Semantic Interoperability problem of OSS Forges

Bartosz Lewandowski , Alicja Ciemniewska, Paweł Kędziora, Cezary Mazurek Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC), Poland Semantic Interoperability problem of OSS Forges.

Outline

Motivation

Objectives

Problem Area

Approach

Outcomes

Conclusions & outlook

Motivation

Fostering the idea for supporting interoperability in OSS field.

Limited interoperability of forges.

Forge lock-in phenomenon.

Lack of cross-forge migration facilities.

Focusing on semantic interoperability challenge: differences in Forge information models.

investigate and demonstrate how semantic interoperability approaches and technologies can be used to deal with the variety of software , services and actors in the OSS domain .

enable the process of migrating OSS project metadata between forge platforms at the semantic level by

introducing semantic enhancements to forge platforms

exploiting semantic technologies to facilitate the transition of OSS project metadata between forges.

Objectives

Problem area

More than 50 public and active forge instances in Europe

certain degree of interoperability desirable (e.g. cross-forge search or cross-forge migration)

Technical but also a semantic interoperability challenge

Differences in schemas and granularity of e . g. software categorizations, different skill terminologies, languages etc.

Problem area

The approach

The approach Importing phase Mapping phase Exporting phase

Approach. Sample migration. OSS project metadata migration from BerliOS to Gforge.

Outcomes

The use of semantic technologies for loose coupling of heterogenous forge information models.

The proof-of-concept implementation based on scenario between existing forges: BerliOS and Gforge.

Scenario-based PoC identifies potential enhancements of Forges.

QualiPSo, Semantic Interoperability deliverables and the other results available at: http://www.qualipso.org/node/35

Issues & limitations

Forge related:

Missing ontologies provided by forge platforms,

Lack of WSDL interfaces of forges.

Semantic technology related:

OWL-DL compliance of ontologies required by reasoning engines (Pellet),

Limitations on complexity of parameters of Semantic Web Services (OWL-S Mindswap API),

No significant progress in improvement/development of OWL-S APIs

Modeling the project information hosted by forges:

Introduction of OWL-based ontologies provides a standard way for modeling project-related information.

Efficient modeling through concept-related features: e.g., polymorphism and inheritance.

Introduces the inference capabilities on OWL concepts.

The use of semantic mapping techniques for harmonization of heterogeneous information models . (rule-based language) ( working on a higher level of abstraction )