Use Cases and the VSTO

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VOiG 2007 - June 13, 2007 1 Use Cases and the VSTO Fox, P.; McGuinness, D.; Cinquini , L.; West, P., Garcia, J.; Zednik, S., Benedict, J.; Middleton, D. High Altitude Observatory, NCAR McGuinness Associates Computing and Information Systems Lab, NCAR

description

Use Cases and the VSTO. Fox, P. ; McGuinness, D.; Cinquini , L.; West, P., Garcia, J.; Zednik, S., Benedict, J.; Middleton, D. High Altitude Observatory, NCAR McGuinness Associates Computing and Information Systems Lab, NCAR. Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO). - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Transcript of Use Cases and the VSTO

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VOiG 2007 - June 13, 20071

Use Cases and the VSTO

Fox, P.; McGuinness, D.; Cinquini , L.; West, P., Garcia, J.; Zednik, S., Benedict, J.;

Middleton, D.High Altitude Observatory, NCAR

McGuinness AssociatesComputing and Information Systems Lab, NCAR

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Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO)

• a distributed, scalable education and research environment for searching, integrating, and analyzing observational, experimental, and model databases.

• subject matter covers the fields of solar, solar-terrestrial and space physics

• it provides virtual access to specific data, model, tool and material archives containing items from a variety of space- and ground-based instruments and experiments, as well as individual and community modeling and software efforts bridging research and educational use

• 3 year NSF-funded (OCI/SCI) project in its third year

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Semantic Web as a Technical Approach: Basic elements

• Use case(s)• Team - mixed skills• Perform analysis• Develop model/ontology• Use tools• Adopt technical approach and architecture• Leverage existing infrastructure; API, portal and

web services• Open World: evolve, iterate, redesign, redeploy

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Ontology Spectrum

Catalog/ID

SelectedLogical

Constraints(disjointness,

inverse, …)

Terms/glossary

Thesauri“narrower

term”relation

Formalis-a

Frames(properties)

Informalis-a

Formalinstance

Value Restrs.

GeneralLogical

constraints

Originally from AAAI 1999- Ontologies Panel by Gruninger, Lehmann, McGuinness, Uschold, Welty; – updated by McGuinness.Description in: www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-abstract.html

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Content: Coupling Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions WEB

Community data archive for observations and models of Earth's upper atmosphere and geophysical indices and parameters needed to interpret them. Includes browsing capabilities by periods, instruments, models, …

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Science use casesTemplate 1: Plot the values of Parameter X as taken by

instrument description or instance Y subject to constraint Z during the time period W in style S.

Example 1: Plot the observed/measured Neutral Temperature (Parameter) looking in the vertical direction for Millstone Hill Fabry-Perot interferometer (Instrument) during January 2000 (Temporal Domain) as a time series (or: in a way that makes sense for the data).

Template 2: Find and retrieve image data of the type for images of content Y during times described by Z.

Example 2: Find and retrieve quick look and science data for images of the solar corona during a recent observation period.

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Science and technical use cases• Template 3 Find data for parameter X constrained by Y during

times described by Z. • Example 3: Find data, which represents the state of the neutral

atmosphere anywhere above 100km and toward the Arctic circle (above 45N) at any time of high geomagnetic activity.

• Template 4: Assemble a visual representation of a sequence of images X over a time period Y:

• Example 4: Create a movie of the white light solar corona during the whole-Sun campaign month in 2005.

• Template 5: Infer data representing a state of one physical domain X that changes in response to an external event Y from another physical setting Z.

• Example 5: Find and plot/animate data that represents the terrestrial ionospheric effects of a geo-effective solar storm.

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Example analysis of the use case

Input

Physical properties: State of neutral atmosphere

Spatial:

• Above 100km

• Toward arctic circle (above 45N)

Conditions:

• High geomagnetic activity

Action: Return Data

Specification needed for query to CEDARWEB

Instrument

Parameter(s)

Operating Mode

Observatory

Date/time

Return-type: data

GeoMagneticActivity has ProxyRepresentation

GeophysicalIndex is a ProxyRepresentation (in Realm of Neutral Atmosphere)

Kp is a GeophysicalIndex hasTemporalDomain: “daily”

hasHighThreshold: xsd_number = 7

Date/time when KP => 7

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Translating the Use-Case - ctd.

Input

Physical properties: State of neutral atmosphere

Spatial:

Above 100km

Toward arctic circle (above 45N)

Conditions:

High geomagnetic activity

Action: Return Data

Specification needed for query to CEDARWEB

Instrument

Parameter(s)

Operating Mode

Observatory

Date/time

Return-type: data

NeutralAtmosphere is a subRealm of TerrestrialAtmosphere

hasPhysicalProperties: NeutralTemperature, Neutral Wind, etc.

hasSpatialDomain: [0,360],[0,180],[100,150]

hasTemporalDomain:

NeutralTemperature is a Temperature (which) is a Parameter

FabryPerotInterferometer is a Interferometer, (which) is a Optical Instrument (which) is a Instrument

hasFilterCentralWavelength: Wavelength

hasLowerBoundFormationHeight: Height

ArcticCircle is a GeographicRegion

hasLatitudeBoundary:

hasLatitudeUpperBoundary:

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http://dataportal.ucar.edu/schemas/vsto_all.owl

