the problem domain, to explore the data until they understand its structure They employ a combination of search, query and faceted navigation in a direct manipulation, query-byexample style interface. In this process, users can reuse previously found solutions by other users, which may accomplish sub-tasks of the problem at hand. It is also possible to create an end-user friendly interface to allow them to access the information. Once a solution has been found, it can be generalized, and optionally made available for reuse by other users. This enables the establishment of a social network of users that share solutions for problems in particular domains (repositories) of interest.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

Absract. The Linked Data cloud growth is changing current Web application development. One of the first steps is to determine whether there is information already available that can be immediately reused.

Ai Communications, 2010

This thesis is focused on reducing the gap between Semantic Web technicians and common Web developers and users. To this end, software infrastructure and Web applications have been developed. Experimental results show that the effort required to develop a simple Semantic Web application is reduced in terms of development time and number of required tools. Besides, users report high values of usability and satisfaction concerning the user interface of these applications.

Networked Knowledge - Networked Media, 2009

Despite the growing importance of knowledge work in today's organizations, its support by means of ICT tools is still rather limited. Recent trends in semantic technologies provide novel approaches for an effective solution to these challenges in terms of semanticbased task management. However, task management involves the complex interplay of information and work activities. Thus a semantic task management framework is needed which supports an adaptable semantic foundation, to meet the challenges of knowledge work, via a set of task services on the desktop. To this end, we propose the Nepomuk Semantic Task Management Framework (STMF) as platform for a task-oriented ecosystem for desktop applications.

International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, 2000

Current web application development requires highly qualified staff, dealing with an extensive number of architectures and technologies. When these applications incorporate semantic data, the list of skill requirements becomes even larger, what represents a high adoption barrier for the development of semantically-enabled Web applications. This paper describes VPOET, a tool focused mainly on two types of users: web designers and web application developers. By using this tool, Web designers do not need specific skills in semantic web technologies to create web templates for handling semantic data. Web application developers incorporate easily those templates into their web applications, by means of a simple mechanism based in HTTP messages. And end-users can use these templates by means of a Google Gadget created to this end. As web designers play a key role in the system, an experimental evaluation has been carried out, showing that VPOET provides good usability features for a representative group of web designers in a wide range of competencies in client-side technologies, ranging from amateur HTML developers to professional web designers.

… of the 1st Workshop on The …, 2005

In this paper we will give an overview of the Semantic Desktop paradigm, beginning with the history of the term, a definition, current work and its relevance to knowledge management of the future. Existing applications and research results are listed and their role as building blocks of the future Semantic Desktop described. Based on the analysis of existing systems we propose two software architecture paradigms, one for the Semantic Desktop at large and another for applications running on a Semantic Desktop. A view on the context aspect of the Semantic Desktop and the Knowledge Management aspect is given. Based on the current events and projects, we give an outlook on the next steps.

2003

The Resource Definition Framework (RDF) is designed to support agent communication on the Web, but it is also suitable as a framework for modeling and storing personal information. Haystack is a personalized information repository that employs RDF in this manner. This flexible semistructured data model is appealing for several reasons. First, RDF supports ontologies created by the user and tailored to the user's needs. At the same time, system ontologies can be specified and evolved to support a variety of high-level functionalities such as flexible organization schemes, semantic querying, and collaboration. In addition, we show that RDF can be used to engineer a component architecture that gives rise to a semantically rich and uniform user interface. We demonstrate that by aggregating various types of users' data together in a homogeneous representation, we create opportunities for agents to make more informed deductions in automating tasks for users. Finally, we discuss the implementation of an RDF information store and a programming language specifically suited for manipulating RDF.

… : Ontologies and the …, 2002

The Semantic Web will allow for significantly more machinereadable content to be available on the World Wide Web. Getting this content onto the web, and using it once it is there, requires new "metaphors" for working with Semantic Web data. In this paper, we describe the "Semantic Web Portal" an approach to using Semantic Web content, and some (open source) tools that we are developing to make it a reality.

2008

With the development of inexpensive storage devices, space usage is no longer a bottleneck for computer users. However, the increasingly large amount of personal information poses a critical problem to those users: traditional file organization in hierarchical directories may not be suited to the effective management of personal information because it ignores the semantic associations therein and bears no connection with the applications that users will run. To address such limitations, we present our vision of a semantic desktop, which relies on the use of ontologies to annotate and organize data and on the concept of personal information application (PIA), which is associated with a user's task. The PIA designer is the tool that is provided for building a variety of PIAs consisting of views (e.g., text, list, table, graph), which are spatially arranged and display interrelated fragments of the overall personal information. The semantic organization of the data follows a layered architecture that models separately the personal information, the domain data, and the application data. The network of concepts that ensues from extensive annotation and explicit associations lends itself well to rich browsing capabilities and to the formulation of expressive databaselike queries. These queries are also the basis for the interaction among views of the PIAs in the same desktop or in networked desktops. In the latter case, the concept of desktop service provides for a semantic platform for the integration of information across different desktops and the web. In this paper, we present in detail the semantic organization of the information, the overall system architecture and implementation aspects, queries and their processing, PIAs and the PIA designer, including usability studies on the designer, and the concepts of semantic navigation in a desktop and of interoperation in a network of desktops.