Ousia Weaver -A tool for creating and publishing mashups-

Ousia WeaverA tool for creating and publishing mashupsas impressive Web pages
Ikuya Yamada, WataruYamaki, Hirotaka Nakajima, YoshiyasuTakefuji
Studio Ousia Inc.
Keio University
3rd Workshop on Mashups, Enterprise Mashups
and Lightweight Composition on the Web (MEM 2010)

Mashup is a technique which combines data and functions from multiple Web sources into new Web contents.
Mashups have become very popular. Numerous mashups have been created on the Web.
There are over 4500 mashups registered on ProgrammableWeb (http://www.programmableweb.com/).
Mashups in a nutshell

Recently, software tools called “mashup editors”have been attracting attention.
Yahoo! Pipes
Microsoft Popfly
Intel MashMaker
These editors are typically targeted at non-expert users and allow them to create mashups without writing any code.
Mashup Editors

However, existing mashup editors tend to focus only on creating mashups and lack in publishing and visualizing mashups.
If users want to publish mashup results on the Web, they eventually have to do complex programming and/or settings.
Issues

Yahoo! Pipes only supports three simple visualizations (List, Image, Map).
Users cannot customize these visualizations.
Pipes doesn’t support publishing its mashups as independent Web pages.
Example
Visualized mashup result by Yahoo! Pipes

We propose a novel mashup editor namedOusia Weaver.
Ousia Weaver has distinguished functions that strongly support publishing and visualizing mashups.
Ousia Weaver provides a visual editor which enables users to create mashups without writing any code.
Users can create, visualize, and publish mashups without any complex programming and settings.
Ousia Weaver

With Ousia Weaver, users can create mashups using three steps:
Creating the mashup with Visual Editor
Visualizing the mashup with Visualization Widgets
Publishing the mashup withMashup Server
Three Steps to Publish Mashups with Ousia Weaver

Creating Mashups

Ousia Weaver provides a visual editor which enables users to create mashups by visually stringing together components.
Mashups are represented using directed graph structure.
Operators (nodes) represent data operations.
Connections (edges) connect two operators and define data paths between these.
Programming Model
Operators
Connections

Creating a mashup with Ousia Weaver is an iterative process:
Adding desired operators.
Stringing operators together using connections.
Mashups are executed in a data-flow manner.
InputString operator receives a keyword from a user.
AmazonAllByKeyword operator performs a search on Amazon.com with the keyword.
OutputItemList operator returns the search result.
Programming Model
Operators
Connections

Movie
Programming Model

Operators
Input terminal
Argument name
Argument value
Output terminal
The most fundamental component of Ousia Weaver is operators.
Operators represent all data operations in Ousia Weaver.
An operator consists of input terminals, argument name/value pairs, and output terminals.

Currently, Ousia Weaver provides over 300 operators.
All operators can be classified into three groups:
Base operators provide basic programming operations.
Arithmetic operation
Data type conversion
Standard selection operation (If /Switch)
Loop operation (While/Foreach)
Data source operators represent Web data sources.
Web API
Web data extraction (RSS / CSV)
Data transformation operators transform data into a visualizable form.
AddImage operator adds thumbnails to the data
AddLocation operator attaches geographical locations to the data
AddDate and AddDateRange operator add dates and ranges of dates to the data respectively.
AddCoordinate2d operator adds two dimensional coordinates to the data.
Operators

Extending Operators
class AppendTerminal(OperatorBaseTerminal):
def __init__(self,args):
OperatorBaseTerminal.__init__(self, args)
Input_terminal = {}
input_terminal["Input"] = None
self.set_input_terminals(input_terminal)
class AppendBody(OperatorBaseBody):
def __init__(self, args, manager_args, worker):
OperatorBaseBody.__init__(self, args, manager_args, worker)
def run(self, input_terminals):
output_terminals = {}
output_terminals["Output"] = str(input_terminals["Input"]) + str(self.get_args()["text"])
return output_terminals
ousiaweaver.Operators.Append = function(){
this.addInputTerminal("string", "Input");
this.addOutputTerminal("string", "Output");
}ousiaweaver.Operators.Append.packageName = "base.string";
ousiaweaver.Operators.Append.arguments = {
"text": {
label: "Text",
type: "string",
required: true,
}
}
Append.js
Append.py
Operators are extensible. Users can add and update arbitrary operators whenever they need.
An operator consists of two files:
Simple metadata file (JavaScript)
Program code file (Python)
Ousia Weaver provides code templates. Users can create new operators by writing just a few code fragments.

Data Types
Ousia Weaver implements a simple data typing system.
There are some unique data types:
any can represent any data including other data types.
itemlistrepresents a mashup result and contains multiple item.
data-flow represents a mashup.

Data Types
All terminals have data type properties.
Two terminals, which have different data type properties, cannot be connected unless either or both properties are any.
When users start dragging one terminal, other terminals will automatically be disabled and turn gray if they cannot be connected with the dragged terminal.
Terminals which cannot be connected with the dragged terminal will automatically turn gray.

