Modeling Ontology Views

The emergence of Semantic Web (SW) and the related technologies promise to make the Web a meaningful experience. Conversely, success of SW and its applications depends largely on utilization and interoperability of well-formulated ontology bases in an automated heterogeneous environment. This creates a need to investigate utilization of an (materialized) ontology view as an alternative version of an ontology. However, high level modeling, design and querying techniques still proves to be a challenging task for SW paradigm, as, unlike classical database systems, ontology view definitions and querying have to be done at high-level abstraction. In order to address such an issue, in this chapter, we describe an abstract view formalism forSW (SW-view) with conceptual and logical extensions. SW-views provides the needed conceptual and logical semantics to engineer ontology bases using three levels of abstraction, namely (1) conceptual, (2) logical/schema and (3) instance levels. We first provide the view model and it formal properties including a set of conceptual operators, which enable us to do ontology extraction at the conceptual level. Later, we provide a schemata transformation methodology to materialize SW-views under the Ontology Extraction Methodology (OEM) framework.

The Web contains a lot of information but computers can't do very much with it. We have access to and a need for a lot of information (thanks to pervasive information devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, smart devices, TV, radio...) but we don't have time to find and make associations between information every time we want to. Given the need for quick, intuitive access to information, multimedia presentation is an effective form of communication - different media act as a better means to communicate dependant on the context, and synchronization (organisation of media in space and in time) can express non- verbally relationships between the content (e.g. linear presentation to represent a timeline of events). Appropriately delivering content in the form of synchronized multimedia is a complex task which needs to meet the requirements of the user, device, and actual context. This proves to be too complex to be fulfilled by manually authoring for all possibilities. This has lead to efforts in developing systems for (semi-)automatic multimedia generation. Knowledge representation techniques developed in earlier AI work are being applied to the World Wide Web. Through standards such as RDF and OWL, the so-called "Semantic Web" offers the potential of a large scale distributed knowledge repository built upon the existing Web infrastructure. This makes powerful amounts of knowledge available to Web-based applications as the basis for a new paradigm of Web-oriented services which are intelligent, dynamic, flexible and user-centred. Such services could find the information we need and present it to us in an effective manner. The current situation of Web content discovery and delivery displays significant disorder and inflexibility: natural language is problematically ambiguous and Web content is only adaptive to a limited extent. Using the Semantic Web, intelligent Web clients will be able to deliver the correct information every time by unambiguously understanding the meaning of queries and reasoning on them (through the knowledge available to them on the Web) to come to an answer. Likewise, Web resources will be described with metadata that supports their selection, adaptation and presentation to the needs of the client. Such a paradigm shift in Web-based systems (from content to knowledge-centred) requires a similar paradigm shift in system models, architectures, implementations and operations. This is equally the case for multimedia presentation systems. We propose a framework for a new type of multimedia presentation system in which the multimedia generation process is tightly integrated with the distributed knowledge of the Semantic Web. Unlike previous work in which knowledge is narrowly defined and used by the system, this approach is built with the scale and dynamics of the Web in mind. We name this framework SWeMPs - a Semantic Web-enabled Multimedia Presentation System. The key results of our research are the conceptual model for a multimedia presentation system and the generic rule base which interacts with that model (through querying, reasoning and deriving new knowledge) to realise individual multimedia generation tasks. These form the basis for an implementation of a multimedia presentation system which is fundamentally different from existing multimedia presentation systems in that it operates at the logical or conceptual level rather than the data or syntactic level. This reflects the reality that what users seek is information (knowledge about concepts) and effective communication of that information (respecting the relationships between concepts). It leverages the potential of the Semantic Web as a distributed, large scale, accessible repository of knowledge about the world of the user just as systems today use the Web as a repository of content. The implementation of this proposal serves as a 'proof of concept' and as a basis for the evaluation of the new approach through use cases.

In order to combine advantages of real-time operating systems implementing the time-triggered (TT) execution model and model-based design frameworks, we aim at proposing a correct-by-design methodology that derives correct TT implementations from high-level models. This methodology consists of two main steps: (1) transforming the high-level model into an intermediate model which respects the TT communication principles and where all communications between components are simple send/receive interactions, and (2) transforming the obtained intermediate model into the programming language of the target platform. In this paper, we focus on the presentation of the transformational methodology of the first step of this design flow. This methodology produces a correct-by-construction TT model by starting from a high-level model of the application software in behaviour, interaction, priority (BIP). BIP is a component-based framework with formal semantics that rely on multiparty interactions for synchronizing components. Commonly in TT implementations, tasks interact with each other through a communication medium. Our methodology transforms, depending on a user-defined task mapping, high-level BIP models where communication between components is strongly synchronized, into TT model that integrates a communication medium. Thus, only inter-task communications and components participating in such interactions are concerned by the transformation process. We also provide correctness proofs of the transformation and apply it on an industrial case study.

