www.sti-innsbruck.at © copyright 2012 sti innsbruck semantic communication architecture innsbruck...

www.sti-innsbruck.at © Copyright 2012 STI INNSBRUCK www.sti-innsbruck.at

Semantic Communication Architecture Innsbruck (SCAI)

Dieter Fensel, Ioan Toma, Andreea Gagiu, Iker Larizgoitia, Birgit Leiter, Ioannis Stavrakantonakis

August 30, 2012

www.sti-innsbruck.at

Reference architecture

• “A reference architecture in the field of software architecture or enterprise architecture provides a template solution for an architecture for a particular domain. It also provides a common vocabulary with which to discuss implementations, often with the aim to stress commonality.

• A reference software architecture is a software architecture where the structures and respective elements and relations provide templates for concrete architectures in a particular domain or in a family of software systems.

• A reference architecture often consists of a list of functions and some indication of their interfaces (or APIs) and interactions with each other and with functions located outside of the scope of the reference architecture.

• Reference architectures can be defined at different levels of abstraction. – A highly abstract one might show different pieces of equipment on a communications network, each providing

different functions. – A lower level one might demonstrate the interactions of procedures (or methods) within a computer program

defined to perform a very specific task.

• A reference architecture provides a template, often based on the generalization of a set of solutions. These solutions may have been generalized and structured for the depiction of one or more architecture structures based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that have been observed in a number of successful implementations. Further it shows how to compose these parts together into a solution.

• Reference Architectures will be instantiated for a particular domain or for specific projects.”

Source Wikipedia• Compare also https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/15635/WSMX%252520-

%252520architecture.pdf

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedure_(computer_science)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_(computer_science)


SCAI *sky

• SCAI is a reference architecture for a semantic engagement engine applicable to various domain and task.

• Core of its efficiently and flexibility is its separation of concern

• And the proper separation and alignment of form and substance.

• In total, SCAI includes three different types of functionalities

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Infrastructure

• The infrastructure layer provides basic functionalities needed by the other functionalities.

• The infrastructure layer is responsible for separating and multiple alignments of communication content and communication channels.

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Communication

• The communication layer used the basic functionality of the infrastructure layer to implement the on-line communication of an agent.

• It combines these elements into useful patterns of on-line interactions.

• It supports exchange of meaning.

5


Engagement

• Engagement turns communication into cooperation.• Why is it important?

– Because customers are important for any enterprise and the engagement concept creates strong relationships between the customers and the enterprise.

– It supports value generation through on-line cooperation.

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Customization of the Architecture

• To derive concrete products and services from the reference architecture it must be instantiated for Application types (Tasks) and Domains.

• Task customization:– Advertisement– CRM– Revenue management– Brand management– Reputation management– Quality management

• Domain Customization: e.g., eTourism

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INFRASTRUCTURE: THE SCEI BUS

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Infrastructure

• Content can be down-/and uploaded from GUIs, Repositories, CMSs, and others

• Channels are the millions of on-line communication possibilities

Infrastructure

ContentChannels

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Infrastructure

• Consists of three major components:– Content manager

• Responsible for managing the content of communication

– Channel Manager• Responsible for managing the channels for communication

– Weaver• Responsible for aligning content and channels

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Infrastructure – Content manager

• Import content from – GUI– CMS – Repository– Others

• Export content from – GUI– CMS – Repository– others

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• Stores the content• Decouples storage mechanism from the rest of SCAI• Independent of any specific data store implementation

i.e. database and storage mechanism

Infrastructure – Content manager


Infrastructure – Channel manager

• Integrates a channel• Personalizes a channel• Interacts with a channel

– Read– Write

• Describes and aggregates channels

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Infrastructure – Weaver

• Separating content from channels also requires the explicit alignment of both.

• This is achieved through a weaver. • A weaver is

– an uni-set of tuples of ten elements– an execution engine for these tuples– a GUI to define these tuples– a management and monitoring component for these tuple sets

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Infrastructure – Weaver – Tuple Set

Elements 1 to 3 are about the content:1. An information item defines an information category that

should be disseminated through various channels.

2. An editor: The editor defines the agent that is responsible for providing the content of an information item.

3. An editor interaction protocol: This defines the interaction protocol governing how an editor collects the content.

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Elements 4 to 9 are about the communication of these items:4. An information type: We make a distinction between three

types of content: • an instance of a concept, • a set of instances of a concept (i.e., an extensional definition of

the concept),• a concept description (i.e., an intensional definition of a concept)

that should be content of the communication act.

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Elements 4 to 9 are about the communication of these items:5. A processing rule: These rules govern how the content is

processed to fit to/being re-extracted from a channel.

