This presentation was delivered by Johannes Biermann (State and University Library) and Noa Campos López (Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung Göttingen mbH). It introduced the EcoBuilder and the Process Compiler tools during a PERICLES workshop at IDCC17 (Edinburgh, 20 February 2017).

1. GRANT AGREEMENT: 601138 | SCHEME FP7 ICT 2011.4.3
Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information throughout the Content Lifecycle taking account of Evolving Semantics [Digital
Preservation]
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework
Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no601138”.
Digital Ecosystem and Process Compiler
Johannes Biermann Noa Campos López
State and University Library Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche
Göttingen Datenverarbeitung
Göttingen mbH

2. Part A: Model driven approach Digital Ecosystem
introduction
Part B: Digital Ecosystems Model
▶ Explanation of the Model
▶ Modelling Strategies
▶ EcoBuilder
Part C: Process Model
▶ From Model to Real World
▶ Aggregated Process
▶ Process Compiler
Part D: Practical Examples
Agenda

3. GRANT AGREEMENT: 601138 | SCHEME FP7 ICT 2011.4.3
Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information throughout the Content Lifecycle taking account of Evolving Semantics [Digital
Preservation]
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework
Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no601138”.
Part A: Model driven
preservation

4. Preservation by Design
▶ Preservation is not a dedicated system
▶ Preservation functionality is part of the actual
systems
Benefit
▶ Merging of active-life and archival phases
→ less information loss, continuum approach
▶ use in sheer curation scenarios: automatic
gathering of information without disturbing
the user

5. Model Driven Preservation
Digital
Ecosystem
Models
Capture and representation of the
environment
Preservation Process
analysis
change
provenance
automated model update

6. interwoven evolving networks of
▶ digital objects,
▶ policies,
▶ processes,
▶ technical services,
▶ and user communities
within constantly changing and interacting
environments influencing digital objects
What are Digital Ecosystems?

7. Digital Ecosystem Example
Photo by Randy Montoya, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sandialabs/6104342632/

8. ▶ creation, deletion and change of single entities
▶ change in larger social or cultural contexts
▶ merging and growing user communities
◦ changing expectations, requirements, and
background knowledge of user communities
◦ exchange of digital objects
▶ new policies, processes
▶ technical infrastructure and dependency changes
Planned and Unplanned
Digital Ecosystem change

9. Complex evolving structures of
Digital Ecosystems

10. Because of the complexity of DEs it hard to
▶ maintain them
▶ describe them
▶ introduce changes
▶ determine impact of change
▶ identify and resolve problems
▶ trace provenance
→ use of ontologies and models
Issues of Digital Ecosystems

11. PERICLES Models
Upper layer
ontologies
Middle layer
ontologies
Domain specific
ontologies
LRM
LRM_STATIC LRM_DYNAMIC
LRM_SEMANTIC_
VERSIONING
LRM_TIME
DEM
DEM_CORE
DEM_POLICIES
DEM_ANALYSIS
DEM_PRESERVATION_P
OLICIES
DEM_PROCESS
DEM_INFRA-
STRUCTURE
Other
DOMAIN
ONTOLOGIES
DEM_SCENARIOS
can use
imports
LevelofAbstraction

12. GRANT AGREEMENT: 601138 | SCHEME FP7 ICT 2011.4.3
Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information throughout the Content Lifecycle taking account of Evolving Semantics [Digital
Preservation]
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework
Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no601138”.
Part B: Digital Ecosystem
Model

13. ▶ designed for capturing Digital Ecosystems
▶ an OWL ontology (open source)2
▶ Supported by a software tool which makes creation
of a model for a scenario easy
▶ Needs always applied to a scenario, it is an
abstract model
▶ Consists of six part-models
The Digital Ecosystem Model1
overview
1 Publications:
Johannes Biermann, Anna Eggers, Fabio Corubolo, and Simon Waddington. 2016. An ontology supporting
planning, analysis, and simulation of evolving digital ecosystems. In Proceedings of the 8th International
Conference on Management of Digital EcoSystems (MEDES). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 26-33. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1145/3012071.3012081
Deliverable D3.5 Full report on Digital Ecosystem Management, http://pericles-project.eu/deliverables/75
1 Ontology released on Github:
https://github.com/pericles-project/DEM

15. DEM Modelling Strategies

16. ▶ Policy driven modelling (top - down)
▶ Digital Object based modelling
◦ data flow driven (bottom - up)
◦ process driven (top - down)
▶ Community interaction driven (both)
▶ Infrastructure centric (top-down)
Modelling is always purpose driven
Modelling Strategies

17. ▶ simulate impact of change
▶ reveal single point of failures
▶ use in a sheer curation scenario
◦ extraction of significant environment
information
◦ automatic updating of models
▶ analyse provenance
▶ working basis for other tools
Resulting Model

18. Tool1 for the creation of Digital Ecosystem
Models
▶ GUI & Java API
▶ Simplifies the creation of the model
▶ Usable by scenario experts without the necessity
to write ontology or Java sources
▶ Facilitates integration into workflows
▶ Uses Java Jena API - can output OWL/XML or Turtle
EcoBuilder
1EcoBuilder released on Github:
https://github.com/pericles-project/EcoBuilder

19. GRANT AGREEMENT: 601138 | SCHEME FP7 ICT 2011.4.3
Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information throughout the Content Lifecycle taking account of Evolving Semantics [Digital
Preservation]
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework
Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no601138”.
Part C: Process Model

20. From Model to Real World
PERICLES Objective
Ensure digital content
remains accessible,
understandable, and
reusable in
continually evolving
environments.

