Virtual Private Ontology Server (VPOS) is a middleware software with focus on ontologies (semantic models). VPOS is offering a smart way to its users how to access relevant part of ontology dependent on their context. The user context can be expertise level or level of experience or job position in a hierarchy structure.
Instead of having numerous numbers of ontologies associated to different user contexts, VPOS keeps only one ontology but offers sub-ontologies to users on the basis of their context. VPOS also supports reasoning to infer new consequences out of assertions stated in the ontology. These consequences are also visible for certain contexts which have access to enough assertions inside ontology to be able to deduct them. There are some issues within current implementation of VPOS.
The application uses the random-access memory of local machine for loading the ontology which could be the cause of scalability issue when ontology size exceeds memory space. Also assuming that each user of VPOS holds her own instance of application it might result into maintainability issues such as inconsistency between ontologies of different users and waste of computational resources.
This thesis project is about to find some practical solutions to solve the issues of current implementation, first by upgrading the architecture of application using new framework to address scalability issue and then moving to cloud addressing maintainability issues. The final production of this thesis project would be Cloud-VPOS which is an application made to deal with semantic web mechanisms and function over cloud plat-form. Cloud-VPOS would be an application where semantic web meets cloud computing by employing semantic web mechanisms as cloud services.
Source: Mid Sweden University
Author: Haddadi Makhsous, Saeed