Semantic-guided communication and composition in a widget/dashboard environment

Abstract

Composite websites based on widget/dashboard environments offer top grade adaptability to theoretically any task requirement or user preference. In productive use, however, the usability of a running dashboard depends on the intelligence that has been incorporated when developing the underlying software framework. This is especially true for widget/dashboard frameworks that allow for an ad hoc inter-widget-communication. The paper shows a press media software company effort to semantically enrich the inter-widget-communication of a widget/dashboard framework called NewsDesk. Employing this enrichment, NewsDesk widgets will be able to share ontology-based data and operate in activities and roles. Preliminary results of the ongoing work will be reported, featuring the enhancement of the inter-widget-communication protocol as well as an approach to offer widget composition proposals based on widget template and instance usage patterns. © Springer International Publishing 2013.