Visualizing Mashups

With Ousia Weaver, the user can visualize the mashup result by choosing the desired visualization widgets from the list.
Visualizing Mashups

Visualization Widgets
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget
Visualization widgets are components which visualize mashup results.
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget

Catalog Widget
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget
Catalog widget visualizes the mashup results like a catalog.

Plot Widget
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget
Plot widget plots the mashup results on a two dimensional space.

Table Widget
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget
Table widget presents all titles and descriptions of the mashup results in a table.

Map Widget
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget
Map widget depicts the mashup results visually on a map.

Timeline Widget
Catalog widget
Plot widget
Table widget
Map widget
Timeline widget
Timeline widget puts the mashup results into a graphical timeline.

Ousia Weaver provides a function which automatically selects appropriate visualization widgets for the mashup.
The function scans the mashup result and detects if the result has all of the data which need to be visualized.
Automatic Widgets Selection

Publishing Mashups

Ousia Weaver provides a lightweight server named Mashup Server.
Mashup server executes mashups dynamically and makes the mashup results accessible to external users.
The server automatically assigns a URL to each mashup and dynamically executes the mashup when an external user accesses it.
The URL of a mashup named “search_videos” in the “foo” server would be “http://foo/search_videos/”
Mashup Server

Implementation

Architecture
Sources of mashups
Visual editor
Mashup server
Results of mashups
Metadata ofoperators
Results ofvisualization
Operator manager
Visualizer
Program codes of operators
Run-timeengine
Ousia Weaver consists of five main components:
Operator manager
Run-time engine
Visualizer
Visual Editor
Mashup server

Operator Manager
Sources of mashups
Visual editor
Mashup server
Results of mashups
Operator manager
Visualizer
Run-timeengine
Operator manager is a simple component implemented using Python.
It manages the list of all operators and delivers their program codes and metadata to other components.

Run-time Engine
Sources of mashups
Visual editor
Mashup server
Results of mashups
Operator manager
Visualizer
Run-timeengine
Run-time engine is a component responsible for executing mashups.
It is implemented as a multi-process server daemon using Python and Python’s multiprocessing module.

Visualizer
Sources of mashups
Visual editor
Mashup server
Results of mashups
Operator manager
Visualizer
Run-timeengine
Visualizer is a component which contains visualization widgets inside and visualizes mashups using the widgets.
It is implemented in JavaScript and uses jQuery (jquery.com) and Simile Widgets (simile-widgets.org).

Visual Editor
Sources of mashups
Visual editor
Mashup server
Results of mashups
Operator manager
Visualizer
Run-timeengine
Visual editor provides a rich visual editing interface for creating mashups.
It is implemented using JavaScript and HTML, and can be run on most commonly used Web browsers.
It can also be executed as a stand-alone application on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux using Mozilla’s XUL technology.

Mashup Server
Sources of mashups
Visual editor
Mashup server
Results of mashups
Operator manager
Visualizer
Run-timeengine
Mashup server makes mashups accessible to external users.
It is written in Python and uses Apache CouchDB as a datastore.

Execution Model

Mashup Execution Model(Mashup Server)
(2)
Visualizer
External user
Mashup server
Run-timeengine
(1)
(4)
(3)
The basic sequence of operations of the mashup server.
Mashup server executes mashups when external users access them.
Mashups are executed as follows:
Executing the mashup using the runtime engine.
Visualizing the result using the visualizer.
Returning the visualized result to the user.

Mashup Execution Model(Run-time Engine)
result
result
result
task
task
task
Task queue
Add tasks
Take tasks
Result buffer
Watch progress
Add/getresults
Manager processes
Workerprocesses
Run-time engine executes mashups in parallel.
It divides a mashup into multiple, independent tasks and executes them using worker processes.

Examples

Book Mashup
“Book Mashup” provides a simple book search function.
Receiving a keyword from the user.
Performing a book search on Amazon.com.
Attaching coordinates, which consists of price and the number of pages, to the result.
Returning the result to the user.

Movie
Book mashup

Event mashup
“Event mashup” provides an event search function.
Receiving a keyword from the user.
Retrieving event information from Upcoming and Eventful.
Adding ranges of dates and geographic locations of the events to the result.
Returning the result to the user.

Movie
Event mashup

Conclusion and Future Work

We proposed a mashup editor called Ousia Weaver.
OusiaWeaver provides a sophisticated visual editor which enables users to create mashups without writing any code.
Ousia Weaver offers a variety of rich visualization widgets which visualize mashups in an impressive way.
Ousia Weaver includes a simple Web server which makes the mashup accessible to external users.
With Ousia Weaver, users can easily create, visualize, and publish mashups as impressive Web pages.
Conclusion

We plan to do an extensive user evaluation which compares Ousia Weaver to existing mashup editors.
We will continue to develop Ousia Weaver.
We are planning to release Ousia Weaver as an open source product.
Future Work

Ousia Weaver -A tool for creating and publishing mashups-

by Ikuya Yamada on Apr 27, 2010

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