Ontology-driven User Interfaces Organisation Person CSIRO Activity CLW EIS Jonathan Tech Session: Ontology-driven User Interfaces Role Research Software Engineer Topic User interface design Semantic Web Ontology Ontology-driven User Interfaces Knowledge capture and use is a critical part of our daily activities for interoperability, however, much of this is captured in multiple different formats, schemas, and even semantic representations or is left implicit. Semantic Web technologies allow the integration of resource definitions and terms for users through the capture of semantics using ontologies with machine-readable knowledge representation languages, such as the Web Ontology Language, and standard schemas, such as SKOS. At the same time, web technologies and libraries have provided the ability to render rich, interactive user interfaces efficiently. This talk explores how we can leverage ontologies for driving user interfaces and software systems using modern web technologies and libraries. We also step through some demos of ontology-driven user interfaces. Jonathan Yu | Research software engineer | 21 June 2013 CSIRO Land and Water | Environmental Information Systems

Overview (Semantic view) Organisation Person is-a is-a is-a CSIRO Activity is-a CLW EIS Jonathan works in part-of is-a part-of presenter hosts works as Tech Session: Ontology-driven User Interfaces Role interest interest is-a Research Software Engineer related to Topic is-a is-a is-a Semantic Web User interface design Ontology related to

Overview Problem Recap of ontologies and semantic web User interfaces: Rich Internet Applications Ontology-driven user interfaces Presentation title | Presenter name

Problem – NetCDF header example Try to interpret these NetCDF metadata headers... float DetR_N(record, k_centre, j_centre, i_centre) ; DetR_N:tracer = "true" ; DetR_N:coordinates = "t, x_centre, y_centre, z_centre" ; DetR_N:units = "mg N m-3" ; DetR_N:type = 4 ; float Chl_MIM(time, latitude, longitude) ; Chl_MIM:_FillValue = -999.f ; Chl_MIM:long_name = "Chlorophyll concentration, MIM SVDC on Rrs" ; Chl_MIM:units = "ug/l" ;

Problem – WDTF XML example Try to interpret this... <wdtf:result> <wdtf:TimeSeries> <wdtf:defaultInterpolationType>InstVal</wdtf:defaultInterpolationType> <wdtf:defaultUnitsOfMeasure>ML</wdtf:defaultUnitsOfMeasure> <wdtf:defaultQuality>quality-A</wdtf:defaultQuality> <wdtf:timeValuePair time="2009-03-11T01:29:35+10:00“> 232.2643 </wdtf:timeValuePair> </wdtf:TimeSeries> </wdtf:result> Presentation title | Presenter name

Problem Semantics (meaning) are often kept implicit in syntax or in heads of people and can result in inconsistency, ambiguity, errors in the documentation, data, and software produced Solution Formalise semantics explicitly Build tools to support its use in documentation, annotation of datasets, and software engineering activities

Ontologies enable specification of semantics concepts (classes and instances) the relationships between concepts set of logical assertions that apply Presentation title | Presenter name

Formalising ontologies as explicit artifacts Provides: context and the ability to precisely reference meaning shared understanding of the semantics used between stakeholders ability to leverage logics-based reasoning and querying bind to / reuse of growing list of public ontologies Using RDF-based ontology languages and vocabularies allow Machine readable Collection of truth statements and propositions Draw inferences or possible states “Web enabled” RDF-based ontology languages are part of the semantic web stack

The semantic web ‘Status quo’ web : web of documents The semantic web: web of data <a href...> Melbourne Australia gn:parentCountry Victoria gn:parentFeature “-37.814” “144.96332” pos:lat pos:long Move away from implicit or adhoc semantics in documents to having semantics or meaning available with documents, with the data. Performing event detection over real-time sensor data using ontology-driven approaches | Jonathan Yu

Uses of RDF-based ontologies/vocabularies: Knowledge representation Some uses on the producer side... 1. Use ontologies to perform semantic annotation of datasets. E.g. ML refers to the unit of measure, MegaLitres 2. Representing domain knowledge e.g. Hydrological concepts - flow, rainfall 3. Promote consistency in your application E.g. Black Mountain is a geospatial feature located in Canberra, not the class of black coloured mountains Presentation title | Presenter name

Uses of RDF-based ontologies/vocabularies: Driving software applications and services Some uses on the consumer side 1. Data Discovery and semantic search 2. Driving user interfaces Have been doing this in some projects in varying degrees: eReefs, WDTS, Tools and Docs, SIRF, Geofabric Presentation title | Presenter name

XML / JSON / RDF NetCDF / SHP / etc. The “www” today HTML, AJAX, RIA Web Apps Humans Web Server Web ------ Application Server XML / JSON / RDF NetCDF / SHP / etc. Computers / Machines Presentation title | Presenter name

Web Applications: Modern UI Development Modern web UI development for Rich Internet Applications (RIA) HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS PHP, JSP, Javascript AJAX components Frameworks for developing modern web applications Javascript: jQuery, Dojo Python: Django, web2py Microsoft : Visual C# / ASP.NET Java - JavaServer Faces based (JSF): RichFaces, ICEfaces MyFaces, ADF Faces Frameworks for generating RIA Google Web Toolkit Vaadin Pyjamas Presentation title | Presenter name

Ontology-driven UI Some powerful ontology libraries available: Ontology APIs, e.g. OWL-API, Jena Semantic inference engines, e.g. Pellet Rules engine, e.g. SPIN SPARQL querying, e.g. Jena ARQ Not immediately usable by common web application frameworks Developed some wrappers using GWT to provide access to these libraries https://github.com/jyucsiro/gwt-ontology-lib Demonstrate what is possible with ontology-driven UIs Presentation title | Presenter name

Ontology-driven UI using GWT Ontology Lib HTML, AJAX, RIA Web application server Web UI Framework: GWT (List boxes, portlets, trees, layouts, etc.) Humans OWL / RDF Interfaces Inferences Queries Rules GWT wrapper to ontology libraries and toolkits OWL-api: Native Java interface to OWL ontologies Jena: Native Java interface to OWL ontologies and querying using SPARQL Pellet: Inferencing using ontology reasoners RDF documents and triple stores Pellet SPARQL SPIN OWL-api Apache Jena Presentation title | Presenter name

Examples using GWT Ontology Library Presentation title | Presenter name

Thank you Land and Water Jonathan Yu Research Software Engineer e jonathan.yu@csiro.au w www.csiro.au/clw Land and Water