Visual Diagrammatic Programming

With visual diagrammatic modelling it was possible to include one model within another as a software component, and demarcate responsibility for building, maintenance, and updating of each model. This was difficult using spreadsheets, and possible with non-visual programming though the link between individual responsibilities and code produce was not as clearly identified, because non-programmers cannot participate in code production. As an example, for cost modelling of an aircraft wing, different experts might build software models for wing spars, wing skins etc, and another expert might be responsible for the overall wing cost model. The wing spar and skins model would then be inserted into the overall wing cost model.

The techniques demonstrated in this thesis can aid progress towards accessing of data held using Semantic Web standards, and also other information that might be locked into particular systems such as databases, spreadsheets and enterprise systems. The translation and de-abstraction approach assists with enabling high level diagrammatic visualisations to be used and translated to computer queries. Programming using Semantic Web technologies can :-

* Assist with translating non-Semantic Web information into Semantic Web information.
* Assist in production of Semantic Web information by end-users by.
* Assist end-users to query non-Semantic Web information.

Further Visualisation Information is at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Visualisation.htm

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

Drag and Drop Visual Programming

2 main conclusions resulted from examining the history of end-user computing :-

• Research that created prototype systems for specialist users, school children, and other researchers and programmers, but failed to take make headway in the mass market can be reused with more up to date technology to assist development.

• More pragmatic research that involved creation of tools for the mass market, but which avoided more long term research issues can now be extended.

One mechanism for applying new technologies for use in end-user programming is drag and drop programming.

Repenning (2007) explains the need for enhancements to UML to aid end-user programming. Repenning also argues that "Visual programming languages using drag and drop mechanisms as the programming approach makes it virtually impossible to create syntactic errors." So "With the syntactic challenge being - more or less - out of the way we can focus on the semantic level of End-User Programming." This can make a high level model driven approach to production of better models possible. Rosson (2007) also explains about creation of a web-based drag and drop interface.

Ways that research is pursued in this thesis in order to make User Driven Programming possible are:-

1. Semantic Web and Web 2.0 approach to enabling User Generated Content.

2. User Centric Extensions to UML (Unified Modelling Language) e.g. (Vernazza, 2007) this approach also ventures into 1 and 3).

3. Visual Programming Extensions to spreadsheet type formulae based modelling enabled using approach 1.

Approach 1 is illustrated by Yahoo Pipes (2008) which provides for drag and drop editing of visual components that can combine, sort, and filter RSS data sources in order to automate web application development. This enables modelling of information, and using such diagrammatic programming combined with enabling of calculations would combine these three ways of producing applications. Yahoo Pipes enables creation of modelling applications with Semantic Web information, so this could assist in providing more incentive for provision of Semantic Web information and applications to use it.

So there is considerable overlap between these three approaches and they must be integrated within interdisciplinary research to enable user driven programming. One approach to this is a Semantic User Interface; this is explained in Vernazza (2007). This can enable Drag and Drop programming that combines the benefits of all three research approaches. The important factor is to connect the user interface with the underlying code, so the two share the same structure and users can properly see how their actions can change the actual code. This enables collaborative User-Driven programming.

References

Pipes and Filters for the Internet - http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/pipes-and-filters-for-the-inte.html - O'Reilly - Feb 7 2007 - Yahoo!'s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It's a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output.

Repenning, A., 2007. End-User Design. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar.

Rosson, M. B., 2007. Position paper for EUSE 2007 at Dagstuhl. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar.

Vernazza, L., 2007. Himalia: Model-Driven User Interfaces Using Hypermedia, Controls and Patterns In: IFAC/IFIP/IFORS IEA Symposium - Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems Seoul, Korea - September 4-6th 2007 - International Federation of Automatic Control.

Yahoo Pipes [online]. Available from: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ [Accessed May 22nd 2008].

This is a Yahoo Pipes example created for the subject of Web 2.0/AJAX -

Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for Web 2.0 - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=3e30625ebd44f24ff969ae5eef724425

An explanation of how to access and use the pipe created from a web page is at - Code Explanataion/Tutorial Freshblog - Blogger Hacks, Categories, Tips & Tricks - http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2007/03/pipes-json-and-code-for-your-website.html.

