Localization Management

The Localization Management is the core of the LabelTranslator system. Our solution provides a flexible mechanism to support a collaborative and distributed scenario for localizing an ontology. In our implementation, the workflow localization management implements the strategy described in sec- tion 6.5

Each one of the ontologies imported in the NeOn toolkit is associated with a set of initialization parameters (e.g., user roles, assigned tasks, etc.) which define the behavior of the workflow. In order to configure the local- ization parameters the localization management module extends the NeOn toolkit with a set of wizards8. For example the user wizard shown in Fig- ure 6.11, allows for the managing of the profile of each participant of the localization activity. The wizard records information about the skills of each participant (source and target languages), and describes the roles, op- erations and policies that apply to a certain ontology. All this information is used by LabelTranslator for checking the users credentials at login time, and for determining whether a user is allowed to perform a certain operation based on the policies of the ontology to be localized. In our approach a user can play several roles in the localization activity. For example, a user Elena can play the role of Translator and Reviewer.

In the remainder of this section, we first present the synchronization com- ponent, which is used to maintain the ontological and linguistic information updated. Then, we describe the main features of the automatic localization workflow, which provides a flexible mechanism to supports a collaborative and distributed scenario.

8_{A software wizard is a user interface element that presents a user with a sequence}

of dialog boxes that lead the user through a series of well-defined steps. Tasks that are complex, infrequently performed, or unfamiliar may be easier to perform using a wizard.

Figure 6.11: User wizars used by the Workflow Localization Manager.

Synchronization component

In the NeOn ToolKit, an advanced change tracking based on Resource Delta9

is able to capture changes even when ontological terms have changed their position within the ontology model. By adopting this feature, the syn- chronization component can accurately identify the minimal set of changes needed to adjust the structure of the linguistic model.

In a nutshell, the synchronization component is notified about events that consist of ontology changes performed by the user in the ontology editor. For each of these events, the synchronization component stores the change information in the Sqlite database10.

Concretely, the information stored for each change is a tuple with i) the type of change (e.g., add, delete or rename11), ii) the type of ontology term

9_{A resource delta represents changes in the state of a resource tree between two discrete}

points in time.

10_{SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-}

configuration, transactional SQL database engine (http://www.sqlite.org/).

(e.g., concept, attribute, relation or instance), iii) the related ontology (e.g., name or identifier of the ontology), and iv) the label or identifier of the ontological term on which the change was executed. For example, adding a concept in the ontology editor creates the following tuple in the database (“add”, “concept”, “university Ontology”, “academicSupervisor”). Finally, this component is also in charge of synchronizing the changes by using the method presented in section 6.5.1

Localization Management Component

In our implementation, the localization component automatically imple- ments the actions defined in the workflow. Thus, this component takes care of enforcing the constraints imposed by the collaborative workflow. In de- tail, whenever a new workflow action is performed, the component performs the following tasks:

• It gets the identity and role of the user performing the action.

• It gets the status of the ontology element/translation associated to the

action/change

• It verifies that the role associated to the user can perform the requested

action when the ontology element/translation is in that particular sta- tus.

• If the verification succeeds, it performs the workflow action (e.g., en-

abling all corresponding fields in the interfaces); if the verification does not succeed, no action is performed.

Additionally, the localization component extends some views in the Neon toolkit which allow ontology localization stakeholders i) to see the appropri- ate information of the translations in the workflow and ii) to perform the applicable workflow actions (select, translate, review, etc.), depending on their role (as described in the section 6.5.2).

Figure 6.12 shows the perspective12 used by LabelTranslator in order to support the localization workflow. The Ontology Navigator in the figure is located on the left hand side of the main view. It contains all ontologies that need to be localized. The localization view is located in the middle of the main view. This view is used to add or to update the translations associated with the ontology terms that have been selected in the project tree on the left. Each ontology term is located in its own row. The localization view contains several shortcuts that make work faster, and are enabled according to user profile. Finally, the filter view is located on the right hand side of the figure. It contains several check boxes that allow the user to modify what items are shown in the localization view.

Figure 6.12: A perspective of the Ontology Localization Activity.