PCCAT Exeter University Conference Paper June 8th 2011

This is the paper and presentation I gave for Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011) - June 8th 2011 - http://www.pccat.ex.ac.uk/index.php?pid=1

The paper is titled - Requirements and software engineering for tree-based visualisation and modelling: A user driven approach

This is the link where I placed it in the University of the West of England Research Repository. The PowerPoint presentation I gave is also there. There are Word and PowerPoint 2007 files and also PDF versions. These are all available from this link - https://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/15077/.
This is the abstract -

Abstract

This paper is about potential to provide an interactive visual ontology/taxonomy based modelling system. The research is part of efforts to structure, manage, and enable understanding of complex engineering, business and/or scientific information to enable those involved to collaborate using a systems approach. The aim and objectives are to provide a taxonomy management system to close the link between requirements gathering and end-user modellers. The research is into modelling of product data structures. This research could be adapted to business process modelling, and biology taxonomy visualisation/representation. The modelling system was developed to assist decision support for problems such as wing and engine design. The methodology involves modelling using tree structured ontology based modelling. It is argued that visualising this structure enables improved Maintenance, Extensibility, Ease of Use, and Sharing of Information, and so enables better and more accessible modelling. This is achieved by uniting the software taxonomy structure with the structure of the domain to be modelled and visualised, and using Semantic Web technologies to link this with ontologies and to end-users for visualisation. This research assists with management of development, use, and re-use of software in order to make this an integrated process. The research brings together related fields of Semantic Web, End-User Programming, and Modelling, to assist domain expert end users.

Further information -

I've published my more general thoughts about the benefits of Postgraduate Conferences and Research Repositories to students, in the UK Vitae (organisation for research students and staff) - What's Up Doc Blog - http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/346441/Whats-up-doc-blog-for-postgraduate-researchers.html. I publish my thoughts that are more general to all researchers rather than my specific research to there -this is my post to that blog - http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/346441-406701/Getting-your-Research-Published---PostGraduate-Conferences.html.

The Human Semantic Web - Further Reflection

The web is a useful environment for enabling people to add their knowledge in both a less structured Web 2.0 way (development of less structured but interactive web tools/programs), and a more structured Semantic Web way. The greater interaction in the Web 2.0 approach at least makes it more likely that Semantic disagreements will be spotted, but it takes the structuring in the Semantic Web approach to then show the meaning of terms more clearly and unambiguously so that agreement or disagreement about and mapping of terms can be reached. This then makes possible Naeve’s (2005) ‘Semantic Collaboration’ through and also defining the ‘Human Semantic Web’ that Naeve advocates. This then enables moving on from the Web being an environment only for simple tasks to one where sophisticated programs and models could be run that enable calculation and decision support.

This combination in approaches of enabling greater human interaction, and more definition of semantics can be illustrated by adapting the table displayed in my previous post.

Table - Language and Tool Mapping - Further Development



















Thus Increased Semantic Structuring and Collaboration from right to left, combined with Increased Human Interaction from bottom to top makes it more possible to undertake modelling and programming because the information is then well mapped and structured, and made available for visualisation and human interaction. On reflection AJAX/Web 2.0 technology spans more than one part of this diagram depending on the emphasis of whether to structure it and/or enable greater interaction. To reach the top left of the diagram requires layered use of technology as per the diagram developed by Berners-Lee (2000) and also McGuinness (2003). This layering of technology is needed in order to translate from the computer centred representations in the bottom right to the human centred representations and modelling in the top left. Human centred representations are too abstract for computers and computer centred representations are too abstract for humans. Therefore the technologies in the top left are not superior to those below and to the right as they need to be built on those technologies. Further there is more than one way to reach the top left, e.g. along the diagonal arrow from Naeve’s (2005) Semantic Isolation through Semantic Coexistence to Semantic Collaboration, or by moving up then left, or left then up. Following the diagonal arrow based on Naeve’s analysis is best for planning and building such a project from the start, but the other forms of navigation might be the best way to build on an existing project that has already been moving in a particular direction, that is not on this diagonal arrow.

References

Berners-Lee, T., (2000) Semantic Web on XML – Slide 10 - http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/slide10-0.html

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.

Naeve, A., 2005, The Human Semantic Web – Shifting from Knowledge Push to Knowledge Pull. International Journal of Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS), Vol 1(3) (July-September 2005) pp 1-30.