6. A channel description: The group of media that is used to disseminate/search for the information.

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Elements 4 to 9 are about the communication of these items:7. Scheduling information: Information on how often and in

which intervals the communication will be performed which includes temporal constrains over multi-channel communication.

8. An executor: It determines which agent or process is performing the update of a channel.

9. An executor interaction protocol: It governs the interaction protocol defining how an executer receives its content.

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Element 10 contains meta-information such as:– Is it a read or write– Is it executed– Is it idle– Etc.

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Infrastructure – Weaver – Execution Engine

• Matchmaking of channels and content; determines which channels are appropriate for the content to be disseminated based on the descriptions of channels and content.

• Evaluates and executes the rules that specify how the content is processed to fit into channels, and also how the content is extracted from the channels.

• Schedules the communication considering temporal constrains over multi-channels.

• Orchestrates the interaction with an agent or process (editor or executer) and defines

• how an editor collects the content• how an executer receives the content

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Infrastructure – Weaver – GUI

• The GUI supports the specification of tuples that are defining the Weaver

• Definition of information item and information type

• Definition of the editor and executer• Definition of interaction protocols for editor and

executer• Specification of processing rules• Creation of channel descriptions

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• Detects deficiencies as early as possible in the functioning of the Weaver and its components

• Is aware of the state of the Weaver at any time – monitoring is real time and continuous

• Provides means to instrument the Weaver and its components

• Listens to events generated by the instrumented components e.g. he – events related to execution of the processing rules,– events related to scheduling of communication acts,– events related to the interaction with the editor and executer.

• The events represent a rich source of knowledge which can facilitate profiling, optimization and reliability of the Weaver component.

Infrastructure – Weaver – Management and Monitoring component


Infrastructure – Weaver – Management and Monitoring component

• Provides visualization, analysis and reporting based on monitored data

• Enables easy interpretation of the data collected during instrumentation and monitoring

23WP11 – Instrumentation and Monitoring


Infrastructure

Content

Channels

Content Manager- Import- Export Contents

Channel Manager- Integrates- Personalize- Interacts- Describes Channels

Weaver:- uni-set of tuples - execution engine - GUI - management and monitoring

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Infrastructure – Summary of Components and Functionalities

Component Functionality1. Content Manager

1.1 Importer/Exporter imports and exports the content from/to external sources

1.2 Storage stores the content

2. Chanel Manager integrates, personalize, interacts, describes channels

3. Weaver

3.1 Execution Engine

3.1.1 Matchmaker matches channels and content

3.1.2 Rules evaluator and executer

transforms content to fit into channels, extracted from the channels

3.1.3 Scheduler schedules the communication considering temporal constrains over multi-channels

3.1.4 Orchestrator orchestrates the interaction with an agent or process (editor or executer)

3.2 GUI supports the specification of the tuples that are defining the Weaver

3.3 Management and Monitoring monitors and manages the Weaver and its components25

COMMUNICATION

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Multi-Channel Publishing Social MediaMonitoring

Communication• Active and reactive communication

• Tracing the communication• Multi-channel switch

• Multi-agent• Communication Patterns

Response

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Communication

• Meaningful communication requires often more than just a single and isolated act of exchanging information. – It can be active or reactive (Dissemination versus

SMM and its integration)– It has a trace, a history– It needs multi-channel switch– It is bi-directional and multi-agent– It is based on patterns of successful interaction styles

(campaigning versus individual interaction, etc.)

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Communication – Dissemination

• Dissemination (from the Latin dissēminātus = “sowing seeds”, “scatter wildly in every direction”) refers to the process of broadcasting a message to the public without direct feedback from the audience

• Takes on the view of the traditional view of communication which involves a sender and a receiver.

• The message carrier sends out information to many in a broadcasting system (composed of more than one channels)

• Harmsworth et al. (2000) define dissemination as “delivering and receiving of a message”, “the engagement of an individual in a process” and “the transfer of a process or product”.

28Image taken from: http://nichcy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rsz_1rsz_dissemination2.jpg

http://nichcy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rsz_1rsz_dissemination2.jpg

http://nichcy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rsz_1rsz_dissemination2.jpg



Classification of channels by the type of service they provide:

2.1. Static Broadcasting

2.2. Dynamic Broadcasting

2.3. Sharing

2.4. Collaboration

2.5. Group Communication

2.6. Semantic-based Communication

Image taken from: http://www.softicons.com/free-icons/application-icons/or-applications-icons-by-iconleak/file-cabinet-icon

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http://www.softicons.com/free-icons/application-icons/or-applications-icons-by-iconleak/file-cabinet-icon

http://www.softicons.com/free-icons/application-icons/or-applications-icons-by-iconleak/file-cabinet-icon



Multi-Channel Publishing

Source: http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/

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http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/


Communication – Social Media Monitoring

• SMM tools facilitate the listening of what people say about various topics in

the social media sphere (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.)

