Improving Centruflow using semantic web technologies : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2007
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Massey University
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Abstract
Centruflow is an application that can be used to visualise structured data. It does this by
drawing graphs, allowing for users to explore information relationships that may not be
visible or easily understood otherwise. This helps users to gain a better understanding of
their organisation and to communicate more effectively. In earlier versions of Centruflow,
it was difficult to develop new functionality as it was built using a relatively unsupported
and proprietary visualisation toolkit. In addition, there were major issues surrounding
information currency and trust. Something had to be done, and this was a sub-project of
this thesis.
The main purpose of this thesis however was to research and develop a set of mathematical
algorithms to infer implicit relationships in Centruflow data sources. Once these implicit
relationships were found, we could make them explicit by showing them within Centruflow.
To enable this, relationships were to be calculated based on providing users with the
ability to 'tag' resources with metadata. We believed that by using this tagging metadata,
Centruflow could offer users far more insight into their own data.
Implementing this was not a straight-forward task, as it required a considerable amount
of research and development to be undertaken to understand and appreciate technologies
that could help us in our goal. Our focus was primarily on technologies and approaches
common in the semantic web and 'Web 2.0' areas. By pursuing semantic web technologies,
we ensured that Centruflow would be considerably more standards-compliant than it was
previously. At the conclusion of our development period, Centruflow had been rather substantially
'retrofitted', with all proprietary technologies replaced with equivalent semantic
web technologies. The result of this is that Centruflow is now positioned on the forefront
of the semantic web wave, allowing for far more comprehensive and rapid visualisation of
a far larger set of readily-available data than what was possible previously.
Having implemented all necessary functionality, we validated our approach and were pleased
to find that our improvements led to a considerably more intelligent and useful Centruflow
application than was previously available. This functionality is now available as part of
'Centruflow 3.0', which will be publicly released in March 2008. Finally, we conclude this
thesis with a discussion on the future work that should be undertaken to improve on the
current release.
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Keywords
Semantic web technologies, CentruFlow