Naeve - http://kmr.nada.kth.se/wiki/Amb/HomePage

The Human Semantic Web

My thoughts on the work of Naeve http://kmr.nada.kth.se/wiki/Amb/HomePage and Enoksson on the Human Semantic Web and implementation of Concept Maps.

Enoksson (2006) explains the advantages for extensibility of an open standard language, he used RDF for Conceptual Browsing on the Semantic Web. Enoksson (2006) models things with concept maps that break an overall ontology down into concept sub-ontologies/taxonomies.

Naeve (2005) argue that “combining the human semantics of UML with the machine semantics of RDF enables more efficient and user-friendly forms of human-computer interaction.” Using UML for production of ontologies is as advocated by Baclawski et al. (2001) and Kogut et al. (2002), and Enoksson (2006). Naeve (2005) examines this strong separation between types (classes), and instances (objects) and considers this to be a weakness, which he rectifies for ULM (Unified Language Modeling) developed from UML.

Naeve (2005) gives an example of the need for “semantic mapping” between different words with the same meaning such as ‘author’ in one ontology and ‘creator’ in another ontology in order to establish interoperability and machine readability.

The Table below shows tools, technologies, and languages that can assist in this, and where they are based in a hierarchy from low level information centred interaction to high level user centred interaction (bottom to top), and computing focused to human focused representation (right to left). The Table also shows how each tool fits in with Naeve’s (2005) analysis based on “characteristics of the three different semantic stages” of “Semantic Isolation, Semantic Coexistence, and Semantic Collaboration” :-

Table - Language and Tool Mapping















Naeve (2005) describes Semantic Isolation where databases are available but hidden behind web portals, though the portals advertise their address. Semantic Coexistence is achieved by databases being structured in such a way that it is possible to search them without having to know their location. Naeve gives the example of RDF Schema - RDF(S), this standardises the structuring of the information across RDF(S) databases. RDF(S) provides standardised elements for the description of ontologies, so assisting to enable Semantic mapping. Semantic mapping enables Semantic Coexistence due to Semantic mapping enabling agreement on terms. For the table above the argument presented is that high level user centred interaction (bottom to top), and computing focused to human focused representation (right to left), enable Semantic Coexistence. The tools in the top left are built from those below and to the right of them so the Semantic Coexistence is built from Berners Lee’s (2000) Layered Architecture. Naeve (2005) argues the need for semantics that are understandable to humans as well as machines. That is an important objective of the research outlined in my thesis as without semantics that are understandable to humans, it is not possible for non programmer domain experts to undertake collaborative modelling. Naeve (2005) discusses a bottom up approach where there is a set process of deciding what can be agreed on, what cannot, and on documenting both.

Naeve (2005) argues that where knowledge is tacit it is vital to keep track of the individuals or groups who have this tacit knowledge, and that also the ‘Human Semantic Web’ can help elevate tacit knowledge to explicit.

References

Baclawski, K., Mieczyslaw, K., Kogut, P., Hart, L., Smith, J., Holmes, W., Letkowski, J., Aronson, M., 2001. Extending UML to Support Ontology Engineering for the Semantic Web. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on The Unified Modeling Language, Modeling Languages, Concepts, and Tools, pp 342-360.

Berners-Lee, T., (2000) Semantic Web on XML – Slide 10
http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/slide1-0.html

Enoksson, N. (2006) Serverside Solution for Conceptual Browsing on the Semantic Web. MSc. Dissertation, Stockholm University.

Kogut, P., Cranefield, S., Hart, L., Dutra, M., Baclawski, K., Kokar, M., Smith, J., 2002. UML for Ontology Development. The Knowledge Engineering Review Vol 17(1) pp 61-64.

Naeve, A., 2005, The Human Semantic Web – Shifting from Knowledge Push to Knowledge Pull. International Journal of Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS), Vol 1(3) (July-September 2005) pp 1-30.

Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011)

I have submitted a paper to this conference at Exeter University in June. These are the details of the conference - http://www.pccat.ex.ac.uk/ -

"Home Page
Welcome to the website of the second Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011). Following the great success of PCCAT 2010, we are pleased to announce that the University of Exeter will host PCCAT on 8th June 2011.

PCCAT 2010 proved a great success, both in terms of networking and introducing the vital world of conferencing to postgraduate students.

