=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-95/paper-15
|storemode=property
|title=SeLeNe Deliverable 7: Report on the IST Workshop on Metadata Management in GRID and P2P Systems
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-95/SeLeNe-del7.pdf
|volume=Vol-95
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/mmgps/X03
}}
==SeLeNe Deliverable 7: Report on the IST Workshop on Metadata Management in GRID and P2P Systems==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-95/SeLeNe-del7.pdf
SeLeNe — Self E-Learning Networks
IST-2001-39045
WP1 Deliverable 7
Report on the IST Workshop on Metadata
Management in GRID and P2P Systems
The SeLeNe Consortium
Abstract
This deliverable is a report of the IST Workshop on Metadata Management in GRID and
P2P Systems that was held in London on 16th December 2003 as part of the SeLeNe
project’s dissemination and integration activities.
January 31st, 2004
1
The SeLeNe Project
SeLeNe (Self e-Learning Networks) is an Accompanying Measure in the IST Action Line
“Information and Knowledge Grids”. The SeLeNe project is conducting a feasibility study
into using semantic web technology for syndicating knowledge-intensive resources, such
as learning objects. It is developing services for the discovery, sharing, and collaborative
creation of learning resources, thus facilitating a syndicated and personalised access to such
resources.
Executive Summary
This is a report on the IST Workshop on Metadata Management in GRID and P2P Systems
that took place on 16th December 2003 in London.
The report begins by introducing the aims of the Workshop, then gives a detailed
account of the proceedings of each session and ends with overall conclusions from the
Workshop. The appendices contain statistics on the speakers and participants, and the
results of Workshop evaluation questionnaires completed by attendees.
Revision Information
Revision Date Version Changes
January 27th, 2004 0.1 First Draft Proposal
January 31st, 2004 1.0 Final Version
2
Contents
1 Introduction 4
1.1 Workshop Programme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Summary of Workshop Sessions 6
2.1 Session I - Metadata Management in Grid systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Session II - Metadata Management in P2P systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Session III - Applications I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4 Session IV - Applications II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Concluding Remarks 13
Appendices 14
A Participation Statistics 14
A.1 Number of Attendees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
A.2 IST Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
A.3 Breadth of European Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
A.4 Presentation of IST results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
B Responses to the Evaluation Questionnaires 15
B.1 Morning Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
B.2 Afternoon Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
B.3 Workshop as a Whole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
B.4 Comments and Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
C Evaluation Questionnaires 19
C.1 Morning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
C.2 Afternoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
D List of Participants 21
3
1 Introduction
As part of the dissemination of the SeLeNe project, and also as part of the integration role
of the project as an Accompanying Measure, a Workshop was held in London on December
16th 2003. The target audience for the event were experts from the GRID, peer-to-peer and
e-learning communities, as well as other application areas requiring GRID or peer-to-peer
support.
The declared goal of the Workshop was “to identify recent technological achievements
and open challenges regarding metadata management in novel applications requiring peer-
to-peer information management in a distributed or GRID setting”. The discussions in
all sessions focussed on models, services and architectures from the perspectives of the
metadata level in general and for specific application domains.
The event attracted 43 participants (including those from within the SeLeNe consor-
tium) from 8 different European countries, and we believe that it was an important step
in coordinating research activities in this area. In order to disseminate the findings of
the Workshop as widely as possible, participants’ presentations have been made publicly
available via the Workshop website:
http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl/ist workshop/
and also published on-line in a repository for Workshop proceedings at:
http:CEUR-WS.org
1.1 Workshop Programme
The Workshop programme was as follows. Details of the proceedings of each session can
be found in Section 2.