Semantic Web is the name of the next generation World Wide Web, that has been recently proposed by Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)1. In this new Web architecture, information and Web services will be easily understandable and usable by both humans and computers. The objective is not to make computers understand the human language, but to define a universal model for the expression of the information and a set of inference rules that machines can easily use in order to process and relate the information as if they really understood it (Berners-Lee, 1998). Though, as the current Web provided sharing of documents among previously incompatible computers, the Semantic Web intends to go beyond, allowing stovepipe systems, hardwired computers, and other devices to share contents embedded in different documents. The most known architecture for Semantic Web is based on a stack of related technologies, each one being a whole research area by itself (Berners-Lee, Hendler, & Lassila. 2001; Pereira & Freire, 2005). Accomplishment of the Semantic Web is considered a great challenge, not only due to the complexity of implementation but also because of the vast applicability in several areas. In spite of this, Semantic Web is still one of the most promising research areas among those which aim to define a new architecture for the Web. Semantic Web goes far beyond previous information retrieval and knowledge representation projects, presenting a non-centralized way to represent and contextualize real-world concepts, unambiguously, for several areas of knowledge. Semantic Web-enabled machines will handle information at our communication level. It is clear that the ability to interpret reality is still very primitive, however, Semantic Web points a way towards machine interaction and learning (Pereira et al., 2005). Semantic Web will integrate, interact with, and bring benefits to most human activities. Its full potential will go beyond the Web to real-world machines, providing increased interaction between machines and with humans—smarter phones, radios, and other electronic devices. Semantic Web will bring a different kind of approach in the understanding of reality by the machines and will constitute a mark in the evolution of human knowledge (Pereira et al., 2005).

Determining the service composition strategy suitable for service-oriented applications is an essential design issue. As a first step towards understanding service composition, in this paper, we present a comparison study with two different service composition strategies. One is driven by industrial application - BPEL, the other is inspired by the booming research development in semantic web - OWL-S. We compare the two major strategies with each other through the collaborative virtual enterprise (CVE) scenario. Five key dimensions for service composition requirement have been identified These dimensions belong to two types. One type of dimensions is essential requirement including component model, orchestration model and data flow model. The other type is desirable requirement including error handler and transaction, and quality of service. We provide the comparison between BPEL and OWL-S against the five dimensions. Our comparison shows that OWL-S is more suitable for dynamic environments and BPEL is an ideal choice for controlled workflow.

وب معنایی در صدد گسترش زبان‌هایی است که اطلاعات را ماشین فهم و پردازش را خودکار سازد. برقراری ارتباط میان رایانه به واسطه بازنمون رسمی دانش در مدل‌های مفهومی – از طریق هستی شناسی‌ها- و توانمندسازی قدرت استدلال – از طریق قواعد استنتاج- امکان‌پذیر است. از سویی زبان نقش مهمی در برقراری ارتباط، و سیبرنتیک علم کنترل و ارتباط در ماشین و انسان است. این مقاله می‌کوشد تا ضمن توصیف وب معنایی و نقش هستی‌شناسی‌ها در بازنمون رسمی دانش، پیوند میان وب معنایی و سیبرنتیک را آشکار سازد. توانایی خود سازماندهی و استنتاج هوشمند و خودکار در وب معنایی با تاکید بر مدل سازی مفهومی مورد اشاره قرار گرفته است. رویکرد معرفت شناختی سازندگرایی از دیگر مباحث مطرح شده در ارتباط با سیبرنتیک دوم و شبکه‌های معنایی است. واژه‌های کلیدی: سیبرنتیک، وب معنایی، هستی‌شناسی، مدل‌سازی مفهومی

An article tries to see a group of semantic web representation and communication means like description logics, semantic networks, RDF model and language, OWL language, RDF CFL etc. taking a part at the development of formal ontologies from a slightly higher (meta) level. A focus has been oriented towards properties that semantic web language ought to have to fulfill according to a semantic web idea. Consequently the article tries to draw by the help of the means above the trip towards a proper semantic-web ontology language fulfilling the main demands of expressivity and also easy-to-use conditions. Even if the development of a semantic web language was until now much more complicated with a taking part of a lot of people or companies the authors of the article try to contribute to an analyzing of the actual state by drawing it as a cloud of demands, streams, events or condition’s fulfilling that at the end would have brought into the world an easy-to-usable semantic web ontology language having all the demands fulfilled. The article moreover shows that a language RDF CFL belongs nowadays to the semantic web family as a unique well usable tool of reasoning within semantic web knowledge bases.

