Generative Web Information Systems
- When?
- Monday 24 January 2011, 10:30 to 11:30
- Where?
- 39BB02
- Open to:
- Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Mr Alexandros Marinos
This PhD project aims to realize a new type of information system, more dynamic and less opaque to its owners, specified with structured natural language models and queried through hypermedia. To accomplish this, we focus on Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR) as a modelling language, Representational State Transfer (REST) as an interface paradigm and Relational Databases as the persistence mechanism. All three of these technologies have declarative underpinnings, focusing on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘how’, which is why their combination is feasible and effective. By creating appropriate mappings to align these technologies, we create a core platform for Generative Information Systems.
To this end, we present an architecture that binds the three technologies together and adds the concept of a Meta-Process, a way for users to perform process-like workflows without the system having explicit processes defined. The resulting system can gracefully handle unforeseen requests by its users, exhibiting process-like behaviour without requiring processes to be explicitly defined.
To complement this core architecture, we have created RETRO, a RESTful Transaction Model that allows users to perform more than one actions with guarantees of atomicity over the Web. We also describe a service composition framework for Generative Web Information Systems which combines the strengths of the Web with the descriptive capabilities of SBVR to create a Web of Models in which GWIS are native.
To validate the conceptual architecture that has been constructed, we have implemented SBVR with Sails, a prototype Generative Web Information System that serves both as a proof of concept and as a basis for future work and exploration of the concept.
This model-driven and declarative approach makes semantics and policy integral to the operation of the information system and therefore the individual information system becomes a self-documenting native citizen of the digital ecosystem and the World Wide Web.