Listening: is active, focused, concentrated attention for the purpose of

understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker.

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Communication – Social Media Monitoring

The Conversation

SOCIAL NETWORKS

WIKIS

PHOTO SHARING

BLOGS MAINSTREAM MEDIA

MICROBLOGS

FORUMS/NEWSGROUPS

VIDEO SHARING

SOCIAL MEDIA NEWSAGGREGATORS

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Communication – Integration of Publication and Monitoring

Multi-ChannelPublishing

Social MediaMonitoring

Communication• Active and reactive

communication

Response

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Example of Active

Communication performed by a

hotelier on Facebook

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Customer response to the hotel’s message

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Transmitter: guest at hotel

External Re-active communication

Reactor: hotelier

Source: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g53449-d96753-r130438938-Hampton_Inn_Pittsburgh_Greentree-Pittsburgh_Pennsylvania.html 36

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g53449-d96753-r130438938-Hampton_Inn_Pittsburgh_Greentree-Pittsburgh_Pennsylvania.html

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g53449-d96753-r130438938-Hampton_Inn_Pittsburgh_Greentree-Pittsburgh_Pennsylvania.html


Communication – Trace

Tracing a conversation through all channels involved is crucial for making communication effective and efficient, and is therefore required for

Communication has a history The communication history IS the

trace Communication must be

remembered otherwise it is meaningless




communication• Tracing the communication

Response

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Communication – Multi-Channel Switch

(Online) Communication is scattered over multiple, often very different channels. • Agents are challenged to

disseminate information over all appropriate channels.

• Activities of all channels the agent is active in must be monitored.

• Impact, Feedback and Responses need to be collected from all channels.





• Multi-channel switch

Response

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Communication – Multi-Agent

Communication requires at least 2 agents: a speaker and a listener

However, communication does not occur in a void – thus the initial model may never occur in real life as there may always be more than one listener or more than one agent.

More agents may be required when the communication receives responses from multiple listeners.





• Multi-agent

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Communication –Communication Patterns

In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations. So patterns are formalized best practices that you must implement yourself in your application.

Based on this definition of Software design patterns we introduce at this point the idea of the communication patterns.

Software Design Patterns

CommunicationPatterns

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Communication – Communication Patterns

• The communication patterns could be a way to facilitate the response phase

of an enterprise.

• A rich set of communication paradigms that address different types of issues

by describing workflows of interaction with customers or potential

customers.

• It should be a dynamic set of patterns in the sense that it is being extended

and altered continuously according to the needs of the customers and the

nature of the issues that are arising.

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The Who dimension

•For any feedback item that is available, someone in the enterprise should be responsible to interact with the customer or theuser that gave that feedback or disseminated something related to the brand, products and services of the enterprise.

•It is crucial for the enterprise to respond via the appropriate employee to the user. To achieve this the enterprise should have a decent mechanism that could figure out in a semi-automatic way they needs of the user by relying on the content of user’s feedback.

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The What dimension

• The What dimension mostly refers to the process of content adaptation. Content adaptation is the action of transforming content to adapt to the needs of the user. Thus, the responsible person (who is specified from the Who dimension) should be able to adapt the existing content, which is available and related to the user’s issue.

• Furthermore, there are cases that the response should be different than a reply to the user. Various actions should be taken in order to support and help the user.

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The What dimension – Example scenario “Hotel”

• A customer faces a problem with the hygiene of his room and tweets about that.

• The listening procedures of the hotel capture that tweet and the administrator assigns the issue to the responsible person, who is dealing with the customer services.

• The responsible employee contacts the customer at his room and asks him if iseverything as it should be and in case there is any problem, they could fix it immediately. An alternative could be to contact the customer and propose him an inspection and a second cleaning session within the next minutes/hours to fix the issue that was publicly disseminated.

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The Where dimension

• The response of the enterprise to the content of the user, which was spread in the web sphere should be done not only via the appropriate person that could adapt the content in the right way, but it should be realized through the correct medium.

• That could be the medium that was used by the user or any other way, which is considered to be more appropriate.

• Moreover, there is the possibility to switch between the available mediums (social networks, phone, email, etc.)

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The When dimension

• This parameter reflects the appropriate response time of the enterprise in the bi-directional communication with the user.

• The enterprise should be ready enough in order to respond and support the users within the most efficient time span, which depends on the type of the input.

