Showing papers on "Web standards published in 2007"

RESTful Web Services

Abstract: "Every developer working with the Web needs to read this book." -- David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Rails framework "RESTful Web Services finally provides a practical roadmap for constructing services that embrace the Web, instead of trying to route around it." -- Adam Trachtenberg, PHP author and EBay Web Services Evangelist You've built web sites that can be used by humans. But can you also build web sites that are usable by machines? That's where the future lies, and that's what RESTful Web Services shows you how to do. The World Wide Web is the most popular distributed application in history, and Web services and mashups have turned it into a powerful distributed computing platform. But today's web service technologies have lost sight of the simplicity that made the Web successful. They don't work like the Web, and they're missing out on its advantages. This book puts the "Web" back into web services. It shows how you can connect to the programmable web with the technologies you already use every day. The key is REST, the architectural style that drives the Web. This book: Emphasizes the power of basic Web technologies -- the HTTP application protocol, the URI naming standard, and the XML markup languageIntroduces the Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA), a common-sense set of rules for designing RESTful web servicesShows how a RESTful design is simpler, more versatile, and more scalable than a design based on Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)Includes real-world examples of RESTful web services, like Amazon's Simple Storage Service and the Atom Publishing ProtocolDiscusses web service clients for popular programming languagesShows how to implement RESTful services in three popular frameworks -- Ruby on Rails, Restlet (for Java), and Django (for Python)Focuses on practical issues: how to design and implement RESTful web services and clients This is the first book that applies the REST design philosophy to real web services. It sets down the best practices you need to make your design a success, and the techniques you need to turn your design into working code. You can harness the power of the Web for programmable applications: you just have to work with the Web instead of against it. This book shows you how.

The emerging Web 2.0 social software: an enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education

Abstract: Web 2.0 sociable technologies and social software are presented as enablers in health and health care, for organizations, clinicians, patients and laypersons. They include social networking services, collaborative filtering, social bookmarking, folksonomies, social search engines, file sharing and tagging, mashups, instant messaging, and online multi-player games. The more popular Web 2.0 applications in education, namely wikis, blogs and podcasts, are but the tip of the social software iceberg. Web 2.0 technologies represent a quite revolutionary way of managing and repurposing/remixing online information and knowledge repositories, including clinical and research information, in comparison with the traditional Web 1.0 model. The paper also offers a glimpse of future software, touching on Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web) and how it could be combined with Web 2.0 to produce the ultimate architecture of participation. Although the tools presented in this review look very promising and potentially fit for purpose in many health care applications and scenarios, careful thinking, testing and evaluation research are still needed in order to establish ‘best practice models’ for leveraging these emerging technologies to boost our teaching and learning productivity, foster stronger ‘communities of practice’, and support continuing medical education/professional development (CME/CPD) and patient education. Background The early World Wide Web (Web 1.0) has demonstrated powerful capability to connect clinicians, patients and materials. In this paper, we explore how this connective matrix may further grow through the impact of the democratic and social nature of Web 2.0. We discuss its application to education within a health and health care context and outline some of the social web’s key features. We compare Web 2.0 with Web 1.0, and look forward to the arrival of Web 3.0—the Semantic Web. Throughout, we provide documented uses of social software such as wikis, blogs, social tagging, and emerging uses of social technology such as collaborative writing, aggregative content management, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and podcasting in health care contexts.

Scalable semantic web data management using vertical partitioning

Abstract: Efficient management of RDF data is an important factor in realizing the Semantic Web vision. Performance and scalability issues are becoming increasingly pressing as Semantic Web technology is applied to real-world applications. In this paper, we examine the reasons why current data management solutions for RDF data scale poorly, and explore the fundamental scalability limitations of these approaches. We review the state of the art for improving performance for RDF databases and consider a recent suggestion, "property tables." We then discuss practically and empirically why this solution has undesirable features. As an improvement, we propose an alternative solution: vertically partitioning the RDF data. We compare the performance of vertical partitioning with prior art on queries generated by a Web-based RDF browser over a large-scale (more than 50 million triples) catalog of library data. Our results show that a vertical partitioned schema achieves similar performance to the property table technique while being much simpler to design. Further, if a column-oriented DBMS (a database architected specially for the vertically partitioned case) is used instead of a row-oriented DBMS, another order of magnitude performance improvement is observed, with query times dropping from minutes to several seconds.

