Scientific Annotation Middleware (SAM) Jim Myers, Elena Mendoza PNNL Al Geist, Jens Schwidder ORNL

SAM Vision Develop a lightweight, flexible middleware to support the creation and use of metadata and annotations Enable the sharing of annotations among portals and problem solving environments, software agents, scientific applications, and electronic notebooks Improve the completeness, accuracy, and availability of the scientific record.

Current Practice Electronic notebooks offer users dynamic free- form annotation, but without machine-readable semantics Databases offer user and programmatic access to well-described, but pre-defined data A growing number of scientific environments, portals, agents, and applications are defining and using metadata (e.g. data pedigrees), but cannot share it due to incompatible systems and schema –This metadata is an integral part of the scientific record and needs to be managed across applications

Project Goals Design –Layered annotation services –Service interfaces –Client-side components –Component-based notebook interface –Security implementation and data store agnostic Provide middleware to support generation, storage, search, translation, navigation, … of Metadata (owner, type, classification) Semantic relationships (data pedigree, dependencies) Notebook-specific metadata and relationships Electronic Notebook Interface Applications Agents Problem Solving Environments Scientific Annotation Middleware Notebook Services records mgmt., annotation timestamps, signatures import/export/archive Search & Semantic Navigation Services Metadata Management Services Data Archives Web Components and Service Interfaces Data Store Interface

How does SAM differ from an electronic notebook? SAM –Is primarily middleware –Relies on external data stores accessed through industry- standard protocols –Separates the capabilities for managing annotations from functionality needed for official records/notebooks Useful for many non-notebook knowledge management applications Treats notebook interfaces as just one of many possible clients: all have equal access

Importance Further automation of research processes will require the ability for programs to understand and exchange information about data and relationships between data A middleware layer that supports interoperability between programs at the syntactic and semantic levels will remove a significant barrier to the development of advanced scientific records management and problem solving systems.

Technical Challenges Many of the underlying technologies for encoding semantic information are still in development SAM must balance between being a deployable system that can address current needs for data pedigrees and records issues and a research platform for investigating automated reasoning about scientific data

Proposed Timetable SpecificationAlpha Release1.0 Release1.5 Release Metadata Services 9/013/029/029/03 Semantic Services 12/017/0212/027/04 Notebook Services 3/0212/027/037/05 Interface Components 3/0212/027/037/05 Pedigree Schema 9/027/03 Notebook Interface 3/02 * 12/037/04 *A transitional notebook, based on DOE2000 capabilities, is planned early in the project to provide forward data-compatibility with the SAM notebook interface

Contact Info Project lead: Jim Myers Website: –Includes project overview and technical overview documents –Software download, project status, and list information will be available