Vol.6 No.2 June 1, 2007
Editorial (pp097-098)
        M. Gaedke     

Research articles:
Towards a Systematic Approach for the Credibility of Human-Centric Web Applications (pp099-120)
        P. Kamthan  
The apparent “socialization” of the Web brings new prospects as well as challenges. In this paper, the issue of credibility of Web Applications in the light of increased human participation and collaboration is considered. The stakeholder types to which credibility of Web Applications is relevant are identified. Based on a taxonomy of credibility, the origins of the issue of credibility specific to human-centric Web Applications are explored and examples in support are presented. The role of addressing credibility within the auspices of flexible and iterative development processes is emphasized. A framework for understanding and addressing the credibility of human-centric Web Applications in a methodical manner is proposed. This framework includes quality attributes of concern to stakeholders and process- and product-oriented means for addressing them in a feasible manner. Finally, extensions of the framework, including implications towards the Semantic Web, are briefly outlined.

Alternative Path Selection in Resilient Web Infrastructure Using Performances Dependencies (pp121-130)
        V. Zadorozhny and L. Raschid
We propose an approach to efficiently identify and substitute alternate paths in resilient Web infrastructure using overlay networks for reliable information access. Our approach is based on scalable topology-independent analysis of network behavior to identify dependencies among paths in the overlay network. Such dependencies can be characterized as non-random associations between client/server pairs and will be measured using correlation and mutual information metrics.  We demonstrate that these metrics reflect physical topology characteristics, e,g., the overlap of BGP paths. 

A Web Services Based Architecture for Supporting Mobile Users in Large Enterprises(pp131-142)
        A. Coronato and G. de Pietro
Business enterprises can proficiently benefit from Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp). UbiComp environments enable mobile users to access services and resources in a transparent and spontaneous way,  that is, without any configuration operation and through very friendly user-environment interface mechanisms which sometimes anticipate user needs. Unfortunately, until now the UbiComp model has  been applied only to environments bounded to a specific site. In order to support large enterprises, which may have several offices spread over a wide geographic area, this model needs to be extended with basic services that enable the realization of federations of environments. In other words, in the case of multi-office enterprises, each office could be equipped with a classic UbiComp environment; however, such environments must be interconnected by the internet and co-ordinated by a set of higher level services. As a matter of fact, in this case mobile users not only have to get access in a transparent and spontaneous way but, also, they should have the possibility of leaving a physical site without concern of their pending computations and, successively, they should be enabled to come back in the environment, even in a different site, and resume their computations. As a consequence, locating mobile users and handling their disconnections becomes a very critical requirement. Indeed, differently from a classic UbiComp environment, in a federation of UbiComps resources can not be merely released when a mobile user leaves. Instead, the global environment has to infer user’s intentions in order to understand whether he will come back to resume computations, or not. In this paper, we propose a Web Services based architecture for federating classic UbiComp environments. This architecture supports large enterprises with functionalities for locating and tracking mobile users in a federation of UbiComp environments. These services implement specific strategies that have been devised to allow i) mobile users to leave a physical site with no concern of their pending computations; ii) the global environment to locate and track users in the federation of UbiComp environments; iii) mobile users to come back in the federation and resume their computations and iv) the environment to reliably handle resources by inferring users intentions.

Ontology Development for the Semantic Web: an HTML Form-Based Reverse Engineering Approach (pp143-164)
        S.M. Benslimane, D. Benslimane, M. Malki, Z. Maamar, P. Thiran, Y. Amghar,
        and N. Hacid 
The rapid growth of the Internet makes information available anywhere and anytime. Most businesses run Web-based front-end databases upon which online services are offered to end-users. The next generation of the Web, the semantic Web, seeks to offer data in a usable form for automatic reasoning. To this purpose, it is necessary to make existing database content ready-to-use for semantic Web applications, which use ontologies to formally define the semantics of their data. As a result, a large number of initiatives focus on building ontologies through automatic or semi-automatic processes. In this paper we present a semi-automatic reverse engineering approach that uses a relational database's HTML forms and a set of transformation rules to produce to an~OWL ontology.

Rapid Development of Knowledge-Based Conversational Recommender Applications with Advisor Suite (pp165-192)
        D. Jannach and G. Kreutler
Knowledge-based recommender systems are Web-based applications that exploit deep domain knowledge for generating buying proposals that match the individual needs and requirements of an online user. As in many domains the detailed customer requirements have to be elicited in an interactive dialog before the recommendation can be made, the development and in particular also the maintenance of the dynamic Web pages that form this personalized dialog are critical tasks, mostly because of the typically strong interdependencies between the recommendation and personalization knowledge. In this paper, we present Advisor Suite, an integrated, domain-independent environment for the development of highly-interactive, personalized recommender applications. The main pillars of the presented system are a) an integrated, model-driven approach for designing all the required recommendation-, personalization- and interaction knowledge, and b) a mechanism that allows for the automatic generation of Web applications, which is of particular importance in prototyping-based, evolutionary development approaches. On the basis of the experiences we have made with the system in several industrial projects, we finally summarize key criteria and best practices of how to efficiently develop high-quality recommender applications with Advisor Suite.

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