We are inviting the submission of abstracts, which if accepted will be extended into either a short paper or a poster for presentation on the day. More details can be found on the Submissions Page

In the new year, we will be inviting interested parties to join the paper review panel, which will be responsible for reviewing and providing feedback for short papers. If this is something you feel you would be interested in, please contact us (details of how to contact the committee are here

We hope to see you at PCCAT 2011, and look forward to hearing from you.


Max Dupenois and David Walker
(PCCAT 2011 Programme Chairs)"

This is my Abstract for the paper -

"Abstract: This paper is about potential to provide an interactive visual taxonomy management system. It has been and is part of efforts to structure, manage, and enable understanding of complex engineering, business and/or scientific information to enable those involved to collaborate using a systems approach. The aim and objectives are to close the link between requirements gathering and end-user modellers. The main subject will be editing and display of product data structures (already implemented), business process modelling, and discussion of possible application to phylogenic/phylogenetic (biology taxonomy) knowledge. Modelling in all these areas could make possible new insights. This approach could also be used for public understanding work and visualisation, e-science, and information management. The aim is to apply novel end-user programming research to enable the editing, management, and representation of anything tree/taxonomy based by uniting the software taxonomy structure with the taxonomy structure of the domain to be modelled and visualised, and using Semantic Web technologies to link this with overall ontologies then to end-users for visualisation.

The purpose of this work is to ease management of development use, and re-use of software and make this a continuous integrated process.

To achieve the above aim what is necessary is to establish or link to a computing infrastructure for representation of complex, engineering, business, and scientific information. This kind of Computer Science/Software Engineering research allows for bringing together related fields of Semantic Web and ontology/taxonomy management, end-user programming, and visualisation and interaction with complex information. Then management of software development with and for such professionals can be eased and all be involved via the web.

Further, the structure and accessibility of Semantic Web technologies may also assist with broadening this approach to accessibility for people with various disabilities, and also for environmental modelling."

Open Standard Layered Architecture Tools

This diagram examines my thinking for 2009-10. This reflects the need to build up from layers of simpler generic information representation and tools that are generic. For representation of information this is more high level and more customised, less generic from right to left. For modelling this is more high level and less generic from bottom to top. Greater use of computer to human translation increases the modelling capabilities. Good interoperability improves the ease of translation, and the layering of simpler information formats with more complex and less generic layers built on top.

Thus it is possible to build on layers of generic solutions from bottom right, and get as far as possible towards the top left, building re-usable solutions before at some point building a final layer of a more customised less generic solution.

This approach maximises re-use and improves maintenance.

Unified Computing For Engineering, Business and Science

The research undertaken and described here crosses the boundary between engineering and computing. This is achieved by reusing the same approach for computer modelling and engineering modelling, thus applying computing use case and tree based node and object design. This approach is usable for any kind of tree and network based modelling e.g. engineering process modelling, workflow, business process modelling. The approach makes use of nodes linked by equations, or pure taxonomies if equations aren't required, thus making this useful for taxonomies, and useful for representing computing structures, biology, and engineering structure. When these taxonomies are linked up, they can then be used for a colour coded visualised ontology super taxonomy, of sub taxonomies e.g. processes, materials, components (engineering or computer software), resources, and cost rates.

The visualisation represents the structure of the model, and the structure of the problem, creating a unified approach for systematic program and model, computing and engineering, business, and biology structure representation. This makes structured representation much clearer than it can be in a flat structure such as a spreadsheet, and makes auditing and keeping track of changes easier.

This unified approach then enables representation of the problem at a high level of abstraction and if the optional equations are included aids process modelling and decision support. This high level of abstraction and structured representation and visualisation makes errors more obvious and findable, aiding auditing. Semantic Web and Web 2.0/3.0 technologies make this approach feasible for moving this approach from more complex to simple low end computing and networking the approach where useful or necessary.

VoCampBristol 2009 - Thursday 10th, Friday 11th September

These are the details for - The 9th ever VoCamp, and the first in Bristol.

Thursday 10th and Friday 11th September 2009. Note that this date has been changed due to a conflict - http://vocamp.org/wiki/VoCampBristol2009.

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.

Peter Mika outlines some of the issues he sees with the current state of vocabularies on the Semantic Web in his blog post What’s wrong with vocabularies on the Semantic Web?
What is VoCamp?

VoCamp is a series 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 events 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 influenced by BarCamp, although the emphasis is different. Whereas BarCamps are oriented to demos and presentations, VoCamps are oriented to hands-on technical work and practical outputs; any presentations and demos should be short, highly on-topic to the vocabulary development process, and limited in number, to leave plenty of time for hacking on new vocabularies.

