Use Cases and the VSTO

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Use Cases and the VSTO

• Fox, P. McGuinness, D. Cinquini , L. West, P.,
  Garcia, J. Zednik, S., Benedict, J. Middleton,
  D.
• High Altitude Observatory, NCAR
• McGuinness Associates
• Computing and Information Systems Lab, NCAR

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Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO)

• a distributed, scalable education and research
  environment for searching, integrating, and
  analyzing observational, experimental, and model
  databases.
• subject matter covers the fields of solar,
  solar-terrestrial and space physics
• it provides virtual access to specific data,
  model, tool and material archives containing
  items from a variety of space- and ground-based
  instruments and experiments, as well as
  individual and community modeling and software
  efforts bridging research and educational use
• 3 year NSF-funded (OCI/SCI) project in its third
  year

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Semantic Web as a Technical Approach Basic
elements

• Use case(s)
• Team - mixed skills
• Perform analysis
• Develop model/ontology
• Use tools
• Adopt technical approach and architecture
• Leverage existing infrastructure API, portal and
  web services
• Open World evolve, iterate, redesign, redeploy

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Ontology Spectrum
Thesauri narrower term relation
Selected Logical Constraints (disjointness,
inverse, )
Frames (properties)
Formal is-a
Catalog/ ID
Informal is-a
Formal instance
General Logical constraints
Terms/ glossary
Value Restrs.
Originally from AAAI 1999- Ontologies Panel by
Gruninger, Lehmann, McGuinness, Uschold, Welty
updated by McGuinness. Description in
www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-
come-of-age-abstract.html
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Content Coupling Energetics and Dynamics of
Atmospheric Regions WEB
Community data archive for observations and
models of Earth's upper atmosphere and
geophysical indices and parameters needed to
interpret them. Includes browsing capabilities
by periods, instruments, models,
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Science use cases

• Template 1 Plot the values of Parameter X as
  taken by instrument description or instance Y
  subject to constraint Z during the time period W
  in style S.
• Example 1 Plot the observed/measured Neutral
  Temperature (Parameter) looking in the vertical
  direction for Millstone Hill Fabry-Perot
  interferometer (Instrument) during January 2000
  (Temporal Domain) as a time series (or in a way
  that makes sense for the data).
• Template 2 Find and retrieve image data of the
  type for images of content Y during times
  described by Z.
• Example 2 Find and retrieve quick look and
  science data for images of the solar corona
  during a recent observation period.

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Science and technical use cases

• Template 3 Find data for parameter X
  constrained by Y during times described by Z.
• Example 3 Find data, which represents the state
  of the neutral atmosphere anywhere above 100km
  and toward the Arctic circle (above 45N) at any
  time of high geomagnetic activity.
• Template 4 Assemble a visual representation of a
  sequence of images X over a time period Y
• Example 4 Create a movie of the white light
  solar corona during the whole-Sun campaign month
  in 2005.
• Template 5 Infer data representing a state of
  one physical domain X that changes in response to
  an external event Y from another physical setting
  Z.
• Example 5 Find and plot/animate data that
  represents the terrestrial ionospheric effects of
  a geo-effective solar storm.

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Example analysis of the use case
GeoMagneticActivity has ProxyRepresentation Geophy
sicalIndex is a ProxyRepresentation (in Realm of
Neutral Atmosphere) Kp is a GeophysicalIndex
hasTemporalDomain daily hasHighThreshold
xsd_number 7 Date/time when KP 7
Specification needed for query to
CEDARWEB Instrument Parameter(s) Operating
Mode Observatory Date/time Return-type data

• Input
• Physical properties State of neutral atmosphere
• Spatial
• Above 100km
• Toward arctic circle (above 45N)
• Conditions
• High geomagnetic activity
• Action Return Data

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Translating the Use-Case - ctd.
NeutralAtmosphere is a subRealm of
TerrestrialAtmosphere hasPhysicalProperties
NeutralTemperature, Neutral Wind,
etc. hasSpatialDomain 0,360,0,180,100,150 h
asTemporalDomain NeutralTemperature is a
Temperature (which) is a Parameter
Specification needed for query to
CEDARWEB Instrument Parameter(s) Operating
Mode Observatory Date/time Return-type data
Input Physical properties State of neutral
atmosphere Spatial Above 100km Toward arctic
circle (above 45N) Conditions High geomagnetic
activity Action Return Data
FabryPerotInterferometer is a Interferometer,
(which) is a Optical Instrument (which) is a
Instrument hasFilterCentralWavelength
Wavelength hasLowerBoundFormationHeight
Height ArcticCircle is a GeographicRegion hasLati
tudeBoundary hasLatitudeUpperBoundary
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http//dataportal.ucar.edu/schemas/vsto_all.owl
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Creating Ontologies CMAP, UML Options

