Software Services for Social Network tools implementation Aleksandar Dimov, PhD Sofia University

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 2 Agenda Introduction Technologies used Architectural framework for Social Network tools implementation Overview Tool Social Help System

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 3 Current European trends Lifelong Learning  Should result in competence that are widely recognized and interoperable  Should be adapted to take into account individual and local characteristics (preferences, needs, language, etc.) Use of ICT/the Internet is key to achieving Lifelong competence development

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 4 Social Networks Should support individuals to connect with each other Learning knowledge management networks  Currently provide too little effective support to the users in their various tasks.  Lack of integration of models for competence development during learning and working and across a lifetime  Lack of individual experts and/or trainers

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 5 Contemporary Software Technologies Trends for reusable software  Objects  Components  Services Service Oriented Software Engineering  Service – a standard way to reuse some functionality over internet Technologies Used  Hibernate  REST

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 6 REST An architectural style aimed for distributed systems Define rules for how different resources should be identified and addressed  Defines a common set of operations  Use an Universal Resource Identifier (URI) to locate resources Does not rely on heavy additional meta- model layer

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 7 What is Hibernate? Popular Open Source (LGPL) Object/Relational Mapping (ORM) tool Transparent persistence for POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) Make an abstraction over the classical SQL tables

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 8 What is Hibernate? Benefits  Retains natural object model (transparent)  Minimizes Code  Does not require a container  Model is not tied to persistance implementation  Metadata controlled persistence  Transparent - working with the model, not the data access technology

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 9 Object/Relational Mapping JavaObject int id; String name; String getName() int getId() void setName(String) void setId(int) SQL Table id [int] primary key, name [varchar(50)] Magic Happens Here (O/R Mapper – i.e. Hibernate)

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 10 TenCompetence TENCompetence integrated project PCM server  The ICT heart of TENCompetence infrastructure  Widget server

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 11 Web-Service Architecture

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 12 Toolset objectives Enrich the users' experience by providing data models which will allow more relevant matches between users to be made. Provide an integral overview of Competence Development Opportunities available to users. Develop, test and integrate  value-added components such as connection agents, simulation and game dynamics embedded in online competence development contexts.  network models and management policies that support the community’s capacity for self-organization while preserving the autonomy of individual users.

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 13 Objectives, explained The system The community Competence Development Opportunities The user, himself

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 14 Overview Tool (OVT) Purpose: To provide an overview of all the possible formal and informal competence development programmes available. Consist of three parts: Visualization maps General browsing perspective Linear browsing perspective

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 15 OVT Screenshots

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 16

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 17 Social Help Tool (SHT) Purpose: To foster self-organizing (peer) communities with the maximum of autonomy and control of users Provides environment for support of novices and learners Lowers the overload of individual experts and learners Increase possibilities for collaboration between users

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 18 Flow of program activities

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 19 SHT Screenshots

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 20 Concllusion Improvements are needed in eLearning and knowledge management systems Development of new software is crucial to address this issue Future work  User evaluation  Improvement of underlying models

31 October 2008, Sofia TENCompetence open workshop 21 The end Q & A