What Next?
The first VoCamp event took place in Oxford, UK in September 2008 (VoCampOxford2008), the second took place in Galway, Ireland in November 2008 (VoCampGalway2008), and the third, and first ever in the US took place in Austin, Texas (VoCampAustin2009) followed immediately by another one in Ibiza, Spain in April 2009 (VoCampIbiza2009).

Decision Support Tool Representation

It's important to close the gap between ontology representation and modelling and visualisation of problems. There is much more incentive to poulate an ontology or database if the information in this is automatically or semi automatically translated for use in modelling and decision support. Then those populating an ontology can see the benefits, and those creating or using models/programs based on the ontology can see where the inforamation is coming from.

Equations/formulae can be represented in the ontology, and then sent to the model which can then visualise them and calculate results. A Decision support tool called Vanguard System was used for this.

This screenshot illustrates how a decision support system tree view of the spar (wing part)branch from a wing process and cost model can be created with information translated from an ontology (in Protege) of related taxonomies (sub ontologies), and where necessary from user's selections (e.g. of materials). The tree, including all the default part definition information for the spar, is produced automatically. The buttons in the tree enable choices to be made by the user about materials, consumables, rates, and processes. Branches are created in response to these choices. The values in the branch nodes can then be changed as required.
Results can also then be output to the web for navigation and visualisation, and maybe for interactive web based modelling and visualisation.

Research Methodology - Automated Model Production

Models are constructed and translated in a different way from object oriented programming. There is no clear distinction between classes and objects, as a class only becomes an instance gradually as translations are made from step 1 to 3, and as the models are visualised, interacted with, and represented to users. In the early research an ontology was translated and created from a C++ program, and also from a database. Now, models are created in the Vanguard System (http://www.vanguardsw.com/products/vanguard-system/) modelling tool, with information imported to this from a Protégé ontology, via the nested SQL queries. Vanguard System performs the calculations necessary for the economic model. After inferencing/calculation a result ontology is created for step 3. The step 3 result ontology/taxonomy is created by manually coding, then a system is created to reproduce and output this code automatically. This translation is then tested on many different models to ensure it is generic.

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 produces a new ‘System/Translator Program’ in Step 2 which 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 have created 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 on this diagram would be possible. Another option is that Step 1 could be repeated to translate between ontologies.

Translation Process for User Driven Modelling/Programming (UDM/P)

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 the relationships and write out result 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 any tree to be represented in computer languages. Then recursive routines write the programming language to be output.

More information is available at http://sites.google.com/site/userdrivenmodellingprogramming/index.

Models produced so far are available at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm.

SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) and Protege

SWRL is a Semantic Web Rule Language Combining OWL and RuleML - http://www.w3.org/Submission/2004/SUBM-SWRL-20040521/.

So far in creating ontologies for modelling for my thesis, if-then-else structures were edited using simplified english language. Elenius et al. explain that Protege now supports SWRL. This makes it possible to use SWRL expressions within Protege. So if-then-else and other control structures could be specified using SWRL. Protege provides an expression builder for this purpose. This also opens up the possibility of translating between an english representation of such structures and an SWRL structure or vice versa, so would be useful future research.

Protege support for SWRL is through the SWRLTab, and has been available since 2004 - http://protege.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SWRLTab.

This paper by Elenius et al. is available online - The OWL-S Editor - A Development Tool for Semantic Web Services - http://owlseditor.semwebcentral.org/documents/paper.pdf - Daniel Elenius, Grit Denker, David Martin, Fred Gilham, John Khouri, Shahin Sadaati, and Rukman Senanayake - SRI International, Menlo Park, California, USA.

This is the relevant paragraph - Refering to their own research - "One aspect of OWL-S services not covered in this paper is the editing of preconditions and effects of processes, and conditions associated with control constructs such as If-Then-Else. In OWL-S, these are normally described in the SWRL language. Currently, we simply provide a text box where users can enter these SWRL expressions. However, we plan to provide more user-friendly editing capabilities. Protege has recently" ... (2004)... "been enhanced with native support for SWRL, including a SWRL expression-builder, which will serve as the basis of this work."

One possible application of this would be using OWL-S, and UML type diagrams to produce interoperable process models diagrammatically.

More information on OWL is at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#OWL.