Session I: Metadata Management in Grid systems
Chair: George Samaras (University of Cyprus)
1. Gavin McCance (CERN)
“Metadata Management in the EU DataGrid”
2. Savas Parastatidis (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne)
“Working with Grid Service and Resource Metadata Using Existing Tools and
Specifications”
3. Mario Cannataro (University “Magna Græcia” of Catanzaro, Italy)
“Architecture, Metadata and Ontologies in the Knowledge Grid”
Session II: Metadata Management in P2P systems
Chair: George Loizou (Birkbeck)
1. Henrik Nottelmann (University Duisburg-Essen)
“Probabilistic Logics for Defining and Using P2P Service Descriptions”
2. Philippe Cudré-Mauroux (EPFL Distributed Information Systems Laboratory)
“The Chatty Web Approach for Global Semantic Agreements”
3. Wolfgang Nejdl (KBS/L3S)
“Data-Centric Networks and Peer-to-Peer Databases”
4
Session III: Applications I
Chair: Nicolas Spyratos (LRI, University de Paris-Sud)
1. Tamás Hauer (CERN)
“The Role of MetaData in Querying Grid-Resident Medical Images”
2. Bob Bentley (UCL)
“Management of Metadata for the Virtual Solar Observatory. Experiences from EGSO”
3. Theo Dimitrakos (CCLRC)
“Meta-data Management Issues Underpinning Emerging Solutions for Distributed Trust
and Contract Management and Enforcement in Enterprise Grid and P2P Systems.
Experiences from the GRASP, SWAD-Europe and CORAS projects”
4. Stavros Christodoulakis (MUSIC/TUC)
“Multimedia Metadata Management and t-Learning Applications”
Session IV: Applications II
Chair: Alex Poulovassilis (Birkbeck)
1. Klaus Jantke (DFKI)
“DaMiT - Peculiartities of an e-Learning System”
2. Kevin Keenoy and Vassilis Christophides (Birkbeck and ICS-FORTH)
“Personalisation in Self e-Learning Networks”
3. David Massart (European Schoolnet)
“Metadata Management in the Celebrate European Learning Network”
4. Zoltán Miklós (Vienna University of Economics)
“ELENA: Creating a Smart Space for Learning”
5
2 Summary of Workshop Sessions
2.1 Session I - Metadata Management in Grid systems
The first session of the Workshop addressed metadata management issues in Grid systems.
The session contained three presentations on related projects and issues. The presentations
complement each other in that they present mutually exclusive issues; what metadata we
have in real Grid systems, how we can provide Grid services using existing technology and
how metadata can be used in new Grid domains. In all three presentations the need for
metadata management middleware was quite evident.
The first presentation, given by Gavin McCance of the University of Glasgow, presented
how DataGrid, the European flagship Grid project, addresses issues of metadata manage-
ment. DataGrid is a file-based system manipulating quantum-physical, Earth-observation
and biomedical data. The DataGrid project utilises two types of metadata: (i) Grid inter-
nal metadata on files and application logical names, and (ii) general application-specific
metadata. Internal metadata have a relatively simple structure and their main use is for
indexing purposes. The internal metadata is used to solve the “replica location problem”,
answering the query “given a logical file identifier, how do we find all the replicas of that file
on the Grid?”. The system that has been built is composed of a Replica Metadata Catalog
and a Replica Location Service. It is based on bloom filters and allows quite a flexible
search facility. DataGrid provides a simple Grid-enabled front end, it is up to the end-user
(from one of the supported domains — physics, Earth-observation, biomedicine) to provide
the specific application and to request the relevant files to manipulate. There is no generic
application-metadata-management middleware that can handle generic application-type
metadata.
The second talk was given by Savas Parastatidis of North East e-Science Centre and
focussed on how Grid services can access an organisation’s resources. He identified the
need for resource metadata that can be published outside the organisation’s boundaries
and argues that this can be achieved via existing specifications and tools without the need
to change the existing infrastructure. He presented two possible solutions, one based on
Service Data Elements (SDEs), where metadata about resources is exposed through SDEs,
and one based on the Grid Resource Metadata document (GRM). The claim made is that
when using SDEs a number of changes need to take place: WSDL and resource descriptions
are affected, new SDE-aware tools are required, Web services need added semantics, and
an SDE-specific interface is necessary. However, if we utilise the concepts in GRM no
changes need to take place. This is so because GRM is based on XML-Schema and no
additions to WSDL or any other specifications are needed, existing tools work, it does not
add semantics to a Web service (as it is just a document) and it could be published into a
registry. However, it requires a particular Web service interface (a management interface or
another interface) but other solutions can be built around it (e.g. peer-to-peer, registries,
etc.). The main conclusion is that the GRM document provides a functional equivalent to
SDEs that allows the re-use of existing technologies and work, which is not the case for
SDEs.
