Workpackage description: 12.1: Open demonstrators
Workpackage number: 12.1
Start date or starting event: Month 1
Lead Partner: HP (4)
Participant short name: |
ILRT |
W3C-ERCIM |
CCLRC |
HP |
STILO |
Participant number: |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Person-months per participant: |
0 |
0 |
0 |
33 |
0 |
Total number of deliverables: 8
Objectives
- Collect proposals on possible demonstrator topics based on the
examples described below, but also taking into account suggestions
from the rest of the consortium and other opportunities that arise
between now and project inception. The demonstrators will address
different topics to those described in the other
demonstrator workpackages 12.2, 12.3 and 12.4.
- Develop two high specification demonstrators using an iterative
web development methodology, and package for use as demonstrator
within outreach program
- Collate, analyse and report on lessons from demonstrator
development as feedback to tool developers and as input to the
educational outreach program and business use cases
Description of work
Pilot and demonstrator projects are a critical cornerstone of
research and development for the Semantic Web. In particular they
play three key roles within this project.
Firstly, they act as realistic application-driven tests of the
developed technology and toolkits. Existing Semantic Web toolkits
and APIs have tended to evolve bottom up based on predictions of
the functionality required; this workpackage tests these APIs
against application-driven requirements. It will give critical
guidance to the development of those interfaces and suggest new
middle-tier components to assist in application development.
Secondly, in deploying any Semantic Web based application there
will be a number of ancillary practical issues to be solved:
database-layout performance tuning, metadata management techniques,
appropriate use of provenance tracking and so forth. The
demonstrator development of necessity will address some of these
issues and lead to a body of "how to" knowledge that can speed up
future application development via the educational outreach
program.
Finally, the existence of functioning demonstrators offers
developers strong indicators of the potential applications of the
Semantic Web. Motivating examples are as important to widespread
uptake as the technical know-how and available toolkits. The
educational outreach programme is the appropriate mechanism for
exploiting such demonstrators.
Type of demonstrator
At this stage we do not fix the precise demonstrators to be
developed. As guidance we describe one broad application area we
consider promising; however new possibilities emerge by the month
and the final choice should be made as part of this workpackage.
The critical nature of the Semantic Web is that it should be a web.
It is the combination and integration of semantic data across
different sources that is key to its power. The broad class of
application we start from is one where a rich set of web-accessible
information repositories exist (or are in development) and multiple
community groups wish to subset, collate, annotate, and organize
their own views on this data. Examples of this include:
- Several web-accessible repositories of media and species
information on world flora, fauna and associated habitats are under
development by diverse groups. Each includes metadata suited to the
requirements for that repository. However, many possible user
communities have specialist annotation and search needs, for
example researches with specialist interest in species subsets.
Each community group can develop an appropriate ontology to
structure its external annotations. Furthermore, the community
group interests overlap and some cross-community search and
information sharing is possible through ontology translation.
- The web is a rich repository of educational material for use in
secondary and primary as well as tertiary education. The user
communities (different subject speciality teachers) gain experience
in which material works best in different situations for delivering
different curriculum elements and how to exploit it. Whilst some
attempts at standardising such metadata exist (ref. QCA) a key to
growing such a structured overlay on the web will be to enable
small groups of practitioners to work with manageable ontologies
matched to their own areas of interest and then combine these
community-based annotations into a (semantic) web of guidance,
indexing and advice.
- Similar situations arise with current generation digital
libraries, Again external user groups have specialist annotation,
indexing and organization needs that can be overlaid on the core
repository using group-specific ontologies to structure the
annotations.
Each of these applications has common technology requirements:
multiple scalable metadata stores, each supporting multiple
specialist user communities with their own ontologies, linked
together into a common metadata web. These features are core to the
evolution of the Semantic Web and key elements of likely
demonstrator projects to be selected
Deliverables
- Month 6: (12.1.1: chosen_demos_rationale_report) Report
describing chosen demonstrators and rationale (3 months, report,
Pub.)
- Month 8: (12.1.2: requirements_demo_1) Requirements
specification for demonstrator 1 derived from analysis in report on
chosen demonstrators (3 months, specification, Pub.)
- Month 14: (12.1.3: demo_1_impl) Demonstrator 1 made public (8
months, demonstrator, Pub.)
- Month 16: (12.1.4: demo_1_report) Public report on lessons
learned as feedback to tool developers from Demonstrator 1 (3
months, report, Pub.)
- Month 18: (12.1.5: requirements_demo_2) Public requirements
specification for demonstrator 2 derived from analysis in report on
chosen demonstrators (2 months, report, Pub.)
- Month 24: (12.1.6: demo_2_impl) Demonstrator 2 made public (8
months, demonstrator, Pub.)
- Month 26: (12.1.7: demo_2_report) Public report on lessons
learnt as feedback to tool developers from Demonstrator 2. (3
months, report, Pub.)
- Month 28: (12.1.8: demo_lessons_report) Public report on
lessons learned from the two demonstrators as feedback to tool
developers, incorporating information about how the demonstrator
was created and the tools used. (3 months, report, Pub.)