José Andrés Asensio

A Model Transformation Approach for Automatic Composition of COTS User Interfaces in Web-Based Information Systems

Globalization of the information and the Knowledge Society requires the modernization of Web-based Information Systems (WIS) into evolutive and adaptable user interfaces. Today, WIS user interfaces are built following traditional development paradigms. This article is inspired on a Model-Driven Development (MDD) perspective to produce runtime automatic composition of user interfaces from model and metamodel representations of widgets-type COTS interface components architectures and model transformation.

Modelling an Environmental Knowledge-Representation System

Environmental Management Systems(EMS) are social-technical systems with a variety of final users and actors that cooperate with each other and interact with the system for decision-making, problems resolution, etc. The modelling of these systems using formal methods provides mechanisms and tools that guarantee the users a correct deployment and use of it. In this paper we showing environmental knowledge modelling accomplished in the SOLERES project, a spatio-temporal information system for environmental management, a cooperative system based on multi-agent architectures and intelligent agents. The system modelling uses UML for knowledge representation, and Model-Driven Engineering(MDE) perspective --based on the OMG classical Model-driven Architecture(MDA)-- to create OWL/XML ontology automatically.

User Interface Composition with COTS-UI and Trading Approaches: Application for Web-Based Environmental Information Systems

Due to the globalization of the information and knowledge society on the Internet, modern Web-based Information Systems (WIS) must be flexible and prepared to be easily accessible and manageable in real-time. In recent times it has received a special interest the globalization of information through a common vocabulary (i.e., ontologies), and the standardized way in which information is retrieved on the Web (i.e., powerful search engines, and intelligent software agents). These same principles of globalization and standardization should also be valid for the user interfaces of the WIS, but they are built on traditional development paradigms. In this paper we present an approach to reduce the gap of globalization/standardization in the generation of WIS user interfaces by using a real-time “bottom-up” composition perspective with COTS-interface components (type interface widgets) and trading services.

SOLERES-HCI: Modelling a Human-Computer Interaction Framework for Open EMS

Organizations and administrations working on environmental information for specific behaviors of soil or planning management of natural resources need to have innovator systems of quality information in order to guarantee the success of theirs daily activities. Experts managing the system consider that not only it is important to have reliable and updated information in order to help to make the most suitable decisions. Due to the variety of final users that cooperate and interact with the decision making system (for instance, politicians, technicians, administrators, etc.) it is also important to have real-time query systems that facilitate the human-human and human-computer interaction and coordination not only with user interfaces that adapt to the users’ profiles habits, but also with intelligent software agents. In this work we advance some ideas about the HCI framework of the SOLERES project, an Environmental Management System (EMS) that fixes, defines and experiences solutions to problems previously described.

Open-Environmental Ontology Modeling

Current open information systems need formal semantic definitions to describe and handle information which is dealt within different interaction environments such as human-to-human, human-to-computer, and computer-to-computer interactions. This paper provides a semantic definition of the knowledge used by environmental management information systems. We describe an ontological model in UML class diagrams and present a formalization of the ontology in first-oder logic and encoded in description logic. A model transformation approach is also used to map the UML class diagram elements into web ontology language. A running example is presented to explain the ontological knowledge modeling of EMIS SOLERES cartography and satellite information.

OntoTrader: An Ontological Web Trading Agent Approach for Environmental Information Retrieval

Modern Web-based Information Systems (WIS) are becoming increasingly necessary to provide support for users who are in different places with different types of information, by facilitating their access to the information, decision making, workgroups, and so forth. Design of these systems requires the use of standardized methods and techniques that enable a common vocabulary to be defined to represent the underlying knowledge. Thus, mediation elements such as traders enrich the interoperability of web components in open distributed systems. These traders must operate with other third-party traders and/or agents in the system, which must also use a common vocabulary for communication between them. This paper presents the OntoTrader architecture, an Ontological Web Trading agent based on the OMG ODP trading standard. It also presents the ontology needed by some system agents to communicate with the trading agent and the behavioral framework for the SOLERES OntoTrader agent, an Environmental Management Information System (EMIS). This framework implements a “Query-Searching/Recovering-Response” information retrieval model using a trading service, SPARQL notation, and the JADE platform. The paper also presents reflection, delegation and, federation mediation models and describes formalization, an experimental testing environment in three scenarios, and a tool which allows our proposal to be evaluated and validated.

An Ontology-Driven Case Study for the Knowledge Representation of Management Information Systems

Web-based Management Information Systems (MIS) require the use of standardized methods and techniques for their design and development. The two most used resources are Model Driven Architectures (MDA) and Ontology Driven Architectures (ODA). The MDA perspective allows us to separate the specification issues from the system architecture as well as the details from its implementation. On the other hand, ODA provides the semantic representation of knowledge domain, also independently of its implementation. This paper presents the use of ODA in the SOLERES system, an information system for environmental management (EMIS).

A model-driven approach for deploying trading-based knowledge representation systems

Trading services are well-known solutions in Software Engineering for solving the interoperability and integration of software components and Information Systems (IS). This paper presents a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach aimed to help designing and deploying Trading-Based Knowledge Representation (TKR) Systems, a subset of Management Information Systems (MIS). For this purpose, we have defined a set of modeling languages and supporting tools enabling: (a) the description of platform-independent TKR System architectures; (b) the high-level description of different deployment platforms; and (c) the creation of configuration models relating the two previous ones. These configuration models are then used as an input to a model-to-text transformation that generates the final TKR System implementation (code) from the selected platform. In order to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of the proposed approach we also present a case study applied to an Environmental Management Information System (EMIS).

Ontological Trading in a Multi-agent System

In a more open world, the Web-based Information Systems (WIS) must be flexible and ready to be adaptable, extendable, accessible and operable by different people (or groups) who are in different places with different types of information (convergent systems). The convergence of systems is possible due to: (a) certain capacity for autonomy (software agents), (b) ability to use a common vocabulary for all convergent systems (ontologies); and (c) capacity for mediation between subsystems (traders). Moderns IS use ontologies as part of the design and implementation of their architecture. Traders are an essential part of these IS, where ontologies are required for them (traders) to facilitate integration. This paper describes the SOLERES trading service, a solution to carry out the mediation function within a multiagent environmental information system. The data handled by the trader are defined by ontologies, as are the semantic description and content of the messages by which the trader communicateswith the rest of the agents. An example to explain the functionality of the ontological trading agent is also introduced.

An Eclipse GMF Tool for Modelling User Interaction

Model-Driven Development (MDD) has encouraged the use of automated software tools that facilitate the development process from modelling to coding. User Interfaces (UI), as a significant part of most applications, should also be modelled using a MDD perspective. This paper presents an Eclipse GMF tool for modelling user-interaction diagrams ---an specialization of the UML state-machines for UI design--- which can be used for describing the behaviour of user interfaces.