• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.127-141
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• 2009

In this paper, we describe our vision of a "Just-in-time" initiative to solve the Data Interoperability Problem (a.k.a. INTEROP.) We provide an architectural overview of our initiative which draws upon existing technologies to develop an immersive and collaborative approach which aims at empowering data stakeholders (e.g., data producers and data consumers) with integrated tools to interact and collaborate with each other while directly manipulating visual representations of their data in an immersive environment (e.g., implemented via Second Life.) The semantics of these visual representations and the operations associated with the data are supported by ontologies defined using the Common Logic Framework (CL). Data operations gestured by the stakeholders, through their avatars, are translated to a variety of generated resources such as multi-language source code, visualizations, web pages, and web services. The generality of the approach is supported by a plug-in architecture which allows expert users to customize tasks such as data admission, data manipulation in the immersive world, and automatic generation of resources. This approach is designed with a mindset aimed at enabling stakeholders from diverse domains to exchange data and generate new knowledge.