Mark J. Weal, Gareth V. Hughes, David E. Millard, Luc Moreau

1. Open Hypermedia as a Navigational Interface to Ontological Information Spaces Mark J. Weal, Gareth V. Hughes, David E. Millard, Luc Moreau

2. But can be very difficult for People to access and understand Overview Ontological Information Systems model information very precisely

3. Ontologies • The word “Ontology” denotes the science or study of being • In Agent Systems an Ontology comprises a vocabulary describing a certain domain • Ontologies are designed artefacts • Ontologies are a shared understanding of some domain • Agent-based information management systems are designed to manipulate ontological information spaces

4. SoFAR • Southampton Framework for Agent Research • In SoFAR, ontologies are organised as a hierarchy based on single inheritance • Terms describe a structure • Predicates describe a relationship between terms <term name="Person" extends="Entity"> <field type="String" name="title"/> <field type="String" name="personal"/> <field type="String" name="family"/> </term>

5. Querying Ontologies • SoFAR’s query language is based on pattern-matching and requires adding variables and constraints to ontological definitions : Person("Dr"; "Luc"; "Moreau") Person(?String; "Luc"; ?String) • Querying terms looks up data • Querying predicates asks a question InGroup(Person(?String; "Luc"; ?String); ?Group)

6. The Interface • Composing queries requires an in depth understanding of the ontology • Keyword search ignores inherent structure of the information space • Open Hypermedia – link navigation initiates complex queries in the background. This separates : • the graphical interface • the process of querying • the process of link generation • the ontological information space

7. FOHM • The Fundamental Open Hypertext Model • Based on the Open Hypermedia Protocol (OHP) developed by the Open Hypermedia Systems Working Group (OHSWG) • Extends OHP data model to represent several domains of hypermedia • SoFAR FOHM Server Agent provides Open Hypermedia Services to SoFAR agents

8. Navigational Structure

9. FOHM and Ontologies

10. The Dynamic C.V. • Set of Agents that have access to information about our group • publications agent • ECS database agent (phone numbers, group, etc.) • Seminars agent (internal seminars by group members) • Dynamic C.V. is an agent with a web user interface that queries these agents to build a Curriculum Vitae

11. User request Info on Person • Web Agent sends request to Dynamic C.V. • C.V. Finds appropriate Query Recipe in LinkServer • Uses the destinations as queries to the agent cloud • Converts the resultant terms into XML and passes them to the Annotator • Annotator searches for query recipes on those terms in the LinkServer • Query recipes are stored in the cache • XML marked up with references to the cache are transformed by XSL and passed back to the browser

12. The Linkbases • FOHM Associations link terms to potential queries (predicates) over the ontologies in the system : Src : Person(?String; ?String; ?String) Dest1 : HasEmail(?Person; ?Email) Dest2 : HasPhone(?Person; ?Phone) • The destinations are used to build each dynamic ‘page’ • The Annotator searches for other recipes with the destinations as sources

13. The ‘Query Recipes’ Person HasOffice HasTelephone InGroup IsUser Creates Seminar

14. The ‘Query Recipes’ Person HasOffice HasTelephone InGroup IsUser General C.V. of a person Creates Seminar

15. The ‘Query Recipes’ Person HasOffice HasTelephone InGroup IsUser Creates A Person’s publications Seminar

16. The ‘Query Recipes’ Person HasOffice HasTelephone InGroup IsUser Creates Seminar A person’s seminars

17. What are Wendy’s publications?

18. Who else wrote this paper?

19. Who is Danius?

20. Who else has this phone number?

22. Conclusions • Separation of Concerns • Ontologies for Information • Hypermedia for Navigation • Static to Dynamic Documents • Hides complex ontological models • Alternative linkbases • FOHM supports different modes of interaction • New query recipes can be easily added