A Developer

1
A Developers Viewpoint

• Prof Mark Baker
• School of Systems Engineering
  University of Reading Tel [phone]
  E-mail Mark.Baker_at_computer.org
• Web http//acet.rdg.ac.uk/mab

2
Outline

• Who am I?
• Sakai VRE Demonstrator
• Overview,
• Enabling Technologies
• WSRP,
• Bridges.
• VERA.
• Cross Database searching.
• Thoughts.
• Conclusions.

3
Who Am I?

• Research Professor at University of Reading
• Run a group involved in developing middleware for
  Parallel and Distributed Systems.
• Worked on a number of Grid-based projects - test
  beds, performance, and tools.
• Based on this experience we have produced a
  number of tools, including
• MPJ Express - Java version of MPI
• Tycho - A wide area messaging framework with an
  integrated registry.
• GridRM - A wide area monitoring system,
• Slogger - Semantic Web-based system for
  distributed log analysis.
• More Recently we have been involved in creating
  tools and services for Portals - using portlets -
  hide backend complexity.

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Sakai VRE Demonstrator

• Partner in the JISC VRE I funded Sakai
  Demonstrator project (ends June 30 2007).
• Other partners
• Lancaster University (lead),
• Oxford University,
• Daresbury Laboratory.
• The aim of project was to create a working
  demonstrator of a VRE, based on the Sakai portal
  framework, that would enable and engage
  researchers and scientist to explore the benefits
  and capabilities of such a VRE for undertaking
  their work.

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Some Tools Developed

• Standard tools based around the JSR-168 portlet
  API
• WSRP - used to access resources from Sakai.
• Agora Communication Technology - being developed
  to support a suite of communication tools for
  Sakai.
• Bridging Technologies have been investigated to
  link to legacy applications written in Perl,
  Python and PHP.
• Security - Shibboleth Integration to allow VRE
  users to authenticate in the same way as they do
  to see other JISC-supported resources such as
  information repositories.

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Web Site - http//tyne.dl.ac.uk/Sakai/
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Enabling Technologies

• WSRP/Portlet-Bridges

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WSRP Services Plug and Play Portlets
Registry
Find
Publish
Portals
Portals
Clients
Portals
Clients
WSRP Services
Portals
Portals
WSRP Services
Portals
Portals
WSRP Services
Web Clients
Web Clients
Web Clients
Web Clients
Portals
Web Clients
Portals
Web Clients
Bind
Portals
Web Clients
Portals
Web Clients
Portals
Web Clients
Web Clients
e.g.
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WSRP - Jaffer Imported into Sakai
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PHP-JavaBridge

• Described as an XML-based network protocol.
• Designed to communicate with native scripting
  engines, which have a Java or Common Language
  Infrastructure virtual machine.
• Provides a suitable environment for PHP
  applications to run under Apache Tomcat.
• Allows Java and PHP to share sessions, in a J2EE
  environment.
• Has a number of configurations for installation
  and connections to existing Web servers.

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Examples BibAdmin Portlet
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Examples Guest Book Portlet
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Examples Guest Book Admin Portlet
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Examples Image Gallery Portlet
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Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology
(VERA)

• JISC VRE II funded project.
• Addressing user needs and aiming to enhance the
  means of efficiently documenting archaeological
  excavation and its associated finds.
• Creating a Web portal that provides tools for the
  user community, and developing utilities that
  help encapsulate the working practices of current
  researchers not so familiar with the research
  environment.

http//vera.rdg.ac.uk
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Cross Database Searching

• It is increasingly clear that researchers want to
  be able to search across multiple
  interdisciplinary databases
• The VERA project wants to identify and research
  their finds and artefacts by potentially
  undertaking searches across multiple
  archaeological databases!
• This could be aided by also being able to search
  other databases to identify manuscripts, graffiti
  or geographical features.
• The infrastructure to create portal tools for
  searching across database is really very easy!
• However, there are no standard ways of
  categorising or describing the data and
  information contained in the distributed
  databases, which means the task becomes
  tedious/hard

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Cross Database Searching

• Need to know about the database schema, which
  describes tables and records, to be able to
  undertake these searches coherently.
• Lots of interest in Semantic Web technologies for
  this purpose - XML schema, RDF, RDFS and
  Ontologies (OWL)
• But, whatever technology you use, it is still
  necessary to infer terms in one database against
  the other
• i.e. a search for street may return nothing if
  the database calls this information road.

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Thoughts

• From a scan of the areas we are interested in
  (Archaeology and Manuscript databases) it appears
  they use catalogue numbers and have limited
  metadata about entities
• Whatever search API we decide to potentially use,
  e.g. OpenSearch or SQL92, some work needs to be
  undertaken to create/provide additional metadata
  to aid the search process.
• Ideally, from a users point of view
• They login to a portal,
• Hit the search page,
• Then use pull downs and buttons to click on the
  databases, and terms they are interested in,
• Finally adding some additional text to refine the
  search,
• Click on go and lots of useful data and records
  are returned that they than refine or analyse,
• Potentially may also want to save search and
  additional data.

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Thoughts

• The VERA project are going to work with Oxfords
  Manuscript project to create a prototype portal
  service that can be used to do search across
  Archaeological and Manuscript databases.
• We are going to choose two databases and explore
  the best way of creating the additional metadata
  and cross database terms to allow efficient and
  effective searches
• Note - we do not own the databases, so will
  probably have to use a third party service for
  the annotation services.
• This may involve marking up each database in XML,
  and mapping terms with technologies like XLST or
  OWL
• Unfortunately, there is no automatic way of
  mapping these terms, so this will involve experts
  working together with CS people in the first
  instance.

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Conclusions

• Cross database searching is becoming increasingly
  important
• Not just in library systems.
• Addition data can enhance all manner analysis
  undertaken by researchers.
• Few standards in the area we are interested in.
• Limited metadata associated with entities on
  database,
• Makes the process of cross database searching
  tough, and probably a very manual process in the
  first instance to start.
• We need to explore automatic ways of inferring
  terms - would be useful to get AI folk working in
  this area.