1. Semantic Web and the Grid Brian Matthews

2. 2 euroCRIS seminar 2004 2 Contents A Changing Environment for Research The Semantic Web The Grid The Semantic Grid What does that mean for CRIS and OA? Conclusion

3. Brian Matthews 3 euroCRIS seminar 2004 3 A Future Environment for Research OA and CRIS as drivers for the management and access to information Need for shared metadata and exchange mechanisms Central control impossible/undesirable –a loosely coupled federated approach –based on common interchange and access standards –W3C, GGF, IETF, OASIS, EuroCRIS, WfMC etc Changes in technology –resource discovery –enables access Two leading technology opportunities –Semantic Web and the GRID

4. Brian Matthews 4 euroCRIS seminar 2004 4 The Semantic Web Adding machine readable information about the web, to the web. The Web is chaotic - why are resources are linked? –Imagine a library where all the books have the same text on the cover, and the only catalogues are compiled by photocopying the books, cutting up the copies, and arranging the words in the order of frequency. Johan Hjelm Google is great at returning all the pages on the web that mention "Tim Berners-Lee“ –But what about returning those pages written by Tim Berners-Lee? The Semantic Web adds well-defined meaning to describe the Web (Metadata). The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which the information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation –Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001

5. Brian Matthews 5 euroCRIS seminar 2004 5 Add Meaning to Resources

6. Brian Matthews 6 euroCRIS seminar 2004 6 Semantic Web: A Layered Architecture Basic Syntax of the Web Language of triples for describing resources Formalism for defining and sharing vocabularies Reasoning over statements about resources “The Web of Trust”

7. Brian Matthews 7 euroCRIS seminar 2004 7 Machine Readable Meaning Meaning becomes machine readable - so software agents can use it for: –Improving searches (indexing, cataloguing) –Convey information on the usage of the resource (access control, IPR). –Convey information on the actors involved (user preferences, device profiles, privacy preferences) –Give third party opinions on the content of another site (rating services, brokering). Essentially, Metadata of all kinds

8. Brian Matthews 8 euroCRIS seminar 2004 8 Progress so far A lot more than you might think! Base standards are now mature: –RDF, RDF Schema, OWL –many others reaching maturity: Many shared vocabularies emerging –DC, DMoz, Prism, FOAF, VCard, SKOS, RSS…. Lots of RDF out there! –Mozilla, Adobe, RSS, Still a lot of work to do –reasoning, trust, provenance, tools, But we are getting there!

9. Brian Matthews 9 euroCRIS seminar 2004 9 Example: SKOS Community effort led by CCLRC/W3C A vocabulary to represent Thesauruses Heavily used in the library community –but traditionally locked up in institutional databases Allow people to share controlled vocabularies for cataloguing resources Examples –GEMET – environmental data –GCL – e-Government –English Heritage –W3C glossary CRIS 2 CRIS 1 CRIS portal Query distributor and collator Users Thesaurus Service  

10. Brian Matthews 10 euroCRIS seminar 2004 10 Example: Simile Project of MIT + HP Labs + W3C Publishing digital library information onto the semantic web. Make semantic interoperability of metadata a reality for digital libraries by: –providing reusable software for browsing, searching and mapping heterogeneous metadata –using semantic web technologies –identifying issues, gaps and best practices allow libraries to share information Provide semantic web browser, and RDF based datasets –for art history information –combined from different sources Using SKOS as the thesaurus format. OA within the Semantic Web

11. Brian Matthews 11 euroCRIS seminar 2004 11 Semantic Web and OA Semantic web provides an underlying mechanism to support OA: –common metadata –data exchange mechanism –searching and browsing across web –query language and logic –interoperability –lose coupling. Can also support CRIS this way too. –CERIF in OWL (Lopatenko) And also Data Sets –CCLRC Metadata format – also in RDF Schema But that is not the only main technology change

12. Brian Matthews 12 euroCRIS seminar 2004 12 The Grid The Grid provides an environment that enable software applications to integrate instruments, displays, computational and information resources that are managed by diverse organisations in widespread locations. Provide access to a global distributed computing environment –via authentication, authorisation, negotiation, security Identify and allocate appropriate resources –interrogate information services -> resource discovery –enquire current status/loading via monitoring tools –decide strategy - eg move data or move application –(co-)allocate resources -> process flow Schedule tasks and analyse results –ensure required application code is available on remote machine –transfer or replicate data and update catalogues –monitor execution and resolve problems as they occur –retrieve and analyse results - eg using local visualization So far typically in large-scale science and engineering.