6
The third talk was given by Mario Cannataro of the University “Magna Græcia” of
Catanzaro. The “Knowledge Grid” was presented as a software environment that integrates
data-mining techniques and Grid resources to build Grid-aware data-mining applications.
The clear claim was that metadata (for describing data mining tools, data sources, Grid
resources and ontologies for semantic modelling of the application domain) is a must if the
Grid is to be utilised in knowledge management and data mining. The need for two types
of metadata was exposed, the first type of metadata being for data-mining software and the
second type for classical data-source metadata. The first type of metadata is semantically
related to data mining and is split into two parts: (a) a description part, that is used to
classify software and (b) a usage part, that contains the information needed by clients to
access and use the software. In the system presented, metadata is utilised extensively to
define execution plans and other processes. The presentation then showed how metadata
and ontologies are managed to build and execute distributed data mining applications on
the Knowledge Grid. It finally argues that metadata and ontologies are major players
when complex applications are developed in a Grid environment.
2.2 Session II - Metadata Management in P2P systems
The second session of the Workshop addressed metadata management issues in peer-to-peer
systems. This session also contained three presentations on related projects and systems.
The first talk, given by Henrik Nottelmann (presenting work carried out jointly with
Norbert Fuhr) of the University of Duisburg, focussed on the use of probabilistic logics
for defining and using service descriptions in a peer-to-peer network with a large number
of (Web) services. The goal of this work is to dynamically compute execution plans for
services required to implement a given task. In this respect, the DAML-S upper ontology
(a vocabulary for defining arbitrary services) is used for describing services, while prob-
abilistic Datalog is used for match-making. A service is described in DAML+OIL by its
profile, which is used for match-making, by its model, which describes how the service
works, and by its grounding, which describes how to access the given service. A lower
ontology for library services (e.g. search, schema mapping, or result modification services)
is also introduced, containing definitions for generic search services and other query- and
result-transformation services. Match-making rules were defined with probabilistic Data-
log, which is a variant of predicate logic based on function-free Horn clauses and which
defines probabilistic facts and rules. Match-making rules use facts derived from DAML-S
directly to provide proper execution plans of services. By using the notion of chain (S1,
S, S2) — i.e. a chain beginning with S1, ending with S2 and with S in between — two
or more services with correct input/output can be chained to produce an execution plan.
The probabilities are used as a primitive kind of cost estimation. The weight specifies the
quality of the execution plan, so if its value is smaller than 0.5 then we have a quality
loss, otherwise we have a quality improvement. The creation of a detailed lower ontology
for library services, the introduction of composite services and the implementation of the
project including grounding services are left as future work.
7
The second talk, given by Philippe Cudré-Mauroux (presenting work carried out jointly
with Karl Aberer) of the EPFL and the Distributed Information Systems Laboratory,
presented the Chatty Web approach for global semantic agreements. The problem posed
is that of achieving semantic interoperability among heterogeneous data sources in a peer-
to-peer data management system, without relying on pre-existing global semantic models.
The solution given involves the use of local translations that enable global agreements.
Semantic ‘gossiping’ is used for query forwarding and distribution through the system.
The right peers are selected and the “Per-Hop Behaviours” are query-dependent. An
analysis is done between original and transformed queries based on intrinsic (syntactic
distances) and extrinsic (semantic distances) measures. For the semantic similarity, query
cycles can be detected and analysis of the results with content-retrieval techniques can be
used. Consequently, a self-repairing semantic network can be organised with the use of
evaluations based on Chatty Web simulations and the automatic correction of erroneous
mappings based on gathered evidence. Finally, results concerning the system’s scalability
and sensitivity to TTL were presented and discussed.