Understanding Web 2.0

Abstract: Web 2.0, the second phase in the Web's evolution, is attracting the attention of IT professionals, businesses, and Web users. Web 2.0 is also called the wisdom Web, people-centric Web, participative Web, and read/write Web. Web 2.0 harnesses the Web in a more interactive and collaborative manner, emphasizing peers' social interaction and collective intelligence, and presents new opportunities for leveraging the Web and engaging its users more effectively. Within the last two to three years, Web 2.0, ignited by successful Web 2.0 based social applications such as MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube, has been forging new applications that were previously unimaginable.

SAWSDL: Semantic Annotations for WSDL and XML Schema

Abstract: Web services are important for creating distributed applications on the Web. In fact, they're a key enabler for service-oriented architectures that focus on service reuse and interoperability. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recently finished work on two important standards for describing Web services the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0 and Semantic Annotations for WSDL and XML Schema (SAWSDL). Here, the authors discuss the latter, which is the first standard for adding semantics to Web service descriptions.

Ontology of Folksonomy: A Mash-Up of Apples and Oranges

Abstract: Ontologies are enabling technology for the Semantic Web. They are a means for people to state what they mean by the terms used in data that they might generate, share, or consume. Folksonomies are an emergent phenomenon of the social Web. They arise from data about how people associate terms with content that they generate, share, or consume. Recently the two ideas have been put into opposition, as if they were right and left poles of a political spectrum. This is a false dichotomy; they are more like apples and oranges. In fact, as the Semantic Web matures and the social Web grows, there is increasing value in applying Semantic Web technologies to the data of the social Web. This article is an attempt to clarify the distinct roles for ontologies and folksonomies, and preview some new work that applies the two ideas together—an ontology of folk-sonomy.

Bringing Semantics to Web Services with OWL-S

Abstract: Current industry standards for describing Web Services focus on ensuring interoperability across diverse platforms, but do not provide a good foundation for automating the use of Web Services. Representational techniques being developed for the Semantic Web can be used to augment these standards. The resulting Web Service specifications enable the development of software programs that can interpret descriptions of unfamiliar Web Services and then employ those services to satisfy user goals. OWL-S ("OWL for Services") is a set of notations for expressing such specifications, based on the Semantic Web ontology language OWL. It consists of three interrelated parts: a profile ontology, used to describe what the service does; a process ontology and corresponding presentation syntax, used to describe how the service is used; and a grounding ontology, used to describe how to interact with the service. OWL-S can be used to automate a variety of service-related activities involving service discovery, interoperation, and composition. A large body of research on OWL-S has led to the creation of many open-source tools for developing, reasoning about, and dynamically utilizing Web Services.

QoS-based Discovery and Ranking of Web Services

Abstract: Discovering Web services using keyword-based search techniques offered by existing UDDI APIs (i.e. Inquiry API) may not yield results that are tailored to clients' needs. When discovering Web services, clients look for those that meet their requirements, primarily the overall functionality and quality of service (QoS). Standards such as UDDI, WSDL, and SOAP have the potential of providing QoS-aware discovery, however, there are technical challenges associated with existing standards such as the client's ability to control and manage discovery of Web services across accessible service registries. This paper proposes a solution to this problem and introduces the Web service relevancy function (WsRF) used for measuring the relevancy ranking of a particular Web service based on client's preferences, and QoS metrics. We present experimental validation, results, and analysis of the presented ideas.