More information on SWRL is at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm#SWRLRuleML

The Protege homepage is - http://protege.stanford.edu/.

Semantic Web and End-User Programming

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.

My research area is explained here http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#LanguageToolMapping :-

My Research Area

The representation of program structure also needs to be visualised to End-User Programmers so they can create and edit content.

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.

Visualisation and Interaction for Modelling

Eng and Salustri (2006) outline the role of computers in aiding decision making, and explain that the human mind is the best tool for making decisions. They explain that visualisation systems must help people use the information access capabilities of computers. Eng and Salustri refer to a dimension from “tacit to articulatable” knowledge. So the research for this thesis aims to use the layered Semantic architecture described by Berners Lee et al. (2000) and discussed by McGuinness (2003) relating to this diagram :-

Layered Architecture, sourced from McGuinness (2003) and Berners-Lee (2000)

This improves translatation between the layers to enable human/computer translation. This approach is intended to improve interaction rather than enable computing decision making through artificial intelligence; the emphasis is on decision support for design and manufacture. The detail of this approach and the methodology for automating translation for users is explained in here - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#ResearchMethodology. Such techniques as genetic algorithms are outside the scope of this thesis. Instead the emphasis is on clear visualisation, interaction and translation.

This 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.



Recursive Translation - Automated Copying from ontology to modelling system

Also the translation can link different ontologies/taxonomies together when they are required in order to solve a problem. So the approach is to gather information from ontologies/taxonomies as required for solving a problem as specified by the model builder. This is tested and applied to engineering modelling. An open source approach can be combined with use of open standards ontologies as was advocated by Cheung (2005).

References

Berners-Lee, T., (2000) Semantic Web on XML – Slide 10 [online]. Available from: http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/slide1-0.html [Accessed 26 June 2008].

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.

Eng, N., Salustri, F. A., 2006. "Rugplot" Visualization for Preliminary Design. In: CDEN 2006 3rd CDEN/RCCI International Design Conference University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

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 [online]. Available from: http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-mit-press-(with-citation).htm [Accessed 26 June 2008].

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

Information about my Research is at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

Semantic Web Applications

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.

The use of Semantic Web languages as information representation and even as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these modelling languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems.

Research can bring together End-User Programming, Modelling and the Semantic Web approaches, so the shaded area is examined.

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 technology is applicable to any problem that involves user interaction, calculation, and modelling so it can be applied to a wider range of tasks and subject areas.

A methodology that involves structuring of information through Ontology and Semantic Web techniques and enabling end-user programming through visualisation and interaction aims to achieve effective production of generic models. Horrocks (2002) explains Semantic Web technologies and the use of agents and ontologies, and ontology representation languages. This demonstrates the linked nature of Ontology and Semantic Web research.

Berners-Lee and Fischetti (1999) sum up the advantage of a Semantic Web program over programs in other languages. They write, "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." They discuss the use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages and explain the benefits declaring "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".

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 visualise and navigate the huge connected graph of information that results." 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

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 users to computer and back for conveying results of a modelling run. The program transformation approach argued for by Lieberman (2007) can be used to translate from a domain expert End-User Programmer abstraction to models represented by Semantic Web languages, ontologies and code.

Use of Semantic Web technologies is a means for open standard representation of collaborative models, transformation into different representations as required, and for provision of a high-level interface as a tool for model visualisation and system creation. 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. Semantic Web technologies could assist greatly with Web based Simulation and Modelling. Kuljis and Paul (2001) evaluate progress in the 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. Miller and Baramidze (2005) establish that for a "simulation study that includes model building, scenario creation, model execution, output analysis and saving/interpreting results. Ontologies can be useful during all of these phases." Model-Driven Programming and the Semantic Web are explained by Frankel et al. (2004).

Research in the use and visualisation of Semantic Web information can provide the tools that end-user programmers have been lacking until recently, and these tools can be used for modelling. Crapo et al. (2002) assert the need for a methodology for creation of systems to enable more collaborative approaches to modelling by domain expert end-users, and that this combined with visualisation would allow engineers to model problems accurately.

Many organisations produce text based reports from their IT systems. But text based reports do not always show information well enough for good decision making. Automated conversion of these reports into Semantic Web languages could assist greatly with this. So a translation process is required and can be implemented as part of an overall User-Driven Modelling/Programming Approach. Once reports are converted to a standardised representation, hierarchical information can be represented as clickable trees and numerical representation as charts. This makes it possible to customise outputs from existing IT systems and so allows an improvement in readability of information without major changes to the way it's produced. This could provide a large gain at little cost.

