Industrial Ontologies Group Semantic and Agent Technologies in Developing Distributed Applications “Device” “Expert” “Service” Resource Agent Vagan Terziyan IT2007, Jyvaskyla, Finland,

ContentsContents Future Web –related trends; Motivation for agent technology; Motivation for semantic technology; Vision for future distributed applications; Some relevant projects and activities Case: “Ontology-Based Portal for Management of National Educational Resources” (from Ukraine); Presentation slides can be downloaded from: 

Three alternative trends of Web development Human Communities Machines, devices, computers Facilitates Human-to- Human interaction Facilitates Software-to- Software interaction Facilitates Machine-to- Machine interaction Applications, services, agents

Challenges of Distributed Systems Growing complexity and heterogeneity of computer systems and networks used in industry  need for new approaches to manage and control them IBM vision: Autonomic computing – Self-Management (includes self-configuration, self-optimization, self- protection, self-healing) Ubiquitous computing, “Internet of Things”  huge numbers of heterogeneous devices are interconnected “ nightmare of pervasive computing ” when almost impossible to centrally manage the complexity of interactions, neither even to anticipate and design it. We believe that self-manageability of a complex system requires its components to be autonomous themselves, i.e. be realised as agents. Agent Technology in SE is also considered to be facilitating the design of complex systems We also believe that interoperability among heterogeneous components can be realized by utilization of Semantic Technology.

Agent Definition [IBM]

“The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the Web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications” The Semantic Web is an initiative with the goal of extending the current Web and facilitating Web automation, universally accessible web resources, and the 'Web of Trust', providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. Semantic Web

Semantic Web: New “Users” applications agents

Semantic Web: Annotations applications agents Semantic annotations are specific sort of metadata, which provides information about particular domain objects, values of their properties and relationships, in a machine-processable, formal and standardized way.

Semantic Web: Ontologies applications agents Ontologies make metadata interoperable and ready for efficient sharing and reuse. It provides shared and common understanding of a domain, that can be used both by people and machines.

Semantic Web: Rules applications agents Logical support in form of rules is needed to infer implicit content, metadata and ontologies from the explicit ones. Rules can act as a means to draw inferences, to configure systems, to express constraints, to specify policies, to react to events/changes, to transform data, to specify behavior of agents, etc.

Semantic Web: Languages applications agents Languages are needed for machine-processable formal descriptions of: metadata (annotations) like e.g. RDF; ontologies like e.g. OWL.; rules like e.g. RuleML. The challenge is to provide a framework for specifying the syntax (e.g. XML) and semantics of all of these languages in a uniform and coherent way.

Semantic Web: Tools applications agents User-friendly tools are needed for metadata manual creation (annotating content) or automated generation, for ontology engineering and validation, for knowledge acquisition (rules), for languages parsing and processing, etc.

Semantic Web: Applications and Services applications agents Utilization of Semantic Web metadata, ontologies, rules, languages and tools enables to provide scalable Web applications and Web services for consumers and enterprises" making the web 'smarter' for people and machines.

Semantic Technology Semantic Web itself is not the main goal; “Semantic” is a useful feature of an application; Semantic Technology is efficient tool to design applications and make them smart, flexible and interoperable; Combination with modern trends like e.g. Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing, Embedded Systems; Web Services and SOA, Agent Technologies and MAS; Machine Learning, data Mining and Knowledge Discovery; Distributed, Autonomous and Self-Configurable Architectures, Grid Computing, P2P; etc. makes advantages provided by Semantic Web more visible.

Shared ontology Web users (profiles, preferences) Web access devices and communication networks Web agents / applications / software components External world resources Smart machines, devices, spaces, etc. Technological and business processes Semantic Web: which resources to annotate ? Multimedia resources Web resources / services / DBs / etc. This is just a small part of Semantic Web concern !!! Semantic annotation

GUN Concept [Industrial Ontologies Group] GUN – Global Understanding eNvironment GUN = Global Environment + Global Understanding = Proactive Self-Managed Semantic Web of Things = ( we believe ) = “Killer Application” for Semantic Web Technology

GUN and Ubiquitous Society Human-to-Human Human-to-Machine Machine-to-Human Machine-to-Machine Agent-to-Agent GUN can be considered as a kind of Ubiquitous Eco- System for Ubiquitous Society – the world in which people and other intelligent entities (ubiquitous devices, agents, etc) “live” together and have equal opportunities (specified by policies) in mutual understanding, mutual service provisioning and mutual usability.