13. Brian Matthews 13 euroCRIS seminar 2004 13 To make this happen you need... agreed protocols (cf WWW -> W3C) defined application programming interfaces (APIs) existence of directories for both system and application distributed data management availability of current status of resources monitoring tools accepted authentication procedures and policies network traffic management provided by Grid-based toolkits and services

14. Brian Matthews 14 euroCRIS seminar 2004 GRID History mid 90s – Globus The GRID Bible Based on “traditional” protocols (IETF) Taken up by e- Science Standardised via GGF Now converging with Web –Web Services - WSRF

15. Brian Matthews 15 euroCRIS seminar 2004 15 Computer simulations real-time collection Multi-source Data Analysis desktop & VR clients with shared controls Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel Example: NASA IPG archival storage

16. Brian Matthews 16 euroCRIS seminar 2004 16 Example: DataGrid LHC will produce several PBs of data per year for at least 10 years from 2005. Data analysis will be carried out by farms of 1000’s of commodity processors (the “computing fabric”) in each of about 10 regional Tier1 centres - RAL is UK Tier1 Each Tier1 centre will need to hold several PBs of raw data and results of physics analysis Strong focus on middleware and testbeds - open source

17. Brian Matthews 17 euroCRIS seminar 2004 17 What Next? The Semantic Grid Semantic Grid distributed computation GRID WEB Semantic Web machine readable semantics thanks to Dave de Roure

18. Brian Matthews 18 euroCRIS seminar 2004 18 What Next? The Semantic Grid Current GRID is “hand-crafted” –users have to know a lot about the available resources –users have to “write scripts” to use the GRID Add machine readable semantics (metadata) –The Semantic GRID Semantic Grid distributed computation GRID WEB Semantic Web machine readable semantics thanks to Dave de Roure “the GRID is an application of the Semantic Web” de Roure, Goble

19. Brian Matthews 19 euroCRIS seminar 2004 19 But what does that mean? more automation more negotiation more autonomy more self-monitoring and control use of autonomous agents Will make the Grid much more like the electricity Grid –You don’t need to know where the stuff comes from.

20. Brian Matthews 20 euroCRIS seminar 2004 20 Major UK e-Science project –Bio-informatics –In-silico experimentation –www.mygrid.org.uk Based on a GRID architecture Uses Semantic Web Tools for –Workflow and service discovery Prior to and during enactment Semantic registration –Workflow assembly Semantic service typing of inputs and outputs –Provenance of workflows and other entities –Experimental metadata glue –Use of RDF, RDFS, DAML+OIL/OWL Instance store, ontology server, reasoner Materialised vs at point of delivery reasoning. –myGrid Information Model About to join them to work on workflow Semantic Grid Example

21. Brian Matthews 21 euroCRIS seminar 2004 21 What does this mean for CRIS & OA? Portal with knowledge-assisted user interface Digital Curation Facility SCIENTIFIC DATASETS metadata PUBLICATIONS metadata CRIS metadata publish validate GRIDs Ambient, Pervasive Access The Semantic Grid is what makes this work!

22. Brian Matthews 22 euroCRIS seminar 2004 22 Example: Validation Validate results from paper –need to access paper (OA) –need to link to data (and metadata) –need to access analysis and visualisation tools –need common metadata and access to resources across Grid. Grid middleware Local data Local metadata DA 1 Data PortalPub Portal Local data Local metadata DA 2 Local data Local metadata IR 1 Local data Local metadata IR 2

23. Brian Matthews 23 euroCRIS seminar 2004 23 Example: Science as a process Within a Grid environment Submit proposal Prepare experiment Generate results Analyse results Write report Provenance metadata + access conditions data description +++ data location Related material Collecting the metadata can then become part of the experimental support environment CRIS DAIR

24. Brian Matthews 24 euroCRIS seminar 2004 24 Example: the Nature of a Publication Traditional publication as continuous text, with static graphs and images Change the notion of the content of the publication –hypertext –include active components – links to simulations, visualisations a much more dynamic document –a multimedia presentation How will publishers cope? How will publication archives cope?

25. Brian Matthews 25 euroCRIS seminar 2004 25 So how to achieve this? Resource discovery –good metadata –common formats –standards Resource negotiation –for data and services Quality of service guarantees Policies and contracts Security and trust Provenance Monitoring and payment Work flow Reasoning tools Autonomous agents Autonomic systems Links to legacy –especially database systems –querying systems Collaborative working environments Design methods

26. Brian Matthews 26 euroCRIS seminar 2004 26 Progress Moving quite fast on this from many different directions –e-Science –Next Generation Grid Report –FP6/7 –Semantic Grid at GGF –OA initiatives –Digital Curation a major concern Real exciting opportunity to pull it all together

27. Brian Matthews 27 euroCRIS seminar 2004 27 Conclusions Semantic Grid and Open Access –enables –enabling CRIS as an information coordinator Archiving and curation –need to archive much more –data, programs, visualisation and analysis tools, formats, calibrations, versions, OS …… Workflow a key component Metadata collection and maintenance is a big problem. B.M.Matthews@rl.ac.uk