Automatic Classification of Semantic User Interface Services

Current user interfaces are ad hoc, application dependent and constantly change while offering the same functionalities in many different ways. This article investigates methods for creating semantic user interfaces, which are much easier to develop, learn, teach and use. The basic idea of semantic user interfaces is to analyze specific application domains (like word processing, file handling or application deployment), organize domain concepts into ontologies, associate user interface presentation attributes (like icons, menu labels and line mode command) to ontology nodes, and to use the ontology as a central controlling entity of application development and execution. The ontology is used inside a service oriented semantic user interface framework, whose elements and potential benefits are also explained. The main contribution of this article is to investigate methods for analyzing and classifying computer system services, as a fundamental step of making the presented semantic user interface architecture operational. The problems and steps of service analysis are described and an automatic classification algorithm is presented based on formal semantic specifications and graph isomorphism. Implementation details and practical experiences are also outlined