References

Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1999. Weaving the Web. Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X

Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Weitzner, D. J., 2006. Creating a Science of the Web. Science 11 August 2006:Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 769 - 771.

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.

Frankel, D., Hayes, P., Kendall, E., McGuinness, D., 2004. The Model Driven Semantic Web. In: 1st International Workshop on the Model-Driven Semantic Web (MDSW2004) Enabling Knowledge Representation and MDA® Technologies to Work Together.

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.

Kuljis, J., Paul, R. J., 2001. An appraisal of web-based simulation: whither we wander?. Simulation Practice and Theory, 9, pp 37-54.

Lieberman, H., 2007. End-User Software Engineering Position Paper. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar.

Miller, J. A., Baramidze, G., 2005. Simulation and the Semantic Web. In. Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference.

Further Information on this research is at -

Semantic Web - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm.

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 Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.

Ontology Visualisation and Interaction

Protégé has OWL plug-ins available that provide extra capabilities for representing and visualising information, and also 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 visualisation 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 visualisation tools must assist users to view the information they need. 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.

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. For this reason, a large range of ontology management tools have been investigated for this thesis. 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), 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, within the thesis 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 created. Support for SWRL in Protégé (Miller and Baramidze, 2005) will assist with the construction of a modelling system with sophisticated editing of rules.

My Pages on this subject
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.
Visualisation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Visualisation.htm.

References

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 - http://www.eamber-esilkroad.org/Projects/408/ICE2005/Knowledge%20Management/P13%20Ontological%20Approach%20for%20Organisational%20Knowledge%20Re-use%20in%20Product%20Developing%20Environments.pdf.

Elenius, D., 2005. The OWL-S Editor - A Domain-Specific Extension to Protégé. In: 8th Intl. Protégé Conference - July 18-21, 2005 - Madrid, Spain - http://protege.stanford.edu/conference/2005/submissions/abstracts/accepted-abstract-elenius.pdf.

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. - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/8409/26515/01180907.pdf.

Ernst, N. A., Storey, M., Allen, P., Musen, M., 2003. Addressing cognitive issues in knowledge engineering with Jambalaya http://www.neilernst.net/docs/pubs/ernst-kcap03.pdf.

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., 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 - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2003/HoPH03a.pdf.

Miller, J. A., Baramidze, G., 2005. Simulation and the Semantic Web. In. Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference - http://www.informs-cs.org/wsc05papers/297.pdf.

Storey, M., Lintern, R., Ernst, N., Perrin, D., 2004, Visualization and Protégé In: 7th International Protégé Conference - July 2004 - Bethesda, Maryland - http://protege.stanford.edu/conference/2004/abstracts/Storey.pdf.

University of Victoria, 2006. Model Driven Visualization (MDV) http://www.thechiselgroup.org/?q=mdv.

Zhang, Z., 2005. Ontology Query Languages for the Semantic Web: A Performance Evaluation. MSc Thesis, (Under the Direction of John.A.Miller) -http://www.cs.uga.edu/~jam/home/theses/zhijun_thesis/final/zhang_zhijun_200508_ms.pdf

Objectives for future development of Ontologies

My next posts outline future research that is required for the advancement of representation, search, and visualisation 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 visualise and navigate the huge connected graph of information that results."

Horrocks (2002) explains the advantages of moving towards a more formal ontology. Making use of a more formal ontology is the next major aim for my research. 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 are meaningful to people as well as being searchable by computer software. My intention is to enable tagging of this ontology and eventually editing of it by users, in order to allow users and domain experts to be involved in the ontology construction.

So far the taxonomies used in my thesis include traditional object oriented relationships such as child, parent, sibling, attribute, and instance. There are other types of relationship that would need to be modelled in order to maximise the capabilities of software that would use the taxonomies. Key relationships used within the object oriented programming domain between objects have been modelled. These key relationships depict families and aggregations of 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 allow a more expressive depiction of a problem domain, and can aid some forms of search within a model. One of the main advantages of a semantic net description, in terms of automated model generation, is that 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 the standard OWL dialects. These more expressive descriptions require sophisticated visualisation tools which will be the subject of the next post.

My Pages on this subject

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.

