Web technologies are horizontal to several application areas, therefore they are interesting not only by themselves, but also as the most modern environment where implement prototypes relevant to different disciplines. Main WebLab goals are pursued by implementation of prototypes, participation in national and international projects, education and institutional advisor role towards public administration. To be more effective, WebLab operates in close contact with other ISTI Laboratories, Universities and private firms.
Presently, several activities are under consideration or under development:
Some of these activities are related to undergoing projects, some others will depend on contacts under way and mainly on available human resources.
Semantic Web is one of the most challenging research area
in these last years, and covers a wide variety of
activities.
This area is therefore acting as the main collector of
previous and andergoing research activities carried out
by WebLab. WebLab has both commitment to and
understanding of the full range of W3C technologies:
particularly those based on both XML and Semantic Web
technologies. A main plank of our research in the next
year is to improve the integration of XML Schema, XForms
and XQuery with RDF and OWL. Main application areas of
interest are Geographic Information Systems, databases of
cultural artefacts and semantic interoperability in
digital libraries.
A main topic of interest is the management of
(semi-)structured information. The basic consideration is
that document structure conveys some semantics, and
different document structures must be reconciled when
managing/searching etherogeneous document
collections.
In addition, ontologies are sometimes implicitly
assuming some document structures.
Hence arises the need of mapping and making interoperable
ontologies and document structures (ontologies on fields
vs. ontologies of fields).
Even if several technologies can be useful and are
effective for handling these issues, their concrete
integration must be investigated in detail, and a non
trivial effort is required to get a suitable
interoperable environment.
Adaptive Hypertext is a well established scientific area,
having roots in the most significant research work done
in the hypertext field. Application areas are in many
exciting directions, like web-learning, entertainement,
e-government, intelligent tourism and cultural
heritage.
Major aim is to develop a simple but effective framework
to support adaptive hypertext. Even if main ideas come
from previous most significant work, W3C technologies
offer now the right mean to support such research ideas
and offer a more coherent development environment. The
core system emphasizes some of the basic ideas of the
evolving web and is based upon some basic principles,
namely: simplicity, no centralization, light tagging,
weighted and semantically tagged links. The conceptual
architecture is centered upon an intelligent software
agent which can operate on documents both on the server
side as well on the client side, depending on user preferences and/or
server capabilities and workload. The
"Document", intended to be any self contained
information node, originated by a query against a
database, or by a search in a document storage system, or
just a single static "page", is supposed to be coded in
XML according to a general document model. The agent will
operate on the basis of a User Profile Model.
Identification of reasonably simple Topic set and
hierarchies can lead to a simple and effective
tool.
This framework can also be used to host many of the
other proposed projects.
We could refer to this project as "W3C technologies in everyday software engineer life". The basis is a tool (named TROOP) developed in the field of reverse engineering, which takes as input a complete operational system, parses source code, and store the information in a Repository (a relational database). On the stored data, it is possible activate several modules, which show PDGs and module dependences. Presently, the tool has been passed to a private firm, which completed the engineering of the tool. Possible extensions are related to a massive introduction of W3C technologies, namely: ·
aiming to have the tool usable in a web based environment and interoperable with other software engineering tools. The tool will therefore demonstrate how different W3C technologies can co-operate to build an interoperable reverse engineering tool. Other possible extensions are about analysing legacy systems to facilitate the migration towards new web based architectures, helping in identifying and designing web services.
This project is of great interest to the central public administration (Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri is the only governamental organization among W3C Members). Even if Usability and Accessibility are two different issues, they share some items, especially if we refer to the "semantic barrier", which originates from different cultures and traditions. The main goal is to define an appropriate quality metrics, that will take in account accessibility, adaptivity, usability, quality of service. The main emphasis will be on checking the document and site structure, stressing as adoption of W3C technologies and conformance to the basic principles of the web can lead to more effective web sites.
Presently this activity is in stand-by, looking for additional human resources.
