Second Workshop: Workshop

WORKSHOP IN COMO, PALAZZO NATTA, May 26-28

The workshop will take place at Palazzo Natta, an historical building in the city center (link, map); the main social event of the workshop will take place on Thursday afternoon; the current program includes: boat trip on the Como Lake to Bellagio (link), visit the spring gardens of Villa Melzi (link), stroll through the narrow streets of Bellagio, and dinner at Ristorante da Silvio (link).

May 26, 9:15-10:00
Stefano Ceri: An Overview of the Early Results of the Search Computing Project (ppt file)
  (audio)
(with Alessandro Bozzon's LiquidQuery Demo - video audio )

May 26, 10:00–12:30
Session on “Semantic Resource Framework”

Organizers: Marco Brambilla, Alex Campi, Davide Eynard
Experts: Sonia Bergamaschi, Laura Po, Francesco Guerra, and Domenico Beneventano (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Fabian Suchanek (Microsoft Research)

This session is focused on linking SeCo to the Momis and Yago projects. It aims at exploring how mediator-based techniques and ontological knowledge can help the service registration process in SeCo by associating semantics with service definitions (and service connections) at the conceptual, logical, and physical levels. Momis (Mediator envirOnment for Multiple Information Sources) is a framework to perform information extraction and integration from both structured and semistructured data sources. Information integration is performed in a semi-automatic way by exploiting the knowledge in a Common Thesaurus and descriptions of source schemas with a combination of clustering techniques and Description Logics. Yago is a light-weight and extensible ontology with high coverage and quality, that currently contains more than 1 million entities and 5 million facts automatically extracted from Wikipedia and unified with WordNet, using a carefully designed combination of rule-based and heuristic methods.

10:00-10:30 Davide Eynard: Semantic Resource Framework in SeCo (ppt file) (audio)
10:30-10:45 Alessandro Bozzon: LiquidQuery over Linked Data (video) (audio)
10:45-11:15 Sonia Bergamaschi: MOMIS - a semantic data integration system (zip of ppt files) (audio)
11:15-11:45 Fabian Suchanek: YAGO - A Core of Semantic Knowledge (ppt file) (audio)
11:45-12:30 Panel Discussion (moderator: Marco Brambilla) with Sonia Bergamaschi, Domenico Beneventano, Francesco Guerra, Fabian Suchanek and the SeCo team (audio)

Panel topics:

  • Use of semantics in SeCo
  • Feasibility and plausibility of free keyword-based search in SeCo

May 26 14:00-16:00
Session on “Wrapping Technology and Ontological Annotation”

Organizers: Marco Brambilla, Alessandro Campi
Experts: Georg Gottlob(Oxford University), Sergio Flesca (Università della Calabria), and “Diadem Team”

This session is focused on linking SeCo to the Diadem projects. Diadem (Domain-centric Intelligent Automated Data Extraction Methodology) sets out to solve the problem of extracting complex, structured information from large numbers of websites. Diadem, aims to create software that can crawl through every website in a particular field – the property market, for example, or restaurants, or air travel – and pull out the information they contain in structured form. Equipped with a basic knowledge of the general principles its domain works on, it will be able to analyze each web page’s low-level structure as it goes in order to extract the information it contains.

14:00-14:50 Georg Gottlob et. al.: Diadem in a Nutshell (pdf file) (audio)
14:50-15:20 Sergio Flesca: Extracting Information from Print Oriented Documents (pdf file) (audio)
15:20-16:00 Panel Discussion (moderator: Alex Campi): Cooperation Options Between SeCo and Diadem (audio)

Panel topics:

  • Wrapping web results with wrapping tools: the right tool or too much power?
  • Dependency of ontological annotation from domain knowledge


Additional Material:

  • Alessandro Campi: Panel Material (ppt file)

May 26, 16:30–18:30
Session on “Design Tools and Mashup Languages”

Organizers: Piero Fraternali, Marco Brambilla, Alex Bozzon
Experts: Fabio Casati (Università di Trento), Florian Daniel (Università di Trento)

This session is focused on linking SeCo to the mashArt project. A mashup-like interface is used in SeCo on top of the semantic service registration for configuring search queries. mashArt is a mashup platform supporting “universal integration”, i.e., integration at the data, application, and user interface layer inside one and the same mashup environment.

16:30-17:00 Marco Brambilla: The SeCo Design Process (with demonstration of the SeCo tools) (ppt file) (audio)
17:00-17:30 Florian Daniel: Distributed Mashup of UI and Application Components (pdf file)
17:30-18:30 Panel Discussion (moderator: Piero Fraternali) with Fabio Casati, Florian Daniel and the SeCo team (audio - including previous presentation)

Panel topics:

  • Real usage of user-friendly mashups
  • Open-source SeCo tools?

May 27, 9:00-10:00
Session on “Search Computing for Research Evaluation”

Organizers: Stefano Ceri, Alessandro Bozzon
Experts: Fabio Casati (Università di Trento), Imran Muhammad (Università di Trento)

This session is focused on linking SeCo to the ResEval project. ResEval (open and RESource-oriented research impact EVALuation tool) aims at building an open and resource-oriented tool for evaluating research impact of individual researchers and groups. The advantages of the tool are that it relies on several sources for computing metrics, freely available on the Internet, and provides an easy way for defining and computing custom metrics for individuals and research groups. The session is focused on understanding the connection between ResEval and SeCo, thus supporting multi-domain, multi-ranking queries on ResEval services.