Resources in GUN (1) Software:Software: Software and software components, operation systems, tools, Web-services, etc.; Data:Data: Electronic documents, warehouses, databases, histories, diaries, lifeblogs, digital media resources, etc. Devices:Devices: all kind of devices, machines, sensors, actuators, adapters, communicators, switches, routers, etc. and their components; Humans:Humans: Users, customers, service providers, buyers, sellers, workers, operators, experts, etc.; Communication systems and networks:Communication systems and networks: PANs, LANs, MANs, WANs, RFIDs, WiFi, WiMax, LTE, etc.

Resources in GUN (2) Organizations:Organizations: various compositions of various resources selected and integrated for certain purpose, e.g. companies, universities, networks, etc.; Processes:Processes: natural, controlled or goal-driven, dynamics of organizations; Concepts, Models and Ontologies:Concepts, Models and Ontologies: various concepts, models and ontologies, which formally describe various resources, their organizational structure, dynamics and coordination; Messages:Messages: all kind of messages various resources exchange among themselves during their lifecycle; Standards:Standards: all kind of standards according to which resources are produced, described, used, operate, communicate etc.

Core DAI platform Adaptation and personalization Proactivity and behavior Coordination and networking Autonomicity, self- management, self- configurability Metadata, semantics, ontologies Security and trust Human- centricity, GUI, Web 2.0, Wiki Industrial cases implementation Intelligence, learning, reasoning, planning … The Roadmap towards GUN Qualitative transitions

SmartResource project summary SmartResource Tekes project ( ): One of the most essential results of the SmartResource project was creation of the “Smart Resource Technology” for designing complex software systems. The technology benefits from considering each traditional system component as a “smart resource”, i.e. proactive, agent-driven, self- managing.

SC Challenge 1: General Adaptation Framework Universal reusable semantically-configurable adapters

GB Challenge 2: General Proactivity Framework Role “Feeder” description Role “SCADA” description Role “Maintenanc e worker” description Universal reusable semantically-configurable behaviors

PI Challenge 3: General Networking Framework Scenario “Predictive maintenance” description Scenario “Predictive maintenance” description Universal reusable semantically-configurable scenarios for business processes Scenario “Data integration” description Scenario “Data integration” description

UBIWARE: “Smart Semantic Middleware for Ubiquitous Computing” Funded by Tekes; In the Web: Started: 1 July 2007; Summary:  UBIWARE project will be build on the foundation laid in the SmartResource project. It aims at designing a new generation middleware platform (UBIWARE) which will allow creation of self-managed complex industrial systems consisting of mobile, distributed, heterogeneous, shared and reusable components of different nature. Partners:  IOG (AC, UJ), ABB, Fingrid, Hansa Ecura, Inno-W, Metso Automation, Metso Shared Services

PRIME: “Proactive Inter-Middleware for Integrating Embedded and Enterprise Systems” EU FP7 STREP proposal for the objective ICT : “Networked Embedded and Control Systems” ; Submitted: 8 October 2007; Summary:  The technological goal of the project is a PRIME inter- middleware which will connect industrial resources belonging to different layers through the middleware platforms that are normally used for connecting resources at the respective individual layers. Interoperability of resources of this level of heterogeneity requires wide utilization of semantic technologies to provide cross-layer communication services (data-level interoperability) to the resources and multi-agent technologies to provide collaboration-support services (functional protocol-level interoperability) for these resources. Partners: IOG (University of Jyvaskyla, Coordinator), Free University of Amsterdam, University of Athens, 4 international companies

Inter-Middleware for Intra-Enterprise Resource Integration … Layer n middleware Layer 3 middleware Layer 2 middleware Layer 1 middleware Existing tools, middleware and and platforms for resource mediation, interoperability, integration, collaborative work, etc.

PRIME project

How to make university resources interoperable? University Resources ?

Centralized data and metadata Ontology University Resources Metadata

Distributed data and centralized metadata Ontology University Resources Metadata

Distributed data and metadata University Resources Metadata Ontology Metadata

Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics, Ukraine Ontology-Based Portal for National Educational and Scientific Resources Management Masha Klymova

Actual problems AMBIGUITY: There is a problem of ambiguous information about educational and scientific resources –different information about the same resources is being managed by different organizational units; INCONSISTENCY: Inconsistency of the parameters of the resources is the result of permanent uncontrolled updates of the information about the resources without synchronization; LACK of TRUST: Reported parameters’ values are not easily verified of their correctness (it takes much time and human resources as the procedure is not automated); LACK of FLEXIBILITY: The structure of the educational and scientific processes in organization is permanently developing and this often leads to a cardinal changes of the appropriate ICT infrastructure.