The third talk, given by Wolfgang Nejdl of the University of Hannover and the Learning
Lab, Lower Saxony (L3S), addressed issues related to data-centric networks and peer-to-
peer data management. Networks have evolved from host-centric to data-centric ones. In
this context, the focus of research has shifted from the evaluation and optimisation of
communication between network hosts to achieving worldwide physical and network data
independence. Professor Nejdl presented the main results and challenges of several ongoing
and past projects. REWERSE (Reasoning on the Web with Rules and Semantics) is an EU
project addressing the issues of retrieving, protecting and integrating data. EDUTELLA
has specified and implemented an RDF-based metadata infrastructure for peer-to-peer
data networks. PROLEARN is a project that works towards innovative and interoperable
e-learning resources and sustainable e-learning infrastructures and processes. The notion of
schema and the use of RDF/S for describing distributed resources were identified in these
projects as useful parts of a peer-to-peer data management system. Furthermore, RDF-
QEL was presented as a Datalog-based Query Exchange Language that can be used to
wrap other RDF and XML query languages. The HyperCup peer-to-peer topology and its
broadcast algorithm were shown as an answer to the efficient routing problem in a peer-to-
peer system. Super-peer networks and their routing indices offer a new network architecture
for distributing workload in a more efficient manner. Access control and automated trust
negotiation were also identified as an important problem in order to protect resources
from unauthorised access using credentials and access control policies. All the above issues
represent essential building blocks for forthcoming schema-based peer-to-peer networks and
peer-to-peer-based data management infrastructures.
2.3 Session III - Applications I
The third session of the Workshop consisted of four presentations, each concerning meta-
data and its use.
8
The first talk, from Tamás Hauer, concerned the role of metadata in querying Grid-
resident medical images in the MammoGrid project, a EU-funded project aiming at a Grid
solution for mammography and involving three hospitals among its partners. A feder-
ated system solution is proposed, whereby, with the help of shared metadata, a clinician
can address a query to the system, which is then translated to remote local sub-queries
whose results are then returned to the clinician. The specific characteristics of the medical
domain (e.g. a user community which is heterogeneous and process-oriented rather than
information-oriented, regional differences and a constantly changing knowledge base) ne-
cessitate flexibility and extensibility as well as management of domain information such
as annotations of images. These and other considerations have led to a service-oriented
architecture using Grid-middleware. In this context, metadata is used to describe service
definitions. Each participating node is responsible for managing its own metadata and can
change its service description on the fly, new sites can join seamlessly, and domain and
service ontologies are defined independently.
The second presentation, from Bob Bentley, concerned metadata management in vir-
tual solar observatories and reported experiences from the EGSO project, a Grid test-bed
designed to improve access to solar data for the solar physics and other communities. The
EGSO project addresses the generic problem of a distributed heterogeneous data set and
a scattered user community. In such a setting, the availability of good quality metadata
is important for searching. The architecture is defined in terms of roles: consumer, broker
and provider. Resources are described by entries in a resource registry and managed by a
broker. Brokers and registries are replicated to provide system resilience and permit load
sharing. In order to provide an enhanced search capability, EGSO will improve the quality
and availability of metadata, having a search registry describe all metadata available for
search.
The third presentation, from Theo Dimitrakos, concerned metadata management is-
sues underpinning emerging solutions for distributed trust and contract management and
enforcement in enterprise Grid and peer-to-peer systems. Metadata management issues
underlie a number of activities across e-science and information technology. In support
of this claim, the speaker presented in some detail four projects where metadata play an
important role:
• GRASP, Grid-based application service provision;
• CORAS, a CASE tool and method support for security-risk analysis;
• SWAD-Europe, Semantic Web technology development;
• PELLUCID, an agent-based platform supporting organisational mobility.
The final presentation, from Stavros Christodoulakis, also concerned metadata man-
agement, this time for audiovisual content to support intelligent video-content retrieval
and e-learning services in digital TV (t-learning). These objectives are pursued in the
context of TV-Anytime framework, MPEG-7 and SCORM. An ontology-driven framework
for semantic metadata management was presented and the following points were stressed:
• TV-Anytime keywords are the only means to describe program segments;
• MPEG-7 semantic model is used to build domain specific ontologies;
9
• a coupling of OWL and MPEG-7 has been implemented;
• ontologies are used for filtering and retrieval of MPEG-7 multimedia content;
• semantic annotations are transformed into TV-Anytime segment keywords.
With respect to t-learning, two issues were discussed:
(1) providing interoperability for educational applications in different e-learning and digital
TV environments;
(2) creation of metadata for digital TV for educational purposes in order to offer educa-
tional experiences exploiting usual TV programs.