Truth discovery with multiple conflicting information providers on the web

Abstract: The world-wide web has become the most important information source for most of us. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee for the correctness of information on the web. Moreover, different web sites often provide conflicting information on a subject, such as different specifications for the same product. In this paper we propose a new problem called Veracity, i.e., conformity to truth, which studies how to find true facts from a large amount of conflicting information on many subjects that is provided by various web sites. We design a general framework for the Veracity problem, and invent an algorithm called TruthFinder, which utilizes the relationships between web sites and their information, i.e., a web site is trustworthy if it provides many pieces of true information, and a piece of information is likely to be true if it is provided by many trustworthy web sites. Our experiments show that TruthFinder successfully finds true facts among conflicting information, and identifies trustworthy web sites better than the popular search engines.

Success Factors for Destination Marketing Web Sites: A Qualitative Meta-Analysis

Abstract: Destination marketing organizations invest considerable amounts of money in the development of Web sites as part of their overall promotion efforts. With increasing pressure on their budgets, it becomes ever more important for these organizations to assess the effectiveness of their Web sites, evaluate the return on their investments, and derive feedback on necessary improvements. Web site evaluation measures have been proposed in many ways and various contexts over the past decade. The study presented in this article used a qualitative meta-analysis methodology to synthesize the diverse findings. A unified framework of commonly used Web site success factors emerged from the analysis and included a total of nine factors: (1) information quality; (2) ease of use; (3) responsiveness; (4) security/privacy; (5) visual appearance; (6) trust; (7) interactivity; (8) personalization; and (9) fulfillment. Additional factors to further inform Web evaluation efforts were identified based on Werthner and Klein's dime...

Advancing translational research with the Semantic Web

Abstract: A fundamental goal of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) "Roadmap" is to strengthen Translational Research, defined as the movement of discoveries in basic research to application at the clinical level. A significant barrier to translational research is the lack of uniformly structured data across related biomedical domains. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web that enables navigation and meaningful use of digital resources by automatic processes. It is based on common formats that support aggregation and integration of data drawn from diverse sources. A variety of technologies have been built on this foundation that, together, support identifying, representing, and reasoning across a wide range of biomedical data. The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG), set up within the framework of the World Wide Web Consortium, was launched to explore the application of these technologies in a variety of areas. Subgroups focus on making biomedical data available in RDF, working with biomedical ontologies, prototyping clinical decision support systems, working on drug safety and efficacy communication, and supporting disease researchers navigating and annotating the large amount of potentially relevant literature.

Social Networks and the Semantic Web

Abstract: A formal, web-based representation of social networks is both a necessity in terms of infrastructure as well as a prominent application for the Semantic Web. In this paper we present three advances in exploiting the opportunity of semantically-enriched network data: (1) an ontology for the representation of social networks and relationships (2) a hybrid system for online data acquisition that combines traditional web mining techniques with the collection of Semantic Web data (2) a case study highlighting some of the possible analysis of this data using methods from Social Network Analysis, the branch of sociology concerned with relational data.

Discovering the best web service

Abstract: Major research challenges in discovering Web services include, provisioning of services across multiple or heterogeneous registries, differentiating between services that share similar functionalities, improving end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), and enabling clients to customize the discovery process. Proliferation and interoperability of this multitude of Web services have lead to the emergence of new standards on how services can be published, discovered, or used (i.e. UDDI, WSDL, SOAP). Such standards can potentially provide many of these features and much more, however, there are technical challenges associated with existing standards. One of these challenges is the client.s ability to control the discovery process across accessible service registries for finding services of interest. This work proposes a solution to this problem and introduces the Web Service Relevancy Function (WsRF) used for measuring the relevancy ranking of a particular Web service based on QoS metrics and client preferences. We present experimental validation, results, and analysis of the presented ideas.

