In terms of future work, the plan is to keep on fostering the different efforts pertaining to this conceptual framework.
These include:
• Establishing intense scrutiny of profiles and rule languages, looking for the incor- poration of maximized sets of rules and Description Logics-based fragments; en- hancing the projection algorithms, the tagging recommendations strategy based on additional explorations of semantic checkers, of non-standard reasoners and reasoning techniques.
• Elaborating further implementations that target the integrated framework in a Big Data cloud environment within which knowledge acquisition systems run on Hadoop [87] and NoSQL clusters. Achieving such an endeavor has the po- tential of greatly boosting the framework’s efficiency in dealing with the Web 2.0 sources of massive data.
• Assimilating and evaluating Social Network Analysis methods, typical SNA methods include centrality and similarity measures, clustering methods, etc. These methods had been on the initial framework roadmap since they can be exploited for various decision-support outcomes; other priorities and time con- straints prevented their incorporation.
• Researching the feasibility of exploiting the framework similarly for the require- ments of other domains. The sociomedical domain’s online resources and SN users offered a particular opportunity, the quest will thus be for other domains that could present similar advantages. Alternatively, for domains with differ- ent characteristics and challenging aspects, exploring what possible component replacements or workarounds can be considered for these domains.
• Integrating the SMOF extensions once the OntolOp called upon framework will be formalized and issued; comparing and assessing the differences between a potential OMG recommendation and the framework’s conceived extensions, their corresponding advantages and disadvantages.
This thesis proposed and presented Web3.OWL while targeting its specific critical aspects, most particularly those related to DL and the Semantic Web. However, while attempting to estimate possible future related endeavors, it is worth looking at the proposed framework from the broadest perspective.
On the one hand, and for the time being, Web3.OWL is intended for the so- ciomedical domain. This domain is a fusion between the social and medical domains along with their underlined aspects. On the other hand, it is a Web 3.0 framework,
and Web 3.0 is nothing but a web built on the marriage between the social and the semantic webs. The framework also abides by the standards and specifications of two well-established standardization organizations: OMG and W3C. It combines and exploits the concepts and techniques of, jointly, ontologies and databases, as well as NLP, tagging and NLG. The fact that it is ontology-driven leaves room for continuous improvements in line with reasoning and Semantic Web research advancements. As a consequence, the potentials for future work are numerous and at many levels.
In the midst of the Big Data era’s outbreak with its forthcoming non-traditional approaches to handle computing problems, this framework, in our opinion, is prone to be the bedrock of many future efforts to come.
7.3
Discussions
An indirect aim of the framework is to contribute to the adoption process of the expressive Semantic Web, an adoption that lags behind its corresponding research endeavors.
With the continuous evolution of the DL and reasoning research agenda,Web3.OWL, given its extended metamodel standard, offers a smooth process to incorporate and adapt to support structural linguistic and reasoning advances.
This thesis spared no effort to show that it is by setting the ground for an ontology- driven collaboration model that semantic web accomplishments address and unravel challenging areas, like those of the sociomedical domain.
The next subsections summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the frame- work.
7.3.1
Summary of Challenges and Disadvantages
In Chapter 3, the disadvantages and challenging aspects of the proposed framework were presented.
Here is a summary of the most important ones:
• Similarly to MDA, a very specialized level of expertise and know-how in ontol- ogy and metadata modeling is required; such expertise cannot be easily made available.
• There obviously exists an intensive reliance on modeling and correctness of critical metadata and configurations (for semantics and scenarios). Errors and inconsistencies at this level have important effects on the whole flow.
• A comprehensive integrated implementation of the framework is intricate, par- ticularly when individually attempted. Furthermore, the incomplete metamod- eling requirements prevent the adaptation of transformations that should be made available through the standardized components.
• For scenarios within which semantic tagging is essential, there is a dependency on the cooperation from the SN users (the mommy bloggers).
7.3.2
Summary of Advantages
The advantages of the proposed conceptual approach have already been explicitly and implicitly listed throughout its chapters and within the explored contributions in the present one.
They can be quickly summarized in the following:
• Benefiting from standard reasoning services for querying the KB and for the different decision-support and recommender systems that target parenting ed- ucation and public awareness.
• Overcoming expressiveness performance costs while capitalizing on the contin- uous evolutions in OWL and DL reasoning (fully-fledged and specialized rea- soners).
• Identifying, creating and expanding social and semantic networks, extending existing ones according to explicit and clear ontological vocabularies.
• User profiling, clustering, segmentation and detection of communities and sub- communities, again according to expressive unambiguous logical constructs. These include tagging-supported surveys and studies on the controversial so- cial domain aspects.
• Tracking web processes and activities, managing web history, reaching a de- tailed level of categorizing resources according to expressive logical constructs (particularly beneficial for important and sensitive resources).