Category Archives: Software Development

Thomas Schandl

OntoWiki Workshop

by , Category: Software Development, Tools & Software

Days 3 and 4 of the OntoWiki KickOff Meeting in Leipzig were comprised of semantic technologies and OntoWiki development workshops.

Just like the overall organization of the project meeting was very good, so Sebastian Dietzold, Sebastian Hellmann, Michael Martin and Jörg Unbehauen did a real good job at putting the ideas behind key concepts of the semantic web across in several introductory SemWeb presentations. Their talks about various technologies from the semantic web stack like URIs, RDF and its serialisations, RDFS, SPARQL and some related tools were well suited to bring people who are relatively new to the semantic web up to speed. Links to the presentation slides can be found at the project page in the coming days.

Later Jens Lehmann outlined the new things OWL 2 brings, e. g. profiles, which are subsets of OWL 2 and which provide different degrees of expressivity and reasoning efficiency.

The last day started with Sören Auer’s presentation of their semantic wiki OpenResearch, a site where information on conferences, journals and scientists is pooled. OpenResearch is built with Semantic MediaWiki (SMW), just like our Social Semantic Web wiki.

While SMW is a very useful tool as it lowers the entry barriers for using semantic wikis, Sören also pointed out  that in comparison OntoWiki provides some important features that SMW doesn’t have:

  • SMW doesn’t use SPARQL for its queries, but a less powerful custom query language, whereas OntoWiki has full SPARQL support.
  • OntoWiki’s UI has many widgets that support the user when entering data or new properties on a page (e. g. there is an autocomplete feature for suggesting properties)
  • With SMW changes to the wiki’s semantic structure often entail manual changes to many, many pages. With OntoWiki it is easy to e.g. change poperties at any time.

For the new version of OntoWiki Sören and his team use the Zend framework and develop the Erfurt API to store and access RDF data. The Erfurt API supports SPARQL, versioning, caching and RDF based authentification/access control. It abstracts different stores using the adapter pattern, so it can be used with Virtuoso and any other store which has an interface provided by Zend_Db (MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc.) plus they are working on an interface for Redland. Find the slides for Philipp Frischmuth’s Erfurt API presentation here, the API documentation here and Norman Heino’s Zend & OntoWiki Application Framework presentation here.

Julian Jöris demonstrated how Selenium is used for acceptance testing. This is a very promising testing framework for web applications, where one can e.g. record interactions with different browsers and automatically run them as tests. Selenium has a Firefox extension to record macros and is integrated with PHPUnit.

Finally we had a very good discussion about our conX-OntoWiki integration use case and application ideas, so we left Leipzig with a pleasant anticipation of the coming co-operation in the project.

Jana Herwig

Content Versatility in the KiWi Core System

by , Category: Social Software, Software Development, Tools & Software

It’s been five months since the last Joint Work Package (WP) meeting in the KiWi – Knowledge in a Wiki – project. This morning, we gathered in Vienna for the next round – focus this time around will be on the core system (architecture developed by the WP3 team, handing over and paving the way for WP 4 team) and the use cases (Logica, Sun Microsystems) where it is of particular importance that everyone involved in the project understands the requirements of the use cases.

In the first presentation today, Sebastian Schaffert from Salzburg Research gave us a tour of two different configurations of the KiWi system. The KiWi core system is oriented towards content versatility, meaning that content items can be displayed and used in various contexts and configurations. As a service to the user, KiWi uses Javascript-based WYSIWYG Editor TinyMCE enhanced with a few home-grown plug-ins which, for instance, make it easier to set links to other wiki pages. Memorizing wiki shorthand is sometimes a challenge, so this feature helps getting things done.

Using a different skin and interface, KiWi can take various forms and shapes – even shapes where you might not spot the wiki in it at first glance. TagIT is such an example of an adaptation of the KiWi core system: a geotagging platform targeting youth in Salzburg who can locate, tag and comment on places that matter to them.

Vice versa, KiWi in its wiki incarnation displays a little map, provided a content item is enhanced with geoinformation; technically, the map on the wiki page is an interpretation of a georelated tag (learn more about complex, structured tags proposed by the KiWi Enabling Technologies Work Package in this article: Usage Data Model Day in the KiWi Project).

Take a look at the screenshots below:

KiWi-Screenshot

It is the same article that is being displayed, in the first example using the classic KiWi interface, in the second example using the TagIT interface with the article appearing as an info page.

TagIt Screenshot

This afternoon, we expect to see another configuration of the system, in a presentation about how the system is specifically tailored to the needs of Logica’s “Knowledge Management for Project Management” usecase.

N.B. The system is not yet publicly available, if you have questions, please contact Sebastian Schaffert.

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Jana Herwig

Which flavour does knowledge have on the web?

by , Category: Knowledge Management, Software Development

In recent debates within the KiWi – Knowledge in a Wiki project, the need arose to further refine and find a common understanding of the type of knowledge that is (ideally) managed and processed using (semantic) wikis. One of the proposals evolved around a conceptualization of knowledge put forward by Gabi Reinmann-Rothmeier, also dubbed the “Munich Modell” (Münchner Modell).

In the Munich Modell, knowledge comes in three states of matter: solid (like ice), liquid (like water) and gas (like water vapor).