• An hierarchy model is needed in order to sort theopen issues according to the importance of thediscussion for the enterprise. This depends on:

– Popularity of the user in the action field of the enterprise

– The importance of the issue

– Existing data regarding the issue and the user

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The Why dimension

• The enterprise should have a set of criteria that could help them decide if a post in the web sphere should be taken in consideration and should be replied or not.

• There are some types of posts that the enterprise does not gain any added value by responding. Some of the criteria could be:

– Is that person an influencer and active in the area of the enterprise?

– Does the post need a reply? (e.g. if it is an online discussion between 2 people, it would be annoying to pop-up in the discussion with the official account of the enterprise.)

– Is there any decent answer to the problem or by jumping into the discussion it would be uncomfortable for the enterprise?

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Communication – Summary of Components and Functionalities

Component Functionality1. Tracer shows the history of communication over multiple channels

involving multiple agents

2. Multi-channel switch

2.1 Multi-channel publisher publishes content on multiple channels using the underlying Weaver component

2.2 Monitoring actively monitors multiple channels

2.3 Feedback and response collector collects and aggregates periodically feedback and responses from multiple channels

2.4 Impact analyzer measure the impact of the communication over multiple channels

3. Multi-agent manager enables multiple agents support in the communication

4. Communication patters library manages a set of commonly used communication patters

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Multi-Channel Publishing Social MediaMonitoring



• Multi-agent• Communication Patterns

Response

Impa

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ENGAGEMENT

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Enga

gem

ent

Workflow management

Crowdsourcing

Value-chain generation


Engagement – Workflow management

What is Workflow management?

• A workflow consists of a sequence of concatenated (connected) steps*.

• Workflow management refers to the process of assigning, tracking and

responding to social media streams, usually in a team environment in

order to prevent double responses and missed opportunities. It is crucial

for an enterprise tool to promote team productivity through collaboration.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow52

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow


Engagement – Crowdsourcing

What is Crowdsourcing?

• Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a

designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an

undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

• The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.

Howe (2008, 2009)

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Engagement – Crowdsourcing

Amazon Mechanical Turk

• Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a market in which anyone can post tasks to be completed and specify prices paid for completing them.

• The inspiration of the system was to have users complete simple tasks that would otherwise be extremely difficult (if not impossible) for computers to perform.

• A number of businesses use Mechanical Turk to source thousands of micro-tasks that require human intelligence, for example to identify objects in images, find relevant information, or to do natural language processing.

• Mechanical Turk has more than 500,000 people in its workforce. Their median wage is about $1.40 an hour.*

*http://www.economist.com/node/2155587654

http://www.economist.com/node/21555876


Engagement –Value-Chain generation

“A value chain is a chain of activities for a firm operating in a specific industry.

The business unit is the appropriate level for construction of a value chain, not

the divisional level or corporate level. Products pass through all activities of

the chain in order, and at each activity the product gains some value. The

chain of activities gives the products more added value than the sum of the

independent activities' values.”

Wikipedia

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Engagement –Value-Chain generation

• The value chain generation lays on top of the other layers (i.e. workflow

management, crowdsourcing) and reflects the aim of the enterprise to

monetize their activities through these layers.

• The ultimate target for keeping the customers happy and engaged to the

brand is to increase the revenue. Thus, it is important to have a layer on top

of the communication that transforms long-term relationships into economic

transactions and new opportunities for the enterprise.

• For example, for a hotelier this layer could be the book-ability of his

services.

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Engagement– Summary of Components and Functionalities

Component Functionality1. Workflow engine manages, executes and tracks the communication and

engagement processes

2. Crowdsourcing manager enables the definition and management of tasks related to communication and engagement; integrates with popular crowdsourcing platforms

3. Value-chain integrator integrates the overall system with a value chain system such as for example a hotel booking engine

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Enga

gem

ent

Workflow management

Crowdsourcing


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Summary

Infrastructure

Multi-Channel Publishing




• Multi-channel switch• Multi-agent

• Communication Patterns

Response

Impa

ctFe

edba

ck

Enga

gem

ent

Workflow management

Crowdsourcing


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Domain Layer - eTourism

• Top down: Instantiate this architecture for the touristic domain.

• Bottom up: Extend current seekda stuff into the direction of SCAI

• The domain specific instantiation is already a refinement of the SCAI - reference architecture (i.e., no longer a reference architecture)

• In any case what needs to be done:– Evaluate the overall approach– Identify core components and their functionalities– Define their APIs and the control flow– Start to define a technical architecture

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www.sti-innsbruck.at © copyright 2012 sti innsbruck semantic communication architecture innsbruck...

Documents

architecture structures

field of software architecture

communication layer

apis reference architectures

engagement engagement

communication channels

infrastructure layer

particular domain