9:00-9:30 Imran Muhammad: Research Evaluation in ResEval (with Demo) (ppt file
9:30-10:00 Panel Discussion (moderator: Fabio Casati): Building SeCo Applications for Research Evaluation (audio - including previous presentation)

Panel topics:

  • Relevance of multi-ranking approaches to research evaluation
  • Comparison of service-level integrations VS tool-level integration
  • Application scenarios for SeCo and ResEval

May 27, 10:30-13:00
Session on “Query Processing”

Organizers: Daniele Braga, Michael Grossniklaus
Experts: Dana Florescu (Oracle), Donald Kossmann (ETH Zürich), Norman Paton (Manchester University)

The aim of this session is to establish the challenges and opportunities related to query processing for Search Computing. In particular, the workshop will focus on the consolidation and evolution of the current query processor. To do so, we will gather expert experiences and opinions based on a set of targeted questions. Each expert will be given the opportunity to present their viewpoint, followed by an open discussion which (hopefully) leads to a consistent summary, synthesis and directions for future work.

10:30-11:00 Daniele Braga, Michael Grossniklaus: Introduction & Challenges (pdf file) (audio)
11:00-11:15 Francesco Corcoglioniti, Salvatore Vadacca: Demo of the SeCo Query Processor (audio)
11:15-13:00 Panel Discussion (moderators: Michael Grossniklaus – Daniele Braga) with structured responses to questions by Dana Florescu, Norman Paton, Donald Kossman and final panel wrapup

Panel topics:

  • Will SeCo scale? And how? Can we learn from others?
  • Critical issues in the delivery of SeCo services?

Additional Material:

  • Dana Florescu: Query Processing in SeCo - a practical and naïve perspective (pdf file) (audio)
  • Donald Kossmann: Query Processing in Search Computing(pdf file) (audio)
  • Norman W. Paton: Adaptive Query Processing For Search Computing (pdf file) (audio)
  • Discussion (audio)

May 27, 14:00–16:30
Session on “Rank Join”

Organizers: Davide Martinenghi, Marco Tagliasacchi
Experts: Ihab F. Ilyas (University of Waterloo), Neoklis Polyzotis (University of California)

This session aims at providing the audience with an overview of the different uses of ranking in SeCo-related contexts. Invited experts will give presentations focusing on relevant instances of the rank-join problem, along with short demos of state-of-art systems. Then, an open discussion on how-to's, do's and don'ts of rank-join in SeCo will be started, trying to identify the most relevant future directions of research in the field.

14.00-14.30 Neoklis Polyzotis: Efficient and Robust Rank Join Algorithms (ppt file) (audio)
14:30-15.00 Marco Tagliasacchi: Proximity rank-join (audio)
15.00-15:30 Ihab F. Ilyas: MashRank: Building Ranked Mashups of Unstructured Sources with Uncertain Information (with Demo) (audio)
15.30-16:00 Panel Discussion (moderator: Davide Martinenghi): Rank-join in SeCo: Next Steps

Panel topics (audio):

  • Where will rank join research move on?
  • Practical results and their injection into the SeCo Engine

May 28, 10:00-13:00
Session on “Search Computing for BioMedical Applications”
Organizer: Marco Masseroli
Experts: Franck Valentin (European Bioinformatics Institute), Norman Paton (Manchester University), Paolo Missier (Manchester University), Alfonso Valencia (Spanish National Cancer Research Center), Luciano Milanesi (Italian National Research Council), Paolo Romano (Italian National Institute for Cancer Research), Angela Bachi (San Raffaele Hospital)

This session has two purposes: exploring the use of Taverna and EBI search services in connection with Bio-SeCo, and understanding the needs of bio-genetic researchers concerning complex search and bio-molecular knowledge discovery. Taverna is an open source family of tools for designing and executing workflows, allowing for the automation of experimental methods through the use of a number of different services (such as Web services) from a very diverse set of domains – from biology, chemistry and medicine to music, meteorology and social sciences. EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute) is a non-profit academic organization for research and services in bioinformatics. The Institute manages databases of biological data including nucleic acid, protein sequences and macromolecular structures, which can be accessed though EB-eye, a fast and efficient search engine.

10:00-10:45 Marco Masseroli: Bio-SeCo (with Bio-SeCo demo by Giorgio Ghisalberti) (pdf file) (video) (audio)
10:45-11:15 Frank Valentin: EBI Search Services and their Programmatic Access (pdf file) (audio)
11:15-11:45 Workflows for Information Integration in the Life Sciences (audio)
Norman Paton: Case Study in Systems Biology (pdf file)
Paolo Missier: Workflows in context (
pdf file)
11:45-12:15 Alfonso Valencia: Search and Ranked Search Integration in the Life Sciences
12:15-13:30 Panel Discussion (moderator: Marco Masseroli) – What users really need? With Angela Bachi (pdf file)(audio) , Paolo Romano, Luciano Milanesi

Panel topics (audio) :

  • Background knowledge support, semantic issues and validation of ranked integrated search results
  • Relevance of rankings, joins of rankings, provenance and dataflows in the Life Sciences
  • Search interfaces for biomedical users
  • Towards Bio-SeCo

May 28, 14:30 – 17:00
Session on “User-centered Approach to Search Computing Applications”
Organizers: Marta Carubolo, Emanuele Della Valle
Experts: Roberto Verganti, Tommaso Buganza, Marta Corubolo

The aim of this session is to find ideas for new “SeCo like” applications. Adopting a user-centered approach, the experts will lead the participants to generate new ideas for potential killer applications.

14:30-15:00 Roberto Verganti, Tommaso Buganza, Marta Corubolo: Session Introduction (pdf file) (audio)
15:00-15:30 Participants: Exposition of ideas (audio)
15:30-17:00 Discussion (moderators: Roberto Verganti, Tommaso Buganza)

Topics (audio audio) :

  • Identification and ranking of applications, is there a “killer”?