Modelling Data-Intensive Web Sites with OntoWeaver

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Modelling Data-Intensive Web Sites with OntoWeaver

• Knowledge Media Institute
• The Open University
• Yuangui Lei, Enrico Motta, John Domingue
• y.lei, e.motta, j.b.domingue_at_open.ac.uk

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Outline

• Motivation
• OntoWeaver Rationales
• Site View Modelling
• Presentation Modelling
• Customization Framework
• An Example
• Advantages and Limitations
• Conclusions

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Motivation

• Data-intensive web sites
• Time-consuming design process
• Few re-usable components
• Costly maintenance process
• Solutions
• Model-based web modelling methodologies
• HDM, RMM, WebML, etc.

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Current Research Practices
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Open Issues

• Limited support for the specification of site
  views
• RMM, OOHDM, HDM-Lite
• ARANEUS, WebML, OntoWebber, HERA
• Limited support for the specification of
  presentation styles and layouts
• Style sheets
• Layout design
• Limited support for customization at design time
  as well as at run time
• The customization specification is intertwined
  with the site view layer
• The aspects of customization are limited

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OntoWeaver an Ontology-Based Approach

• Goal
• to enable the process of designing ontology-based
  web applications to be carried out at the
  conceptual level
• Rationales
• Employing the notion of ontology as the back-bone
• Site View Ontology
• Presentation Ontology
• Customization Framework
• All aspects of a web site expressed declaratively
• Advantages
• Low-cost route to data-driven web applications
• All aspects of a web site amenable to reasoning
• Site Design Critiquing
• Customization

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Customization Framework
Presentation Ontology
Site View Ontology
Domain Ontology
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OntoWeaver an Ontology-Based Approach

• Goal
• to enable the process of designing ontology-based
  web applications to be carried out at the
  conceptual level
• Rationales
• Employing the notion of ontology as the back-bone
• Site View Ontology
• Presentation Ontology
• Customization Framework
• All aspects of a web site expressed declaratively
• Advantages
• Low-cost route to data-driven web applications
• All aspects of a web site amenable to reasoning
• Site Design Critiquing
• Customization

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OntoWeaver Architecture
OW Web Site
Presentation Specification
Site View Specification
Domain Ontology
Site Builder
Site Designer
Site View Presentation Ontologies
Ontology Editor
Inference Engine
Site Customizer
Online Page Builder
User Profiles
User Ontology
Customization Rule Base
Customized View
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Modelling the Site View Layer
Site
hasIndexResource
hasResource
Resource
hasMetaData
hasComponent
MetaData
Component
hasSubComponent
hasSubResource
hasCommand
hasInput
hasOutput
SubResource
Command
Output
Input
hasLinkItem
LinkItem
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Examples of the Site View Constructs
KA component
Input element
Command Element
Output Elements
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Data Component
Dynamic Output
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Site View Constructs Summary

• Composite User Interface Constructs
• Site, SiteResource, ResourceComponent
• Component Primitives
• DataComponent
• KAComponent
• SearchComponent
• Pre-defined services
• Atomic User Interface Constructs
• Output, DynamicOutput, Command, Input
• Navigational Constructs
• LinkItem, DynamicLinkItem, Parameter

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Modelling the Presentation Layer

• Presentation Styles
• Fonts, colours, etc
• Template-based approach
• Templates generic templates, widget templates,
  data component templates
• Presentation objects attaching templates with
  site view components
• Layouts
• Organization of site view components
• Layout modelling
• Text Layout
• Component Layout
• Presentation Model
• SitePresentation

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Presentation Model
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Customization Framework

• Declarative Site Model
• Site view specifications
• Site presentation specifications
• Site ontologies.
• User Ontology
• A model to enable the recording of user profiles
• Only very basic ontology is provided, typically
  this will be specialised for particular
  applications
• User Profiles
• Information about end users in terms of user
  ontology.
• Customization Rules
• Conditions
• Customization Actions
• Jess Inference Engine

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OntoWeaver Architecture
OW Web Site
Presentation Specification
Site View Specification
Domain Ontology
Site Builder
Site Designer
Site View Presentation Ontologies
Ontology Editor
Inference Engine
Site Customizer
Online Page Builder
User Profiles
User Ontology
Customization Rule Base
Customized View
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Example Building a Paper Review System

• Four types of users
• Authors
• They browse conference information
• They submit papers
• Reviewers
• They get the papers assigned for review from the
  web site
• They submit their reviews to the web site
• Program committee members
• They browse review recommendations.
• Chair
• Has access to everything, notifies authors, etc.

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Design Process

• Domain Ontology Design
• Site View Design
• Designing navigational structures
• Composing user interfaces for web pages
• Presentation Design
• Specifying visual appearance for user interface
  elements
• Specify layout for user interface elements
• Customization Design
• Identifying potential audiences
• Creating different site models for different user
  groups
• Defining customization rules for individual users
  or groups

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OntoWeaver Site Designer
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A General View
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User Group Specified Customization
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Rule-based Customization
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A Customized View For Paper Reviewers

• Reviewers get extra links for obtaining assigned
  papers and submitting reviews
• Two corresponding new web pages have been
  created
• Customized web pages are generated on the fly
  when users whose role is Reviewer login onto
  the paper review system and make requests about
  web pages.

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Advantages

• High level specification
• The design can be made much simpler
• Automatic site generation through ontology
  mapping
• Customization support
• The modular approach
• The customization framework
• Site maintenance
• Tools support for manual and semi-automatic
  maintenance

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Limitations

• Focusing on data presentation, data acquisition,
  and data querying
• Remote web services are not considered
• Semantics of web pages are not explored

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Conclusions

• OntoWeaver uses an ontology-driven approach to
  the design and development of data-intensive web
  sites.
• It provides a set of ontologies to support the
  modelling and specification of all aspects of
  data-intensive web applications.
• It provides a customization framework to allow
  the specification of customization requirements
  at a high level of abstraction.
• It provides a tool suite to support the design
  and development of data-intensive web istes.