References

Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Weitzner, D. J., 2006. Creating a Science of the Web. Science 11 August 2006:Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 769 - 771. - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5788/769?ijkey=o66bodkFqpcCs&keytype=ref&siteid=sci.

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. - http://www.cs.umd.edu/~nau/papers/ontologies-JCISE-2001.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.

Semantic Web Development

Semantic Web Development and dealing with complexity is a tricky issue. Representing information is a problem where complexity can preclude any single approach. In order to find our way around large quantities of information it needs to be structured. But the information already exists and is still being created, so this makes it a moving target. Kurt Cagle refers to this in his article on complexity on his Understanding XML blog at http://www.understandingxml.com/

The structuring of ontologies from the top down can be useful, but can only be achieved where the ontology developers have some control over the information. Much of web development and other creation of information is bottom up, in that there is no controlling authority. This is good for inclusiveness and speed of development, and something that encourages community, and encourages individuals to create their own content, which is a good thing. In his interview with the British Computer Society Tim Berners-Lee http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4 answers a question on ontologies. He talks of a top level ontology that can be created to hold certain terms and the need to find out who is using these terms, so that other web pages and databases can be categorised. This would be achieved using URIs (Universal Resource Identifier) and RDF (Resource Description Framework). In answer to what Tim Berners-Lee hopes to achieve, he talks of this bottom up development that is going on, using blogs, and wikis etc and a possible approach of 'web science' - 'the science and engineering of web based things that have a bottom up Web-like structure'.

I think this approach is highly relevant to my PhD research on user-driven programming, with University of the West of England (UWE - Bristol). Not everyone has the time to learn programming especially if their main expertise is elsewhere. They then have to ask others to do the development for them and this leads to delays and mis-understandings. The approach advocated here could enable visual creation of software by members of a community. Members of this community would not need advanced programming skills if other members with more advanced development skills could create a suitable interface for the creation of software. This could be achieved in a similar way to that used in visual web page creation tools, or word processor and spreadsheet software. Also the members who do possess advanced skills could provide ways of sorting, searching and navigating the programs created using the visual development tools. Members could work with either or both groups, according to their skills and interests.

A good first step would be to link communities and sites that have a mix of those with advanced software skills who want to encourage and enable others to learn to program, and of new starters who want to learn. This could involve those who are willing to try out new techniques to make it easier for new starters to train learn and gain experience.

Sir Tim-Berners-Lee's interview - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3337.

This talk by Nigel Shadbolt explains research about coping with diverse sources of information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3043.

This article by Bill Thompson for the BBC technology site examines new developments in Web 2.0 technologies - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4842498.stm.

I am a Researcher in the final year of my PhD at the University of the West of England, Bristol UK. I specialise in applying Semantic Web techniques. 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 the form of a tree diagram. I am attempting to develop ways of automatically translating this information into program code in a variety of computer languages. This is very important and useful for many employees that have insufficient time to learn programming languages. I am looking to research visualisation, and visualisation techniques to create a human computer interface that allows non experts to create software.

I am a member of the Institute for End User Computing.

My Home Page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/

Language and Tool Mapping - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#LanguageToolMapping

Semantic Web Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm

Semantic Web History - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/Semanticweb.htm

Semantic Web Modelling Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm

Language and Tool Mapping

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.

My intention is to examine tools and technologies that can translate from a domain representations and/or and 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 :-

Please let me know if you think a particular tool or technology is represented wrongly.

Domain Representation	Modelling/Programming	Abstract Representation	Structured Data File
ACUITy
KAON
Metatomix M3t4
TopBraid Composer
	Jena
	Ontolingua
	Protégé
	Semantic Wikis
PSL, STEPml, PMXML, XML with domain schemas	AspectXML, AJAX/Web2.0, XQuery, XForms, SPARQL	RDF, RDFS, DAML+OIL, OWL, RSS, SVG, VRML, UML, XMI, MathML, RuleML	XML, Databases

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.

Relevant Conferences/Events

Where 2.0 Conference - http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2007/ - The third annual O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mash-ups and platforms, and the folks looking ahead to the future of geospace. - San Jose - California - May 29-30.

ESTC2007 - http://www.estc2007.com/ - 1st European Semantic Technology Conference initiates a new conference series in Semantic technologies in Europe. ESTC2007 is a new European meeting ground for customers, developers and researchers to discuss the applicability and commercialization of Semantic technologies in corporate settings - May 31st - June 1st - Vienna - Austria.

