Abstract

Web-Based Publishing refers to making available any information that is made accessible through a Web-Based Service. Thus, Web-based publishing refers to any publishing process that is based on Web technologies, but not necessarily as a delivery technology. Web-based publishing can also use non-Web technologies as a delivery platform, for example the new proprietary Rich Internet Applications (RIA) platforms Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) or Microsoft Silverlight, or mobile platforms such as Android or OpenMoko. There are two main differences between information systems built around Web-based publishing, and other approaches. The first difference is that the standards used for communicating between the delivery platform and the back end are open and widely deployed technologies, which makes it easy to find and use tools, developers, and reusable components. The second difference is that because of the flexibility of the involved technologies, such a scenario is ideally suited to implement easily adaptable multi-channel publishing platforms, which can aggregate and publish information from and to a large variety of different information sources and consumers.

Projects, Projects, Projects

• Projects in the fields Location, Linked Data, and Feed Technology
• Regular meeting time reserved for project work
  • presentations about related work (research, projects, products)
  • presentations about project plans and issues
  • discussion of project plans and issues
• One fixed meeting slot per group per week
  • discussion of project plans and issues
  • assignment of presentations
• Overall workload should be 6-8h per week

Course Results

• Final Project Presentations
  • presentations which briefly present the project results
  • reports which describe the project and its results in greater detail
• Grade is based on:
  • 30% presentations during the semester
  • 30% final project presentation & report
  • 40% project results

Location

• Place Markup Language (PlaceML) for describing locations
  • places can be described geographically (coordinates)
  • places can be described with metadata (descriptions)
  • place descriptions can be structured
• What applications can use place descriptions, and how?
  • creating, editing, managing, and sharing location information
  • connecting location-enabled devices with location descriptions
• In many cases location information can be mashed up
  • combined with other information such as map data from map services
  • integrated into other environments (Facebook or OpenSocial)

Linked Data

• Data linking on the Web is rudimentary
  • HTML has some primitive support in the document head
  • microformats describe special-purpose links (e.g., to a license)
• The Semantic Web has stifled the development of the plain Web
  • anything that can be done on the Web can be done on the Semantic Web
  • adoption is still non-existent outside of closed communities
• Links are good, following links is good
  • XLink is the Web's generalized linking language
  • XLink is badly designed, underspecified, and unpopular
  • a new link format must be accompanied by an access protocol

Feed Technology

• Feeds are widely used to publish and reuse itemized information
• RSS and Atom provide formats for publishing feeds
• AtomPub is a format for providing write access to a feed
• Managing feeds currently is a manual process
  • server configuration and not accessible through an API
• Feed descriptions are information items and can be put into a feed
• Feed Feeds is feed metadata managed using feeds
• Standardized formats support distribution and sharing of information
  1. a feed feed server manages feed descriptions and supports AtomPub interactions
  2. feed publishers can manage and publish their feed through a publisher interface
  3. feed consumers can manage and share their feed subscriptions

Resources, REST, UI

Multiple UIs

Mash-Ups

Mash-Apps

Web-Based Application

• Applications should ship data, not code
  • REST-based back-ends can support any kind of interface
  • shipping code is very client-specific and should be avoided
• Applications should focus on the service perspective
  • how to deliver a service that can be easily used by others
  • how to describe the service's data model for potential users
  • how to control access and authenticate service users
• If possible, other services should be integrated
  • if you need authentication, why not use OpenID?
  • if you need social networking, why not use OpenSocial?
  • if you need location, why not use Fireeagle?

Rich Internet Application (RIA)

• Rich Internet Applications are based on the idea of a smarter client
  • Ajax applications ship JavaScript code for modern browsers
  • Flash applications ship ActionScript code for flash players
  • ActiveX applications ship Windows components for IE
• RIAs should be built on top of a RESTful service
  • standard services will provide XML-based interactions
  • Ajax-specific services may provide JSON representations
• Service and RIA should be completely separated
  • if required, the service can be provided as an API
  • if required, alternative UIs (e.g., purely Web-based) can be implemented

About Me

• Computer Science at Technical University of Berlin (TUB) (88-91)
• Ph.D. at ETH Zürich (92-97)
• Post-Doc at ICSI, Berkeley (97/98)
  • book on Technical Foundations of the World Wide Web
• Various activities back in Switzerland (98-06)
  • teaching at ETH Zürich and FHNW
  • working as independent consultant (training, courses, consulting)
  • research in various XML-related areas
• Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Information (since fall 2006)
  • Web and XML courses in fall 2007
  • technical director of the Information and Service Design (ISD) program

About this Course

• Course Web page: http://dret.net/lectures/publishing-spring08/
• Course mailing list: subscribe at majordomo@ischool.berkeley.edu
  • no subject (leave blank)
  • body of message: subscribe wbp
• Letter grade based on presentations and course project (results and presentation)

About these Slides

• Generated from XSLidy XML
• Designed for online presentation and use (lots of links!)
  • for printing, use a (all slides), and then s (smaller font) a couple of times
• A good real-world example for Web-based publishing
  • Slidy is useful, but there is no support for structures and hyperlinking
  • XSLidy adds these features by adding an XSLT transformation
  • XSLidy is useful, but there is no interface (XML editing only)

Additional Resources

• My Online Glossary at http://dret.net/glossary/
  • suggestions, updates, corrections are very welcome (really!)
  • another exercise in how to use XML and XSLT for information management
• My bibliography at http://dret.net/biblio/
  • suggestions, updates, corrections are very welcome (really!)
  • produced by an XML-centric system for managing bibliography data
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
  • headed by Tim-Berners Lee, inventor of the Web (with Robert Cailliau)
• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
  • mainly Internet standards, but also responsible for URIs and HTTP

Projects!

• Create a project description until next week
  1. context, goals, and non-goals of the project
  2. deliverables in one-month phases (i.e., 3 phases)
  3. your project will be graded based on these goals!
• Next week we will discuss and assign projects
• If you don't have a project idea, just ask me …