WebScripter Status BriefingWebScripter Status Briefing

University of Southern CaliforniaInformation Sciences Institute

Pedro Szekely, Robert NechesMartin Frank, Juan Lopez, Baoshi Yan

13 February 2002

Executive OverviewExecutive Overview

WebScripter is a report/portal generator which is easy-to-use and scalable to present large DAML data sets.

Special benefit of approach is that aligning multiple source ontologies is an effortless side effect of populating a report.

Next issue: not enough DAML content out there, need much more

(but there’s lots of legacy materials without mark-up).

Next step: extend WebScripter to support collaborative DAML production – both creation of new DAML and mark-up of existing materials – as a similarly low-effort side effect of report creation.

WebScripter Accomplishments: WebScripter Accomplishments: IntroductionIntroduction

Easy-to-use interactive report/portal generator

Users lay out skeleton DAMLized presentation

Start populating by dragging sample content

DAML retrieval finishes populating, keeps it live

Product: DAMLized report, useful as-is or for driving a portal

Users implicitly align multiple ontologies

Sample content dragged in from many sources

Usage produces mapping

Accomplishments: SoftwareAccomplishments: Software

WebScripter 1.0 released Aug 2001

Solid report generation from textual report definitions, for small DAML files

Alpha-quality report generation GUI

WebScripter 2.0 released Feb 2002

10X + faster report generation

Handles DAML input files over 10MB

Solid report generation GUI: practical for external users to create usable products

1. View and select candidate knowledge sources1. View and select candidate knowledge sources

2. View source ontology2. View source ontology

3. Drag content into report3. Drag content into report

Accomplishments: Accomplishments: Applications Outside Our GroupApplications Outside Our Group

SWOBIS Projecttools.semanticweb.org

World-wide inventory of semantic web software

Multiple versions: varying granularity, look-and-feel

Illustrates ease of use:external WebScripter 1.0 user created a number of report of their DAML data

University of Vienna datawww.isi.edu/webscripter

/vienna-2002-01-28.html

Front-end to DAMLized DB: 30+ yrs. of people/project records

~10MB DAML, ~90K RDF triples

WS helped in cleaning up DAML

Gives equiv. functionality of a DB viewer to the DAML world

CAMERA Bugs Listwww.geocities.com/snapv1/v1/bugs.htm

Distributed mgt of bug reports, programmer tasks, status

Shows power of DAML for collaboration: continuous update, anyone can contribute, everyone sees, no central maintainer

Highlights importance of ease of contributing DAML content

Proposed WebScripter Contribution to ONA ExperimentProposed WebScripter Contribution to ONA ExperimentPlans, Phase 1: “Tiger Team” SupportPlans, Phase 1: “Tiger Team” Support

Contribution to exercise

Produce a useful app. Enable group editing and

schema development Eliminate bottleneck of

requiring single ontology

Benefits to be shown Ease-of-use: ontology

editing via visual editing by domain experts

Simple division of labor: team can split data horizontally, vertically,or overlapping

Rapid closure: work accelerated by grass roots alignment ontology

Faster Development,Faster Development,Improved Usability for Military UsersImproved Usability for Military Users

Integrated, DAMLized Portal, for Both Agents and Humans, Built by Distributed TeamIntegrated, DAMLized Portal, for Both Agents and Humans, Built by Distributed Team

<rdf:Description ID=“http://foxnews.com/... <Usage> <report rdf:resource=“http://.../newscomp.daml”/> <date>2002-02-10</date> <org rdf:resource=“http://dia.mil”/> <user rdf:resource=“http://dia.mil/tmiller”/> <instance rdf:resource=“..cks/beersheba-feb-2002.daml”/> <attribute rdf:resource=“..mp.daml#fox-news-coverage”/> </Usage> <Palestinian-Attack-On-Israelis dead=“2” injured=“7”/> <Isreali-Attack-On-Isrealis dead=“0” injured=“15”/></rdf>

Proposed WebScripter Contribution to ONA ExperimentProposed WebScripter Contribution to ONA ExperimentPlans, Phase 2: Mark-Up of Legacy SourcesPlans, Phase 2: Mark-Up of Legacy Sources

Contribution to exercise

Rapid content generation Fills need for tools for

retrofitting DAML to pre-existing materials

Benefits to be shown Low-cost: extends the

grass roots development model from ontologies to content creation/mark-up

Collaborative: extends the collaborative editing paradigm to content creation and mark-up

DAML in reports propagates back to source documents -- and DAMLizes them, tooDAML in reports propagates back to source documents -- and DAMLizes them, too

Rapid, low-cost DAMLization of legacy sources:Rapid, low-cost DAMLization of legacy sources:Entire user community does mark-up just by doing their everyday work Entire user community does mark-up just by doing their everyday work

Plain HTML Page

DAML-Wrapped HTML Page

AutomaticDAML

Back-Propagated DAML

2002 Deliverables2002 Deliverables

3.0 release May: WebScripter as Collaborative DAML Editor Users can create a simple WebScripter “report” that is a DAML source itself

without any external source (single class, 1 attribute per column)

Users can make assertions in several external ontologies at once by providing a value for a report “hole”

Users can collaboratively edit a WebScripter report, including adding new columns, without any software installation (servlet-based)

4.0 release August: WebScripter as Legacy Source Mark-up Tool Users can paste URLs of legacy material intro reports, this automatically

creates DAML meta-data about it (used by whom when, is related to which attribute of which instance)

Users can paste fragments of dynamic Web pages into reports, leading to similar meta-data creation; can be used to construct DAML-driven portal pages for humans and machines

InternalInternal Metrics Metrics ExternalExternal

Collaborative DAML Editing

How long does it take a group of 2 to divide their work, create two reports, and combine them into a human-usable composite report/portal?

How long does it take to make that report feed into the ONA agent correctly?

Mark-Up of Legacy Sources

How much DAML is generated about how many previously unDAMLized documents (measured in RDF triples)?

How useful is this generated mark-up in producing a new report that uses the same source documents (measured in time saved as compared to not having the auto-generated mark-up).

DAML+WebScripter vs. the world without

Claim: More people doing mark-up (DAML+WS)

Measure # of people contributing mark-up used by others vs. KB experts doing same.

Claim: More mark-up produced (DAML+WS)

Count # of documents with mark-up used by others vs. KB experts doing same.

Claim: More useful mark-up (WS in particular)

Compare % of mark-up actually used by anyone vs. KB experts doing same.

Claim: Less skill needed (WS in particular)

Compare the minimal educational level needed to produce mark-up used by others.

Claim: Less time spent doing mark-up

Measure the cumulative time explicitly spent on mark-up vs. what KB experts would have spent.

WebScripter SummaryWebScripter Summary

Accomplishments: As-is, WebScripter is a useful and easy-to-use tool for combining data from multiple sources and for auto-alignment of the underlying ontologies.

2002 Plans: Focus on producing more DAMLized sources with military utility, by support for browser-based collaborative editing and DAMLization of legacy sources (key idea: automatically inferring and propagating DAML from HTML fragment copy-and-paste actions).

2002 Deliverables: May: collaborative DAML editing, August: legacy source mark-up

Proposed Metrics: collaborative editing: time to first human portal, time to first ONA-tool-readable data, DAMLization of legacy sources: quantity and re-use counts of generated DAML

WebScripter reports collect information that people want; WebScripter reports collect information that people want; thus WebScripter mark-up creates DAML that people need. thus WebScripter mark-up creates DAML that people need.