Converting XML DTDs to UML diagrams for conceptual data integration

Frame-based ontological view for semantic integration

From the beginning it was understood that the success of the Semantic Web hinges on integrating the vast amount of data stored in Relational Databases. This manuscript reflects on the last 10 years of our research results to integrate Relational Databases with the Semantic Web. Since 2007, our research has led us to answer the following question: How and to what extent can Relational Databases be Integrated with the Semantic Web? The answer comes in two parts. We start by presenting how to get from Relational Databases to the Semantic Web via mappings, such as the W3C Direct Mapping and R2RML standards. Subsequently, we present how the Semantic Web can access Relational Databases. We finalize with how Relational Databases and Semantic Web technologies are being used practice for data integration and discuss open challenges.

Design of Systems-on-Chip has become very common especially with the remarkable advances in the field of high-level system modeling. In recent years, Matlab also offers a Simulink interface for the design of hardware systems. From a high-level specification, Matlab provides self-generation of HDL codes and/or FPGA configuration codes while providing other benefits of easy simulation. In addition, a large part of the Systems-on-Chip use at least one image processing algorithm and at the same time border detection is one of the most used algorithms. This paper presents a study and a hardware implementation of various algorithms of borders detection realized under Xilinx System-Generator. The various algorithms are implemented using Xilinx FPGA device, the simulation and synthesis results are also compared. We use the Xilinx Zed-Board for physical implementations in-the-loop.

Since archaeology in particular and humanities in general are interdisciplinary disciplines, there is an imperious need to enhance the accessibility and harmonise data integration, given their varied resource types (books, archives, scientific data, GIS, 3D models etc) and their different conceptual and technological structures and standards. A factor that further reduces accessibility and query performances is related to storing, such as physical location of data, language, and interface. The advent of Semantic Web technology represents an important advance in creating networks of archaeological knowledge based on various resources available on-line. While the valuable use of CIDOC-CRM (Comite International pour la Documentation -Conceptual Reference Model) ontology for specific CH (Cultural Heritage) domains (e.g. museums, libraries, etc) has been partially demonstrated, the interdisciplinary implementations are limited. In this article, we explore the potential of the CIDOC-CRM for a cross-domain implementation of CH data integration. We conducted tha mappings of different on-line resources related to Stonehenge to CIDOC-CRM, and evaluated them in the MAD database, a web-based application that manages natively XML-based datasets. The result ensures the validity of mapping mechanism and the semantic integration of CH data from different sources.

Firstly, this paper expounded that the traditional searching based on keywords has a severe deficiency on Recall and Precision because the computer can't understand what information mean efficiently. In Succession, through extending from ordinary information to Geo-spatial information, on the support of geo-ontology theory and semantic web services technology, this paper discussed the principle, methods and application of ontology-driven geo-spatial information retrieving mechanism in semantic web. In other word, How to structure the framework for running this mechanism, how to build the ontology information models and how to establish the ontology-driven services models are discussed in detail in context. A design of systems for implementing the mechanism and experiment are given at the end of the text.

The emergence of new business models, namely, the establishment of partnerships between organizations, the chance that companies have of adding existing data on the web, especially in the semantic web, to their information, led to the emphasis on some problems existing in databases, particularly related to data quality. Poor data can result in loss of competitiveness of the organizations holding these data, and may even lead to their disappearance, since many of their decision-making processes are based on these data. For this reason, data cleaning is essential. Current approaches to solve these problems are closely linked to database schemas and specific domains. In order that data cleaning can be used in different repositories, it is necessary for computer systems to understand these data, i.e., an associated semantic is needed. The solution presented in this paper includes the use of ontologies: (i) for the specification of data cleaning operations and, (ii) as a way of solving the semantic heterogeneity problems of data stored in different sources. With data cleaning operations defined at a conceptual level and existing mappings between domain ontologies and an ontology that results from a database, they may be instantiated and proposed to the expert/specialist to be executed over that database, thus enabling their interoperability.

We outline our computational framework for identity. We have a prototype web application, but this paper is a conceptual level. The interest is in identity as an equivalence relation and how information can be evidence for identity hypotheses. Our account is based on the situation theory of Barwise and Perry. We consider a (legal) identity case to be a constellation of situations, and we indicate how the structure of such a case facilitates discounting and combining evidence using Dempster-Shafer theory. Semantic Web resources are used to capture the structure of evidence as it relates to situations. We have developed OWL ontologies and use the concepts therein defined in RDF triple stores to capture case data. URIs (as used in the Semantic Web) are used for unambiguous references to individuals. We sketch a scenario that uses two biometric modalities in an uncontrolled environment and show how our framework applies. Recently, biometrics has gained the limelight as a means to identify individuals, but much else may be available for this task, including sensor data, witness reports, and data on file. To our knowledge, this is the only framework that in principle can accommodate any kind of evidence for identity. It is not an alternative to biometrics, but rather provides a way to incorporate biometrics into a larger context.