Solution Creation of a flexible, standardized and personalized, secure, web-oriented information/knowledge management system for academic resources. Such system will be organized as Ontology-Based Portal for National Educational and Scientific Resources Management Academic resources are: –Organizations (Ministry, universities, institutes, schools, faculties, departments etc); –Academic documents (study programs, curricula, recommendations, instructions, manuals, textbooks, etc; –People (administration, teachers, researchers, students, etc); –Facilities (classes, computers, equipments, etc) –Scientific products (dissertations, papers, degrees) –Processes and activities (lectures, conferences, workshops, testing, etc) –Etc… all entities related to science and education and appeared in reporting documents from educational establishments

Use case scenario (1) Wanted: to rank national Universities according to e.g. following criteria: –( A ) Amount of full-time professors per student; –( B ) Amount of papers published in international journals per professor; –( C ) Amount of computer classes per student using ranking formula e.g.: Rank = 0.4 * A * B * C and provide transparency of ranking procedure and results

Use case scenario (2) Universities register each new resource online at the portal in appropriate class of the resources in the ontology: –professor; –student; –journal paper with the link to publisher; –computer class; –etc.

Use case scenario (3) Ministry of Education (for example) creates (through appropriate interface of the portal) new criteria for the universities ranking: –( A ) Amount of full-time professors per student; –( B ) Amount of papers published in international journals per professor; –( C ) Amount of computer classes per student and these criteria will be automatically transformed to the appropriate formal queries to registered resources at the portal. Based on calculations on queries output results, the values to the new criteria will be obtained, saved and constantly updated in the portal for each university.

Use case scenario (4) Ministry of Education also creates (through appropriate interface of the portal) new formula for university ranking based on the criteria: Rank = 0.4 * A * B * C and this formula will be automatically transformed to appropriate formal procedure applied to each university and their valid criteria values. Based on calculations the values of current ranks will be obtained, saved and constantly updated in the portal for each university and each registered ranking procedure.

Use case scenario (5) Transparency of the procedure: Anyone who has access to the resources registered at the portal can easily check content behind every value of every parameter of every criteria of every university For example if the value of parameter: – amount of journal papers in international publishers = 35 Then by clicking 35 one obtains the list of the papers with reference to the publisher; further clicks result to opportunity to see full text paper and the publisher web page, etc.

Other possible scenarios Ranking Accreditation Licensing Monitoring Reporting …

Modules of the system Resources` registration Tasks module AccreditationRanking Access control system Audit system System's kernel Common managing system The reports making system The Web-interface making system The interface making module Ontology store system The ontological knowledge base structure Ontology server

The interface structure Task area (e.g. “Resource registration”) The objects type selection area (e.g. “Department”) The document and parameters type selection area e.g. “Contingent of students” The object filter (e.g. “Kharkov University”) Content area Tips area

Properties of the resources Each resource registered at the portal may contain properties of two types: –computable (their value is calculated automatically based on the description joined to the field and can not be modified manually); For example, amount of full professors, average age of personnel, etc. –atomic (their values are being set evidently pointing out at some information resource or literal). For example, name of department, title of paper, telephone number etc.

Computable properties The computable properties are divided into 3 types: –The fields containing the summing operation; –The fields containing a typical formula; –The combined fields; For each of the types its own information presentation system is performed.

Ongoing projects EU Tempus Tacis SCM Project T020B06 ( ) Title: “Towards Transparent Ontology-Based Accreditation” Ministry of Science and Education of Ukraine project ( …) Title: “Ontology-Based Portal for Management and Evaluation of National Scientific and Educational Resources”

More details about Ukrainian portal Full presentation about the portal: – Seminar with the portal presentation: –Tomorrow, 2 November, 13:00, University of Jyvaskyla, Agora (Mattilanniemi 2), Room C 301 (“Aquarium”)

Summary Presentation slides can be downloaded from: – “Ask not what the Semantic Web Can do for you, ask what you can do for the Semantic Web” Hans-Georg Stork, European Union