Anna Gerber

Transformation: The Missing Link of MDA

In this paper we explore the issue of transforming models to models, an essential part of the OMGs Model Driven Architecture (MDA) vision. Drawing from the literature and our experiences implementing a number of transformations using different technologies, we explore the strengths and weaknesses of the different technologies and identify requirements for a transformation language for performing the kind of model-to-model transformations required to realise the MDA vision.

Model transformation: a declarative, reusable patterns approach

The MOF (Meta Object Facility) query, view and transformation RFP, issued by OMG will result in a key enabling technology for model-driven development of large distributed systems. We have designed a transformation language which will meet the requirements of this RFP, and several others besides. The language is declarative and patterns based. Transformation descriptions are explicitly reusable and modular. Rules that make up such descriptions may be aspect-driven, allowing for transformations to be written to address semantic concepts rather than structural features. This paper introduces the language and its rationale, and shows how it is used to solve s small but non-trivial MDA problem.

Harvana: harvesting community tags to enrich collection metadata

Collaborative, social tagging and annotation systems have exploded on the Internet as part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Systems such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Connotea and LibraryThing, provide a community-driven approach to classifying information and resources on the Web, so that they can be browsed, discovered and re-used. Although social tagging sites provide simple, user-relevant tags, there are issues associated with the quality of the metadata and the scalability compared with conventional indexing systems. In this paper we propose a hybrid approach that enables authoritative metadata generated by traditional cataloguing methods to be merged with community annotations and tags. The HarvANA (Harvesting and Aggregating Networked Annotations) system uses a standardized but extensible RDF model for representing the annotations/tags and OAI-PMH to harvest the annotations/tags from distributed community servers. The harvested annotations are aggregated with the authoritative metadata in a centralized metadata store. This streamlined, interoperable, scalable approach enables libraries, archives and repositories to leverage community enthusiasm for tagging and annotation, augment their metadata and enhance their discovery services. This paper describes the HarvANA system and its evaluation through a collaborative testbed with the National Library of Australia using architectural images from PictureAustralia.

MOF to EMF: there and back again

The OMGs Meta-Object Facility (MOF) and the open source Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF) are two popular meta-modelling frameworks, created to meet similar (but not identical) requirements. A means of translating MOF to EMF and vice versa is required to enable the two communities to leverage one anothers specifications. This paper explains the relationship between the MOF and EMF meta-models and describes the XSLT-based translation tool, E-MORF, to convert between MOF and EMF.

A Compound Object Authoring and Publishing Tool for Literary Scholars based on the IFLA-FRBR

This paper presents LORE (Literature Object Re-use and Exchange), a light-weight tool which is designed to allow literature scholars and teachers to author, edit and publish compound information objects encapsulating related digital resources and bibliographic records. LORE enables users to easily create OAI-ORE-compliant compound objects, which build on the IFLA FRBR model, and also enables them to describe and publish them to an RDF repository as Named Graphs. Using the tool, literary scholars can create typed relationships between individual atomic objects using terms from a bibliographic ontology and can attach metadata to the compound object. This paper describes the implementation and user interface of the LORE tool, as developed within the context of an ongoing case study being conducted in collaboration with AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, which focuses on compound objects for teaching and research within the Australian literature studies community.

A collaborative scholarly annotation system for dynamic web documents: a literary case study

This paper describes ongoing work within the Aus-e-Lit project at the University of Queensland to provide collaborative annotation tools for Australian Literary Scholars. It describes our implementation of an annotation framework to facilitate collaboration and sharing of annotations within research sub-communities. Using the annotation system, scholars can collaboratively select web resources and attach different types of annotations (comments, notes, queries, tags and metadata), which can be harvested to enrich the AustLit collection. We describe how rich semantic descriptions can be added to the constantly changing AustLit collection through a set of interoperable annotation tools based on the Open Annotations Collaboration (OAC) model. RDFa enables scholars to semantically annotate dynamic web pages and contribute typed metadata about the IFLA FRBR entities represented within the AustLit collection. We also describe how the OAC model can be used in combination with OAI-ORE to produce scholarly digital editions, and compare this approach with existing scholarly annotation approaches.

LORE: A Compound Object Authoring and Publishing Tool for the Australian Literature Studies Community

This paper presents LORE (Literature Object Re-use and Exchange), a light-weight tool which is designed to allow scholars and teachers of Australian literature to author, edit and publish compound information objects encapsulating related digital resources and bibliographic records. LORE enables users to easily create OAI-ORE-compliant compound objects, which build on the IFLA FRBR model, and also enables them to describe and publish them to an RDF repository as Named Graphs. Using the tool, literary scholars can create typed relationships between individual atomic objects using terms from a bibliographic ontology and can attach metadata to the compound object. This paper describes the implementation and user interface of the LORE tool, as developed within the context of an ongoing case study being conducted in collaboration with AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, which focuses on compound objects for teaching and research within the Australian literature studies community.

Towards Annotopia—Enabling the Semantic Interoperability of Web-Based Annotations

This paper describes the results of a collaborative effort that has reconciled the Open Annotation Collaboration (OAC) ontology and the Annotation Ontology (AO) to produce a merged data model [the Open Annotation (OA) data model] to describe Web-based annotations—and hence facilitate the discovery, sharing and re-use of such annotations. Using a number of case studies that include digital scholarly editing, 3D museum artifacts and sensor data streams, we evaluate the OA model’s capabilities. We also describe our implementation of an online annotation server that supports the storage, search and retrieval of OA-compliant annotations across multiple applications and disciplines. Finally we discuss outstanding problem issues associated with the OA ontology, and the impact that certain design decisions have had on the efficient storage, indexing, search and retrieval of complex structured annotations.

Archiving, editing, and reading on the AustESE workbench: assembling and theorizing an ontology-based electronic scholarly edition of Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life

This essay presents a case study that considers the motivations and needs of a scholarly edition of Joseph Furphy’s Australian novel Such is Life in conjunction with the requirements for the development of the Australian Electronic Scholarly Editing Workbench. The latter integrates a suite of eResearch tools to support the collaborative authoring and management of electronic scholarly editions. The discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of building an electronic edition in such an environment and considers the ways in which the product of these activities begins to move beyond the model of the book. Central to the discussion is the idea of an ontology-based electronic edition, not as an end in itself, but as the ongoing activity of one or more human beings contributing to the creation and assembly of constituent parts with digital tools.