[kepler-dev] Schema matching tool for interface alignment

[Shawn Bowers]

Joseph Goguen wrote:

> Our schema matching tool, SCIA, is getting close to ready for beta release.
> We have succesfully wrapped an older version as a stand-alone Kepler actor,
> so it should be feasible to include it in Kepler as a transformation tool to
> translate data between actors in a pipeline having different input/output
> requirements.  Issues that remain include: 1) obtaining Kepler support for
> actor input/output interface description in DTD/XML Schema, which seems also
> needed for work of Bertram and Shawn on semantic annotation for actors (this
> relates to the type system of Ptolemy); 

Just a note that XML Schema and/or DTD support isn't really part of what 
we've been focussing on. In particular, annotation for actors and data 
isn't based on XML schema or DTD.  An earlier paper we wrote considered 
XML, but since we've adopted Ptolemy's native type system + relational.

It doesn't seem like this would be a limiting factor in SCIA either ... 
although there is probably slightly less to automatically match on since 
there are fewer "tags."

 > (4) decide whether SCIA should be a hidden actor that is launched 
when needed, or be
> explicitly added to a pipeline by a user pulling it from the actor library;
> and 

I think at some point, it would be nice to (possibly in Kansas), sit 
down and discuss the best interface approach for helping scientists 
connect actors in kepler ... For now, I would think that it would best 
to add it as a part of the Kepler UI, e.g., through a menu-list item or 
a button on the gui or something.  For example, when one wishes to 
connect two actors, they could connect them graphically, then hit a 
button or something to further specify the connection using your tool. 
Make sense?

 > (5) develop a set of interesting use cases.

This is going to be the hard one I think ...

> We are pleased that Jianting Zhang at UNM is interested to work with us on
> making the tool really useful for ecologists, and we hope that closer
> collaborations can be estabalished with other SEEKers to reach this goal.
> 
>   -- Joseph Goguen and Jenny Wang
> _______________________________________________
> kepler-dev mailing list
> kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org
> http://www.ecoinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/kepler-dev