• White board, text file
• CMAP Ontology Editor (concept mapping tool IHMC)
• Drag/drop visual development of classes, subclass
  (is-a) and property relationship
• Reads and produces an OWL file (and other
  formats)
• Support for formal convention (is-a, is-part-of,
  )
• Suggest avoid making your CMAP a graph
  (directed-cyclic)
• New release of Object Definition Metamodel
• Ontology Definition Metamodel/Meta Object
  Facility (OMG) for UML
• Provides standardized notation
• Available from OMG - http//www.omg.org/technology
  /documents/modeling_spec_catalog.htm
• Books likely to be available soon

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Software development tools

• Protégé, w/ plug-ins - some better than others
• SWOOP (OWL analyzer, partitioner)
• Jena (http//jena.sourceforge.net/)
• Pellet reasoner
• Eclipse (full integrated development environment
  for Java http//www.eclipse.org/)
• SPARQL for queries
• Lots of others

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VSTO - semantics and ontologies in an operational
environment vsto.hao.ucar.edu, www.vsto.org
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VO API
Web Serv.
VO Portal
Knowledge as service!
Query, access and use of data

• Mediation Layer
• Ontology - capturing concepts of Parameters,
  Instruments, Date/Time, Data Product (and
  associated classes, properties) and Service
  Classes
• Maps queries to underlying data
• Generates access requests for metadata, data
• Allows queries, reasoning, analysis, new
  hypothesis generation, testing, explanation, etc.

Semantic mediation layer - VSTO - low level
Standard, or not, vocabularies and schema
Metadata, schema, data
DBn
DB2
DB3

DB1
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Technical use cases

• Template 6 Expose semantically enabled, smart
  data query services via a web services interface
  allowing composite query formation in arbitrary
  workflow order.
• Example 6 Provide query services for the Virtual
  Ionosphere-Thermospere-Mesosphere Observatory
  that retrieve query results and data filtered
  constraints on Instrument, Date-Time, and
  Parameter in any order and with constraints
  included in any combination.

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Semantic Web Services
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Semantic Web Services
OWL document returned using VSTO ontology - can
be used both syntactically or semantically
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Semantic Web Services
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Semantic Web Services
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Developing ontologies

• Use cases and small team (7-8 2-3 domain
  experts, 2 knowledge experts, 1 software
  engineer, 1 facilitator, 1 scribe)
• Identify classes and properties (leverage
  controlled vocab.)
• VSTO - narrower terms, generalized easily
• Data integration - required broader terms
• Adopted conceptual decomposition (SWEET)
• Imported modules when concepts were orthogonal
• Minimal properties to start, add only when needed
• Mid-level to depth - i.e. neither top-down nor
  bottom-up
• Review, review, review, vet, vet, vet, publish -
  www.planetont.org (experiences, results, lessons
  learned, AND your ontologies AND discussions)
• Only code them (in RDF or OWL) when needed (CMAP,
  )
• Ontologies small and modular

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Semantic Web Benefits

• Unified/ abstracted query workflow Parameters,
  Instruments, Date-Time
• Decreased input requirements for query in one
  case reducing the number of selections from eight
  to three
• Generates only syntactically correct queries
  which was not always insurable in previous
  implementations without semantics
• Semantic query support by using background
  ontologies and a reasoner, our application has
  the opportunity to only expose coherent query
  (portal and services)
• Semantic integration in the past users had to
  remember (and maintain codes) to account for
  numerous different ways to combine and plot the
  data whereas now semantic mediation provides the
  level of sensible data integration required, now
  exposed as smart web services
• understanding of coordinate systems,
  relationships, data synthesis, transformations,
  etc.
• returns independent variables and related
  parameters
• A broader range of potential users (PhD
  scientists, students, professional research
  associates and those from outside the fields)
• VSTO http//vsto.hao.ucar.edu,
  http//www.vsto.org, http//www.egy.org/VOiG
• Peter Fox pfox_at_ucar.edu, Deborah McGuinness
  dlm_at_ksl.stanford.edu

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VSTO experience

• Conceptual model and architecture developed by
  combined team KR experts, domain experts, and
  software engineers
• Semantic framework developed and built with a
  small, cohesive, carefully chosen team in a
  relatively short time (deployments in 1st year)
• Production portal released, includes security,
  etc. with community migration (and so far
  endorsement)
• VSTO ontology version 1.0, (vsto.owl)
• Web Services encapsulation of semantic interfaces
  
• More solar-terrestrial use cases to drive the
  completion of the ontologies - filling out the
  instrument ontology
• Adding data sources, e.g. PSPT, ECHO, Hinode
  vector magnetic fields
• Using ontologies and data framework in other
  applications (volcanoes, climate, )

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Issues for Virtual ObservatoriesMany we are
addressing with new use cases

• Scaling to large numbers of data providers
• Crossing disciplines
• Security, access to resources, policies
• Interoperability at a variety of levels (3)
• Branding and attribution (where did this data
  come from and who gets the credit, is it the
  correct version, is this an authoritative
  source?)
• Provenance/derivation (propagating key
  information as it passes through a variety of
  services, copies of processing algorithms, )
• Data quality, preservation, stewardship