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools

Abstract: Web 2.0 has arrived--find out how it can transform teaching and learning!What is Web 2.0? Once upon a time, Web sites were isolated information 'silos'--all content and no functionality. Today, the next generation of Web sites gives power to the end-user, providing visitors with a new level of customization, interaction, and participation. Many Web sites now allow users to upload, categorize, and share content easily. Weblogs and podcasts allow anyone to publish or broadcast on any topic. Wikis provide information that is constantly updated by the end-user. Open-source software is free and customizable. These new technologies are changing our relationship to the Internet.What can Web 2.0 tools offer educators? Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging Web 2.0 technologies and their use in the classroom and in professional development. Topics include blogging as a natural tool for writing instruction, wikis and their role in project collaboration, podcasting as a useful means of presenting information and ideas, and how to use Web 2.0 tools for professional development. Also included are a discussion of Web 2.0 safety and security issues and a look toward the future of the Web 2.0 movement. Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools is essential reading for teachers, administrators, technology coordinators, and teacher educators.Also available: Database Magic: Using Databases to Teach Curriculum in Grades 4-12 - ISBN 1564842452 What Works in K-12 Online Learning - ISBN 1564842363 Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education - ISBN 1564842479The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is the trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy and leadership for innovation. ISTE is the premier membership association for educators and education leaders engaged in improving teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in PK-12 and teacher education. Home of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET), and ISTE's annual conference (formerly known as the National Educational Computing Conference, or NECC), ISTE represents more than 100,000 professionals worldwide. We support our members with information, networking opportunities, and guidance as they face the challenge of transforming education. Some of the areas in which we publish are: -Web. 2.0 in the classroom-RSS, podcasts, and more -National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) -Professional development for educators and administrators -Integrating technology into the classroom and curriculum -Safe practices for the Internet and technology -Educational technology for parents

The Semantic Web Vision: Where Are We?

Abstract: Semantic Web developers have adopted OWL to represent knowledge. OWL, or a language with similar theoretical foundations, will lead the way in the semantic exploration of the Web. Currently, Web-based standards are the preferred way to represent knowledge. Furthermore, respondents mainly use ontologies to allow both humans and computers to understand knowledge and domain models. Web 3.0 can bring a new breed of spectacular applications compared to Web 2.0. with the same magnitude that separates Web 2.0 from Web 1.0.

Towards domain-independent information extraction from web tables

Abstract: Traditionally, information extraction from web tables has focused on small, more or less homogeneous corpora, often based on assumptions about the use of tags. A multitude of different HTML implementations of web tables make these approaches difficult to scale. In this paper, we approach the problem of domain-independent information extraction from web tables by shifting our attention from the tree-based representation of webpages to a variation of the two-dimensional visual box model used by web browsers to display the information on the screen. The there by obtained topological and style information allows us to fill the gap created by missing domain-specific knowledge about content and table templates. We believe that, in a future step, this approach can become the basis for a new way of large-scale knowledge acquisition from the current "Visual Web.

Exhibit: lightweight structured data publishing

Abstract: The early Web was hailed for giving individuals the same publishing power as large content providers. But over time, large content providers learned to exploit the structure in their data, leveraging databases and server side technologies to provide rich browsing and visualization. Individual authors fall behind once more: neither old-fashioned static pages nor domain-specific publishing frameworks supporting limited customization can match custom database-backed web applications. In this paper, we propose Exhibit, a lightweight framework for publishing structured data on standard web servers that requires no installation, database administration, or programming. Exhibit lets authors with relatively limited skills-those same enthusiasts who could write HTML pages for the early Web-publish richly interactive pages that exploit the structure of their data for better browsing and visualization. Such structured publishing in turn makes that data more useful to all of its consumers: individual readers get more powerful interfaces, mashup creators can more easily repurpose the data, and Semantic Web enthusiasts can feed the data to the nascent Semantic Web.

Progress in Web-based decision support technologies

Abstract: World Wide Web technologies have transformed the design, development, implementation and deployment of decision support systems. This article reviews and summarizes recent technology developments, current usage of Web-based DSS, and trends in the deployment of such systems. Many firms use the Web as a medium to convey information about DSS products or to distribute DSS software. The use of Web-based computation to provide product demonstrations or to deploy DSS applications for remote access remains less common. The academic literature on Web-based DSS is largely focused on applications and implementations, and only a few articles examine architectural issues or provide design guidelines based on empirical evidence.