“Frozen” knowledge is knowledge in its most tangible, manageable form, for instance the type of verified, expert-endorsed information you would find in an encyclopedia like the Encylopedia Britannica.

“Gaseous” knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge in its least consolidated form: think for instance of the type of heated debate you might have with folks in a pub, which is arguably the least structured, most uncontrollable, but also the most engaging type of knowledge!

And the “liquid” form of knowledge, eventually, is the common knowledge of day-to-day-life. It’s probably fair to say that it becomes obvious mostly when in the process of changing its state of matter: When it is calibrated against “frozen” or informational knowledge or when it is debated, becomes “gaseous” knowledge that informs action. (If you’d like to know more about the Munich model and are able to read German, you might want to download the original article here – PDF, 365 KB).

When talking about knowledge that is managed, used or, respectively, that evolves online, I think it also makes sense to pay some attention to the type of community that is preferred by particular online tools or environments. The particular flavour of knowledge, in this sense, is simultaneously characterized and shaped by the state of matter of knowledge and the form of the community that applies.

N.B. The following is not an immediate translation of the “Munich model”, but rather a reconceptualization which tries to also consider that different community models (and their implementation through IT) also play a role for the whole spectrum of knowledge management on and with the web (e.g. for online communication and interaction, online publishing and documentation and maintenance of web infrastructures).

Web-Flavour 1: The Blogosphere – gas, gas, gas!

Hmm… sniff it! This is the flavour I like best because it is my flavour. On the blogosphere (and twittersphere), knowledge is exchanged, developed further and evolves almost like in a pub debate… Continue reading →

Jana Herwig

Java’s Inner Sanctum: A Visit to Sun Microsystems’ Usability Lab in Prague

by , Category: Software Development

The walls in room 3328, the observation room at Sun Microsystem’s usability lab in Prague, are painted a subdued blue. It swallows all the light, ensuring the testing scenario is not interrupted by curious guests like us, the Kiwi-project team members who were granted the privilege of a tour of the inner sanctum of Sun’s developer den. Through the one-way mirror, we can see a rosy-cheeked developer, talking to himself in Czech, interrupted by little sips from a coke bottle. He does not see us. The fact that very few of us understand Czech gives the situation an even more experimental appeal.

Sun Usabilty Lab, Prague
The new usability lab at Sun Microsystems, Prague

Jakub Franc, the cognitive psychologists in charge of the design of the study, explains to us that Sun rely on the Think Aloud method and observation in most of their test cases, rather than analyzing data from biofeedback sensors or eye-tracking devices. “Eye-tracking is good for testing the usability of web sites,” he says, “but for our purposes, the think aloud method, where the test person describes what he does and thinks, has greater benefits to offer.” The authenticity of the tasks to be performed in the study is a key: The developer behind the sound-proof glass wall is currently busy importing his own PHP application into NetBeans, Sun’s open source development environment, while the interaction designers and developers who created the tested module observe. A typical testing scenario lasts about 90 minutes, with the final 20 minutes consisting of an interview. “I always tell the testers that it’s not their fault if they fail to perform a task,” says Jakub. “If they fail, it’s the product’s fault. After all, that’s why we’re testing it.”

Before a software product is tested in its design or redesign phase, the ideal candidates are identified based on the results of questionnaires that are sent out to people in the tester database. The database includes both users of open source software as well as of competitive products, with the ideal test sample consisting of people who represent the whole spectrum of the target group, ranging from expert to newbie – and they must not necessarily be open source enthusiasts: “We offer a relatively high reward of 1000 CZK* as we want testers from all levels and backgrounds and not just the volunteering enthusiasts.”

Until Sun Microsystems moved into their new building in 2006, they collaborated with the Department of Computer Science at Czech Technical University (CTU), where they set up the very first usability lab in the Czech Republic in 2004. The deal was that Sun would supply the equipment and know-how, and CTU would supply the space and construction. Both institutions shared the facility until, after three years, all usage rights and equipment were transferred to CTU. One of the features of the new lab is the one-way mirror – the previous one relied on video observation: “From our experience, despite the fact that some participants feel less comfortable in this set-up, it makes a difference to observers”, writes Jiri Mzourek on his, i.e. one of the many Sun blogs, “they feel more connected to the participants”.

Jakub Franc
Jakub Franc, cognitive psychologist and usability researcher

Even though there is now an in-house usability lab at Sun, the collaboration between Sun and CTU continues, in particular in research and design projects. Students participate in projects led by Sun that focus on Sun products, learning about research methodology as well as gaining experience in project management in a real business environment. Jakub Franc also gives seminars in cognitive psychology and research methodology to CTU students, and is himself pursuing a PhD in environmental psychology – a relatively new discipline which, according to Jakub, deals with questions such as: “How should buildings be designed so that people are not getting lost in them? What recreational areas help people to recover from daily stress? What kinds of front gardens discourage burglars from invading the place?” In other words: Jakub studies the cognitive parameters of the usability of real objects.

Once the KiWi/Sun usecase enters the evaluation stage, the KiWi team will again be given access to the lab – but this time not as visitors, but as observers, witnessing how usable the KiWi-Wiki system really is to the inclined user. We are looking forward to the experience – and thank the designers of the lab for implementing a sound-proof wall, just in case the KiWis get emotional!

*) worth about 2 monthly passes for the metro in Prague, or 40 beers in a good pub

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