WebScripter: Easy-to-Use Report/Portal Generator for DAML Data Sets

1. WebScripter Status Briefing University of Southern CaliforniaInformation Sciences Institute Pedro Szekely, Robert NechesMartin Frank, Juan Lopez, Baoshi Yan13 February 2002

2. Executive Overview • WebScripter is a report/portal generator which is easy-to-useand 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.

3. WebScripter Accomplishments: Introduction • 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

4. Accomplishments: Software 1. View and select candidate knowledge sources • 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 3. Drag content into report 2. View source ontology

5. 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 Accomplishments: Applications Outside Our Group 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 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

6. Proposed WebScripter Contribution to ONA ExperimentPlans, 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 Integrated, DAMLized Portal, for Both Agents and Humans, Built by Distributed Team Faster Development,Improved Usability for Military Users

7. Proposed WebScripter Contribution to ONA ExperimentPlans, Phase 2: Mark-Up of Legacy Sources <rdf:DescriptionID=“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> • 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 AutomaticDAML Plain HTML Page Back-Propagated DAML DAML-Wrapped HTML Page DAML in reports propagates back to source documents -- and DAMLizes them, too Rapid, low-cost DAMLization of legacy sources:Entire user community does mark-up just by doing their everyday work

8. 2002 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 asLegacy 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

9. 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). Internal Metrics External • 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.

10. WebScripter 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; thus WebScripter mark-up creates DAML that people need.