21. From Model to Real World
Triplestore
Preservation
Processes
Digital
Ecosystem
Ecosystem
Model
Validatio
n
Model
update
Change &
model analysis
RDF-based
description
s
PERICLES Approach
“Preservation by
design” with model-
driven preservation.
RDF-based “digital
ecosystem model”
with preservation
processes

22. From Model to Real World
Triplestore
Preservation
Processes
Digital
Ecosystem
Ecosystem
Model
RDF-based
description
s
Validatio
n
Model
update
Change &
model analysis
RDF-based
description
s
Observation
Process descriptions
are an integrated
part of the digital
ecosystem model
and, therefore,
subject to change.

23. From Model to Real World
Triplestore
Workflow
Engine
Preservation
Processes
Executable
Workflows
Digital
Ecosystem
Ecosystem
Model
RDF-based
description
s
BPMN
description
s
Process
execution
Validatio
n
Model
update
Change &
model analysis
RDF-based
description
s
Problem
Real-world
preservation processes
are complex
executable workflows.
The challenge is to
kept them in sync with
their model
description and react
on change.

24. From Model to Real World
Triplestore
Process
Compiler
Workflow
Engine
Preservation
Processes
Executable
Workflows
Digital
Ecosystem
Ecosystem
Model
RDF-based
description
s
BPMN
description
s
Process
compilation
Process
execution
Validatio
n
Model
update
Change &
model analysis
RDF-based
description
s
Solution: Process
Model
“Model first” principle.
Compile RDF-based
process descriptions
into executable
workflows.

25. From Model to Real World
Triplestore
Process
Compiler
Workflow
Engine
Preservation
Processes
Executable
Workflows
Digital
Ecosystem
Ecosystem
Model
RDF-based
description
s
BPMN
description
s
Process
compilation
Process
execution
Validatio
n
Model
update
Change &
model analysis
RDF-based
description
s
Solution: Process
Compiler
Validates changes
before they occur.
Updates executable
workflows automatically
after each change.

26. Described what is an aggregated process and an atomic
process
Aggregated Process
Atomic Process
Implementation:
- executable
language
Infrastructure:
- technical services
- agents
Aggregated Process
Process flow:
- sequential execution
- single thread
Data flow:
- type-validated

27. Features:
▶ backend component
▶ written in Java
▶ open source (Apache
2.0)1
▶ RESTful API2
▶ integrated with the ERMR
▶ provides an internal
Apache Jena triplestore
Process Compiler
1Available at GitHub: https://github.com/pericles-project/ProcessCompiler
2Process Compiler and API documented at: http://pericles-
project.eu/deliverables/80
Functionalities:
▶ validate implementation
files
▶ validate process
aggregations
▶ compile aggregated
processes

28. Advantages:
▶ simple approach
▶ more flexibility to create new preservation processes
▶ increase of process re-usability
▶ reduction of the scope of changes
▶ applicable to any form of process modeling language
▶ semantic annotation of processes
▶ better process understanding and representation
▶ process query and validation at semantic level
▶ aggregated process steps feature Turing complete languages
Process Compiler
Campos-López N. and Wannenwetsch O. (2016). The PERICLES Process Compiler: Linking
BPMN Processes into Complex Workflows for Model-Driven Preservation in Evolving
Ecosystems.In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Web Information Systems
and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-758-186-1, pages 76-83. DOI:
10.5220/0005759800760083

29. GRANT AGREEMENT: 601138 | SCHEME FP7 ICT 2011.4.3
Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information throughout the Content Lifecycle taking account of Evolving Semantics [Digital
Preservation]
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework
Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no601138”.
Part D: Practical Example

30. Connection with the Appraisal Tool
▶ Assumption: we have checked each
collection item with the appraisal tool have
seen that the change (next slide) does not
cause problems
▶ The collection expert decide to introduce a
change to the model of the collection
▶ Aim is demonstrating on
◦ how to model a scenario
◦ perform a change on the model
◦ automatically apply the change to the real
ecosystem

31. Digital Video Scenario
APPRAISAL TOOL
We realise that “mpeg-1” is a risky codec for digital video
entities
RULE
All digital video entities have to be “mpeg-4”
PRESERVATION PROCESS
Transcode digital video entities to “mpeg-4” before storing

32. Example Ecosystem 1.0 Video encoding
Codec
a Policy
Digital Video
a Digital Object
Repository
a Technical Service
Store
an Atomic Process
Transcode
an Atomic Process
Ingest Digital
Video
an Aggregated
Process
constrain
s
hasInput
runs on
constrain
s
hasInput
manages
manages
hasInput
Transcoder
a Technical Serviceruns on

33. EcoBuilder demonstration
Live demo of the tool

34. Aggregated Process: Ingest Digital
Video

35. Change in the ecosystem: new rule
RULE
We have to back up all digital objects to be stored in
the system
PRESERVATION PROCESS
Back up a digital object after storing
REACTION TO CHANGE
Automatic recompilation of processes that store
digital objects

36. Example Ecosystem 2.0 Backuping
Codec
a Policy
Digital Video
a Digital Object
Repository
a Technical Service
Store
an Atomic Process
Transcode
an Atomic Process
Ingest Digital
Video
an Aggregated
Process
constrain
s
hasInput
runs on
constrain
s
hasInput
manages
manages
Backup
a Policy
Backup
a Process
Backup Repository
a Technical Service
constrain
s
constrain
s
manages runs on
hasInput
Transcoder
a Technical Service
runs on
Secure Store
an Aggregated
Process
hasInput
manages
hasInput

37. Aggregated Process: Secure Store

38. Change: automatic recompilation