Another article I wrote on Drag and Drop programming is at http://ezinearticles.com/?Drag-and-Drop-Programming&id=671578 and information and examples at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming

Semantic Web Collaboration

There is a need for Semantic Web applications in order to increase the amount of Semantic Web information that can be searched. This could result in a virtuous circle of Semantic Web applications creating Semantic Web information, and so justifying the creation of more Semantic Web applications to access it. This research advocates the use of Semantic Web applications for modelling and end-user programming, and integration into business applications.

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. A modelling environment needs to be created by software developers in order to allow users/model builders/domain experts to create collaborative and interoperable models. This modelling environment could be created using an open standard language such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Cheung et al. (2005) demonstrate the importance of XML for interoperability and knowledge re-use. As the high (user) level translation, this would depend on tools developed in order to assist the user, provide an interface and manage the user interface. These tools are written by developers using lower level languages, in order to enable modelling by end-user modellers.

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 (as explained by Berners-Lee and Fischetti (1999). Anderson's (2007) Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) report explains that as an application becomes more popular, more people use it in order to communicate with others who use it. This enables exposing information using web technology, for re-use.

Anderson (2007) in a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) report explains how Semantic Web and Web 2.0 are related as Berners-Lee's intention in the early development of Semantic Web technologies was for pages to be interactive. Anderson's JISC report talks of Web 2.0 trends towards the "End of the software release cycle, Lightweight programming models, Software above the level of a single device, and Rich user experiences". The ontology development problem should be aided by publishing the ontology and allowing tagging of content by users, the advantages of this in creating a shared understanding of what things mean is explained by Anderson. Anderson explains that tagging by web users can generate some understanding and agreement about terms and an improved search facility, even without a formal ontology, or as a way to assist in the development and improvement of an ontology. Anderson's JISC report explains how the technologies used are enabling user-centred web applications, and the use of the web as a development platform. It explains "As a Web 2.0 concept, this idea of opening up goes beyond the open source software idea of opening up code to developers, to opening up content production to all users and exposing data for re-use and combination". Anderson (2007) establishes the need for communities to build ontologies. Software applications are needed that allow users with little software knowledge to edit and update ontologies themselves. Anderson talks of 'harnessing collective intelligence' by means of interactive collaborative software, he calls this 'distributed human intelligence'. Cayzer (2004) argues for provision of mechanisms to allow web page creators to tag their pages easily and as a natural part of the page creation. Al-Khalifa and Davis (2006) and Schmitz (2006) use this approach of user tagging combined with centralised ontology development.

Sternemann and Zelm (1999) explained that it has become necessary to research collaborative modelling and visualisation tools, because of the business trend towards global markets and decentralised organisation structures. Green et al. (2007), and Cheung et al. (2007) also explain this. So it is important to demonstrate a system that could be used to solve this problem by means of accessible, interoperable collaborative software to enable visual modelling/programming.

References

Al-Khalifa, H. S., Davis, H. C., 2006. Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds: How To Semantically Annotate Web Resource Using Folksonomies. In: Proceedings of IADIS Web Applications and Research (WAR2006).

Anderson, P. Technology and Standards Watch. 2007. JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education.
Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1999. Weaving the Web. Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X

Cayzer, S., 2004. Semantic Blogging and Decentralized knowledge Management. Communications of the ACM. Vol. 47, No. 12, Dec 2004, pp. 47-52. ACM Press.

Cheung, W. M., Maropoulos, P. G., Gao, J. X., Aziz, H., 2005. Ontological Approach for Organisational Knowledge Re-use in Product Developing Environments. In: 11th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising - ICE 2005, University BW Munich, Germany.

Cheung, W. M., Matthews, P. C., Gao, J. X., Maropoulos, P. G., 2007. Advanced product development integration architecture: an out-of-box solution to support distributed production networks. International Journal of Production Research March 2007.

Green, S., Beeson, I., Kamm, R., 2007. Process architectures and process models: opportunities for reuse. In: 8th Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development, and Support BPMDS07 and CAiSE'07 11-15 June 2007, Trondheim, Norway.

Schmitz, P., 2006. Inducing ontology from Flickr tags. In: WWW2006 Conference, Edinburgh, UK. May 22-26, 2006.

Sternemann, K. H., Zelm, M., 1999. Context sensitive provision and visualisation of enterprise information with a hypermedia based system, Computers in Industry Vol 40 (2) pp 173-184.

More Information on this subject is available at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm.
My Research - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.
Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.

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.