A Dynamic Management Method for FOAF Using RSS and OLAP cube

Since the introduction of web 2.0 technology, social network service has been recognized as the foundation of an important future information technology. The advent of web 2.0 has led to the change of content creators. In the existing web, content creators are service providers, whereas they have changed into service users in the recent web. Users share experiences with other users improving contents quality, thereby it has increased the importance of social network. As a result, diverse forms of social network service have been emerged from relations and experiences of users. Social network is a network to construct and express social relations among people who share interests and activities. Today's social network service has not merely confined itself to showing user interactions, but it has also developed into a level in which content generation and evaluation are interacting with each other. As the volume of contents generated from social network service and the number of connections between users have drastically increased, the social network extraction method becomes more complicated. Consequently the following problems for the social network extraction arise. First problem lies in insufficiency of representational power of object in the social network. Second problem is incapability of expressional power in the diverse connections among users. Third problem is the difficulty of creating dynamic change in the social network due to change in user interests. And lastly, lack of method capable of integrating and processing data efficiently in the heterogeneous distributed computing environment. The first and last problems can be solved by using FOAF, a tool for describing ontology-based user profiles for construction of social network. However, solving second and third problems require a novel technology to reflect dynamic change of user interests and relations. In this paper, we propose a novel method to overcome the above problems of existing social network extraction method by applying FOAF (a tool for describing user profiles) and RSS (a literary web work publishing mechanism) to OLAP system in order to dynamically innovate and manage FOAF. We employed data interoperability which is an important characteristic of FOAF in this paper. Next we used RSS to reflect such changes as time flow and user interests. RSS, a tool for literary web work, provides standard vocabulary for distribution at web sites and contents in the form of RDF/XML. In this paper, we collect personal information and relations of users by utilizing FOAF. We also collect user contents by utilizing RSS. Finally, collected data is inserted into the database by star schema. The system we proposed in this paper generates OLAP cube using data in the database. 'Dynamic FOAF Management Algorithm' processes generated OLAP cube. Dynamic FOAF Management Algorithm consists of two functions: one is find_id_interest() and the other is find_relation (). Find_id_interest() is used to extract user interests during the input period, and find-relation() extracts users matching user interests. Finally, the proposed system reconstructs FOAF by reflecting extracted relationships and interests of users. For the justification of the suggested idea, we showed the implemented result together with its analysis. We used C# language and MS-SQL database, and input FOAF and RSS as data collected from livejournal.com. The implemented result shows that foaf : interest of users has reached an average of 19 percent increase for four weeks. In proportion to the increased foaf : interest change, the number of foaf : knows of users has grown an average of 9 percent for four weeks. As we use FOAF and RSS as basic data which have a wide support in web 2.0 and social network service, we have a definite advantage in utilizing user data distributed in the diverse web sites and services regardless of language and types of computer. By using suggested method in this paper, we can provide better services coping with the rapid change of user interests with the automatic application of FOAF.

RSS와 OLAP 큐브를 이용한 FOAF의 동적 관리 기법

웹 2.0 기술이 소개된 이후 소셜 네트워크 서비스는 미래 정보기술의 기초로서 중요하게 인식되고 있다. 이에, 웹2.0 환경에서 소셜 네트워크를 구축하기 위하여 온톨로지 기반의 사용자 프로필 기술 도구인 FOAF를 활용하기 위한 다양한 연구가 이뤄지고 있다. 그러나 FOAF를 이용하여 소셜 네트워크를 생성 및 관리하는 대부분의 방법은 시간의 흐름에 따라 변화하는 사용자의 소셜 네트워크를 자동적으로 반영하기 어려운 단점이 있으며 다양한 소셜 미디어 서비스가 제공되는 환경에서는 FOAF를 동적으로 관리하기가 쉽지 않다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 기존 FOAF를 이용한 소셜 네트워크 추출방법의 한계를 극복하기 위하여 사용자 프로파일 기술 언어인 FOAF와 웹 저작물 출판 매커니즘인 RSS를 OLAP 시스템에 적용시켜 동적으로 FOAF를 갱신하고 관리하기 위한 방법을 제안한다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 방법은 수집한 FOAF와 RSS 파일들을 스타스키마로 설계된 데이터베이스에 넣어 OLAP 큐브를 생성한다. 그리고 OLAP 연산을 이용하여 사용자의 연결관계를 분석하고 FOAF에 그 결과를 반영한다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 방법은 이기종 분산처리 환경 하에서 데이터의 상호호환성을 보장할 뿐만 아니라 시간의 흐름에 따른 사용자의 관심 및 이슈 등의 변화를 효과적으로 반영한다.