ICE 2007 the 13th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising - http://www.ice-conference.org/ - Sophia-Antipolis, France, June 04 - 06, 2007.

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.

8th Annual Enterprise Architecture Conference - Designing a flexible foundation - IRM UK - Enterprise Architecture Conference Europe 2007, 11-13 June 2007, London.

GC 2007expo - http://www.gcexpo.com/ - 12-13th June 2007 - Earls Court One - London - GC 2007 is simply THE most exciting and dynamic public sector ICT exhibition and conference event of the year for public sector technologists.

SOAWorld 2007: Enterprise Open Source: http://www.soaeosconference.sys-con.com/ - June 25-27 2007 - New York.

IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 2007 http://www.mccsis.org/ - Lisbon, Portugal 3 - 8 July 2007.

Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web (SSSW'07) - http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/sssw07/frames.jsp - July 8, 2007 - July 14, 2007. Cercedilla (Spain).

ISPE - The 14th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering:Research and Applications - http://ce2007.lit.inpe.br/ - ISPE - http://www.ispe-org.net/ - July 16-20, 2007 - São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil.

ACM - DocEng 2007 - http://doceng07.cs.umanitoba.ca/ - ACM Symposium on Document Engineering - 28-31 August 2007 - Winnepeg, Canada.

Engineering the Semantic Desktop (SemDeskEng 2007) - http://semdeskeng2007.semanticdesktop.org/ - 1st Workshop on Engineering the Semantic Desktop - co-located with ESEC/FSE 2007 - 3 September 2007, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

SVG.Open - http://www.svgopen.org/ - SVG.Open 2007 Conference, Tokyo, Japan - 4 -7 September 2007 - The SVG Open 2007 conference will be held in Tokyo, Japan, organized by Opera and Keio University, the Asian W3C host. The conference will be hosted September 4-7 at a university campus of Keio University. A call for papers and contributions will be issued later on this webpage.

VLC'2007 - International Workshop on Visual Languages and Computing - http://www.ksi.edu/seke/vlc07.html - Hotel Sofitel, San Francisco Bay, 6-8 September 2007 - Organized by Knowledge Systems Institute - Digital Arts and Sciences Lab, UF, and Visual Computing Lab, UT-Dallas.

IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing - http://icsc2007.eecs.uci.edu/ - September 17-19, 2007 - Irvine, California, USA - The field Semantic Computing applies technologies in natural language processing, data and knowledge engineering, software engineering, computer systems and networks, signal processing and pattern recognition, and any combination of the above to extract, access, transform and synthesize the semantics (contents) of multimedia, texts, services and structured data.

2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://vlhcc07.eecs.wsu.edu/ - Coeur d'Alène, Idaho, USA - 22-26 September 2007.

ESM'2007, October 22-24, 2007 - European Simulation and Modelling Conference - Westin Dragonara Hotel, St. Julian's, Malta.

Web 2.0 Conference - http://www.web2con.com/web2006/ - November 7-9 2007 - San Francisco.

The 6th International Semantic Web Conference and the 2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference, 2007 - http://iswc2007.semanticweb.org/ - Busan, Korea - November 11 (Sunday) - 15 (Thursday), 2007.

IASTED 2008 - Software Engineering - http://www.iasted.org/conferences/home-598.html - SE 2008 - as part of the 26th IASTED International Multi-Conference on APPLIED INFORMATICS - February 12 - 14, 2008 Innsbruck, Austria.

Links

Events Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/Events.htm

My Home Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/

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

Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm

End User Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm

XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm

SVG - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/SVG/SVG.htm

End User Programming Implementation Using Semantic Web Technologies

This article is about research to provide an environment for computer literate non-programmers to create software. Technologies that assist with this are Semantic Web languages, visualization, and modeling. Visualization of Semantic Web information can make it possible to use this information as a programming environment to be used without the need to write code.

It is possible to create an end-user programming environment using Semantic Web technologies, especially for modeling 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 standardized 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 modeling 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 standardized 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.

References
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/

My Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm
Semantic Web Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm

End-User Programming Using the Semantic Web

This article 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 visualization tools that can aid in their use. Berners-Lee et al (2006) explain the importance of visualization 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."

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. 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 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. Miller and Baramidze also explain their research in Discrete-Event Modelling Ontology (DeMO) for simulation and modelling. This 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.

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) 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 (2006) 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.

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