Implementing Ubiquitous Information services with ontologies: Methodology and case study

Currently, data integration in Ubiquitous Information Systems (UISs) is achieved by a centralized relational database where all the information coming from the remote servers is stored. To improve such architecture we proposed to convert in each server the relational archives into an RDF triple stores where data are represented by standard terms interrelated by subject-predicate-object relations (also called data ontology). In this way, UISs could be developed by a distributed approach, where data integration is achieved by an shared RDF format although data used on the remote servers follow a proprietary format. Also, the paper proposes to implement such UISs per use stories, defined according to task ontologies, to facilitate implementation from specifications. A case study illustrates how software environments based on the paradigm Model-View-Controller, e.g., Ruby on Rails powered by JQMobile, facilitate the implementation of the methodology.