SMS Service Interfaces

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Concept-Based Searching

The following service interface performs simple concept-based searching of resources:

AnnotationEngine:  Set<ResourceID>  search( ConceptExpression, Set<ResourceType>, RemoteSearchFlag )  

Given a search expression (represented as a description logic concept expression), a list of resource types (e.g., "actor", "dataset", etc.), and whether the search should be local or include remote repositories, this operation returns a set of resources that have semantic annotations that "match" the given search expression.

Here, we assume that an initial search string has been converted to a description-logic concept expression, which can be a simple concept id (like "Biomass") or a more complex formula (including nested disjunctive and conjunctive formulas, and so on).

The search operation requires the following service:

KeplerObjectManager:  ResourceType               getResourceType( ResourceID )
KeplerObjectManager:  Set<SemanticAnnotationID>  getSemanticAnnotations( RemoteSearchFlag ) 

Both of these services are implemented by the kepler object manager. The first operation returns the resource type of a given resource identifier (an LSID). The second operation returns the set of semantic annotations known to the kepler object manager (inlcuding any annotations stored on remote repositories denoted by the search flag argument).

We note that in the simplest form as stated above, the search operation requires access to all annotations to determine matching resources.