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Creating Ontologies – CMAP, UML Options

• White board, text file• CMAP Ontology Editor (concept mapping tool IHMC)

– Drag/drop visual development of classes, subclass (is-a) and property relationship

– Reads and produces an OWL file (and other formats)– Support for formal convention (is-a, is-part-of, …)– Suggest avoid making your CMAP a graph (directed-

cyclic)• New release of Object Definition Metamodel

– Ontology Definition Metamodel/Meta Object Facility (OMG) for UML

– Provides standardized notation– Available from OMG -

http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/modeling_spec_catalog.htm

– Books likely to be available soon

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Software development tools

• Protégé, w/ plug-ins - some better than others• SWOOP (OWL analyzer, partitioner)• Jena (http://jena.sourceforge.net/)• Pellet reasoner• Eclipse (full integrated development environment

for Java; http://www.eclipse.org/)• SPARQL for queries• Lots of others

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VSTO - semantics and ontologies in an operational environment: vsto.hao.ucar.edu, www.vsto.org

Web Service

Existing OPeNDAP Service

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Partial exposure of Instrument class hierarchy - users seem to LIKE THIS

Semantic filtering by domain or instrument hierarchy

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Inferred plot type and return formats for data products

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… … … …

VO Portal

Web Serv.

VO API

DB2 DB3DBn

DB1

Semantic mediation layer - VSTO - low level

Semantic mediation layer - mid-upper-level

Education, clearinghouses, other services, disciplines, etc.

Metadata, schema, data

Query, access and use of data

Semantic query, hypothesis and inference

Semantic interoperability

Added value

Added value

Added value

Added value

Mediation Layer• Ontology - capturing concepts of Parameters,

Instruments, Date/Time, Data Product (and associated classes, properties) and Service Classes

• Maps queries to underlying data• Generates access requests for metadata, data• Allows queries, reasoning, analysis, new

hypothesis generation, testing, explanation, etc.

Standard, or not, vocabularies and schema

“Knowledge” as service!

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Technical use cases• Template 6: Expose semantically enabled,

smart data query services via a web services interface allowing composite query formation in arbitrary workflow order.

• Example 6: Provide query services for the Virtual Ionosphere-Thermospere-Mesosphere Observatory that retrieve query results and data filtered constraints on Instrument, Date-Time, and Parameter in any order and with constraints included in any combination.

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Semantic Web Services

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Semantic Web Services

OWL document returned using VSTO ontology - can be used both syntactically or semantically

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Semantic Web Services

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Semantic Web Services

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Developing ontologies• Use cases and small team (7-8; 2-3 domain experts, 2

knowledge experts, 1 software engineer, 1 facilitator, 1 scribe)• Identify classes and properties (leverage controlled vocab.)

– VSTO - narrower terms, generalized easily– Data integration - required broader terms– Adopted conceptual decomposition (SWEET) – Imported modules when concepts were orthogonal

• Minimal properties to start, add only when needed• Mid-level to depth - i.e. neither top-down nor bottom-up• Review, review, review, vet, vet, vet, publish - www.planetont.org

(experiences, results, lessons learned, AND your ontologies AND discussions)

• Only code them (in RDF or OWL) when needed (CMAP, …)• Ontologies: small and modular

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Semantic Web Benefits• Unified/ abstracted query workflow: Parameters, Instruments, Date-Time• Decreased input requirements for query: in one case reducing the

number of selections from eight to three• Generates only syntactically correct queries: which was not always

insurable in previous implementations without semantics• Semantic query support: by using background ontologies and a

reasoner, our application has the opportunity to only expose coherent query (portal and services)

• Semantic integration: in the past users had to remember (and maintain codes) to account for numerous different ways to combine and plot the data whereas now semantic mediation provides the level of sensible data integration required, now exposed as smart web services– understanding of coordinate systems, relationships, data synthesis,

transformations, etc.– returns independent variables and related parameters

• A broader range of potential users (PhD scientists, students, professional research associates and those from outside the fields)

• VSTO: http://vsto.hao.ucar.edu, http://www.vsto.org, http://www.egy.org/VOiG • Peter Fox [email protected], Deborah McGuinness [email protected]

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VSTO experience • Conceptual model and architecture developed by combined

team; KR experts, domain experts, and software engineers• Semantic framework developed and built with a small,

cohesive, carefully chosen team in a relatively short time (deployments in 1st year)

• Production portal released, includes security, etc. with community migration (and so far endorsement)

• VSTO ontology version 1.0, (vsto.owl) • Web Services encapsulation of semantic interfaces • More solar-terrestrial use cases to drive the completion of the

ontologies - filling out the instrument ontology• Adding data sources, e.g. PSPT, ECHO, Hinode vector

magnetic fields• Using ontologies and data framework in other applications

(volcanoes, climate, …)

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• Scaling to large numbers of data providers• Crossing disciplines• Security, access to resources, policies• Interoperability at a variety of levels (~3)• Branding and attribution (where did this data come

from and who gets the credit, is it the correct version, is this an authoritative source?)

• Provenance/derivation (propagating key information as it passes through a variety of services, copies of processing algorithms, …)

• Data quality, preservation, stewardship

Issues for Virtual ObservatoriesMany we are addressing with new use cases