X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors

Abstract: X3D is the ISO-standard scene-graph language for interactive 3D graphics on the Web. A new course is available for teaching the fundamentals of 3D graphics using Extensible 3D (X3D). Resources include a detailed textbook, an authoring tool, hundreds of example scenes, and detailed slidesets covering each chapter. The published book is commercially available, while all other coursemodule resources are provided online free under an open-source license. Numerous other commercial and open resources are available for X3D, which also serves as an interchange format. The supported course has been taught for many years, successfully introducing masters' students to the principles and techniques of 3D graphics without requiring programming experience. This course and module appears to be ready for undergraduate use. Expressing 3D within the domain of Extensible Markup Language (XML) for the Web is novel and has the potential to open up computer graphics to many new practitioners. This combined resource is intended broadly support computer graphics education and skills for web authors.

Web Services Policy 1.5 - Framework

Abstract: The Web Services Policy 1.5 - Framework provides a general purpose model and corresponding syntax to describe the policies of entities in a Web services-based system. Web Services Policy Framework defines a base set of constructs that can be used and extended by other Web services specifications to describe a broad range of service requirements and capabilities.

The Web 2.0 way of learning with technologies

Abstract: While there is a lot of hype around various concepts associated with the term Web 2.0 in industry, little academic research has so far been conducted on the implications of this new approach for the domain of education. Much of what goes by the name of Web 2.0 can, in fact, be regarded as new kinds of learning technologies, and can be utilised as such. This paper explains the background of Web 2.0, investigates the implications for knowledge transfer in general, and then discusses its particular use in eLearning contexts with the help of short scenarios. The main challenge in the future will be to maintain essential Web 2.0 attributes, such as trust, openness, voluntariness and self-organisation, when applying Web 2.0 tools in institutional contexts.

Unleashing Web 2.0: From concepts to creativity

Abstract: Vossen is both an IS & CS Professor at the University of Muenster, and also served as European Editor-in-Chief for Elseviers international information systems journal. Hagemann is his PhD student whose area of research is Web technology.

Embracing "Web 3.0"

Abstract: With the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) - the languages that power the semantic Web - becoming standards and new technologies reaching maturity for embedding semantics in existing Web pages and querying RDF knowledge stores, something exciting is clearly happening in this area. Whereas the research community is widely exploiting the AI technologies that motivate, in particular, the OWL DL sublanguage, the languages' more "Webby" features - sometimes referred to as the "dark side" of the semantic Web - are powering the Web 3.0 technology space

The two cultures: mashing up web 2.0 and the semantic web

Abstract: A common perception is that there are two competing visions for the future evolution of the Web: the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. A closer look, though, reveals that the core technologies and concerns of these two approaches are complementary and that each field can and must draw from the other's strengths. We believe that future web applications will retain the Web 2.0 focus on community and usability, while drawing on Semantic Web infrastructure to facilitate mashup-like information sharing. However, there are several open issues that must be addressed before such applications can become commonplace. In this paper, we outline a semantic weblogs scenario that illustrates the potential for combining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies, while highlighting the unresolved issues that impede its realization. Nevertheless, we believe that the scenario can be realized in the short-term. We point to recent progress made in resolving each of the issues as well as future research directions for each of the communities.

Semantic Web Services: Theory, Tools and Applications

Abstract: The Semantic Web proposes the mark-up of content on the Web using formal ontologies that structure underlying data for the purpose of comprehensive and transportable machine understanding. Semantic Web Services: Theory, Tools and Applications brings contributions from researchers, scientists from both industry and academia, and representatives from different communities to study, understand, and explore the theory, tools, and applications of the semantic Web. Semantic Web Services: Theory, Tools and Applications binds computing involving the Semantic Web, ontologies, knowledge management, Web services, and Web processes into one fully comprehensive resource, serving as the platform for exchange of both practical technologies and far reaching research.