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Locating Web Resources in WSML

Type: 
Master
Student name: 
Nathalie Steinmetz

Currently it is sometimes difficult to find Web Resources, especially Ontologies or Web Services, to work with.  This thesis is on the topic: of "Locating Web Resources in WSML". We will develop a system to find Ontologies and Web Services. The rationale behind this project is the idea of sharing existing documents. Imagine how many Web Resources are being developed both in enterprises and at universities and are stored on either personal computers or servers. All these documents are inaccessible for interested people, as e.g. scientific researchers.
Currently resources can be published in the conventional way, that is the publisher needs a server where to publish the resources and needs to manually upload them. This requires some work and engagement of the side of the publisher. People who are searching for Ontologies or Web Services now still need a crawler to find those published resources.
The goal of this project is to investigate if the sharing of resources can be simplified by the use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies. One of the problems that arise with the use of P2P technologies is the fact that most enterprises and universities are situated behind a Firewall. This is one of the issues that need to be tackled within the project.
Within the scope of the project a Locator tool will be developed, that enables the sharing and locating of Ontologies and Web Services. These can be located either on one’s own computer, on the computers of other scientific researchers in the community or on specified repositories. They can be published in local networks or on the Web, e.g. via FTP or WebDAV.
We will provide an analysis of P2P technology standards and implementations, like HyperCuP, HyperCuP Lightweight Implementation, JXTA, Edutella. A Locator tool for Ontologies and Web Services in WSML will be designed and implemented. The tool shall be based on P2P technology and shall offer a semantic search functionality. How exactly such a search can work will be part of the project work. Part of the Locator shall also be a functionality to map logical addresses to physical addresses. Problems and open questions that need to be resolved within this project are the handling of different versions of resources, questions of authorship and the question of how to deal with conflicts in resources. Other issues that will arise are security and Firewall issues.