2.4 Session IV - Applications II
The fourth session of the Workshop consisted of four presentations, all on e-learning ap-
plications that rely on some form of schema-based repository of Learning Object (LO)
metadata.
The first talk, from Klaus Jantke, gave an outline of the DaMiT e-learning system
developed to provide a tutorial on data mining, and went on to discuss particular problems
posed by the development of the system and aspects that may distinguish it from other
projects.
The system allows users to specify several of their preferences as a “profile”, includ-
ing the type of material preferred (example-oriented, theory-oriented, etc.), style (formal,
informal) and language (although the system is mostly German-only at present). The
e-learning content delivered by the system is stored as a collection of fragments of learn-
ing material, each described by associated metadata. DaMiT generates complete pages of
learning material from these fragments “on the fly”, adapting the page to the user’s needs
based on their profile. DaMiT also includes a fully-functional e-payment system that uses
metadata about the user to keep track of their entitlements to access to the learning ma-
terial (students at DFKI can access all material for free, but others must pay to use the
resource).
Professor Jantke believes that future e-learning systems will include intelligent assis-
tants that learn about, understand and adapt to the user, to provide them with a per-
sonalised learning experience. Metadata of several kinds will be needed to support this
adaptive functionality, including the kinds used in DaMiT:
(1) metadata about each fragment of content;
(2) “storyboards” that aid in the structuring of content fragments;
(3) metadata on security and payment options for users.
The second presentation in the session, from Kevin Keenoy (of work carried out with
the other SeLeNe consortium members), gave an outline of the SeLeNe project, focussing
on the metadata used and aspects of the project related to personalisation. SeLeNe aims
to provide a tool that enables the discovery, sharing and collaborative creation of LOs
within a learning community. LOs to be shared within the community are described
using an extended form of the IEEE-LOM metadata schema, encoded in RDF, and these
descriptions together form a distributed repository of metadata that can be queried by
10
users searching for learning material. The metadata entries make use of taxonomies of
subject and topic domains, learning objectives and learning styles.
As well as metadata describing the LOs (LO descriptions), the system manages meta-
data describing the users of the system (user profiles), to enable adaptive personalisation
services to be provided by SeLeNe. The user profiles are also encoded using RDF, and
make use of the same taxonomies as the LO descriptions. Both the LO descriptions and
user profiles adapt and evolve over time, either automatically (e.g. the user profile records
the history of LO accesses by the user) or as users add and amend the data manually (e.g.
a LO author may add additional information to one of her LO descriptions).
Three main areas of personalisation in SeLeNe were identified:
(1) Personalised views of the RDF LO metadata, defined using RDF View Language
(RVL), are supported;
(2) Personalised query results are generated, based on the user profile;
(3) Advanced notification services are provided, allowing individuals to be informed of
changes to the metadata repository of interest to them. These are specified using an ECA
language for RDF.
Several unresolved issues were identified as areas for future research, including peer-to-
peer query processing over RDF, the evaluation of algorithms for personalised ranking of
query results, the combination of ECA rules with transaction and consistency maintenance
in RDF repositories, and the design of user interfaces enabling easy access to such advanced
personalisation services.
The third presentation, from David Massart (of work carried out jointly with Frans
Van Assche), described work done by the Celebrate (Context e-Learning with Broadband
Technologies) project in developing a system providing metadata search and exchange of
LOs, creating a European Learning Network (ELN) that is used by 500 schools across
Europe.
The ELN is built around a brokerage system that manages exchanges between its
members, enabling interoperability between e-learning systems by searching and exchang-
ing LOs in their repositories. The IEEE-LOM schema is used for LO descriptions. Various
communication protocols may be used between different ELN members, but the individ-
ual systems are shielded from this complexity by the “ELN client” that provides a simple
communication API.
Unlike other virtual learning environment networks based either on a client-server or on
a peer-to-peer architecture, Celebrate is based on a mixed approach where, although the
brokerage system hosts a central metadata repository, each ELN member is also authorised
to manage its own local metadata repository. Search requests are both handled centrally
and propagated to local repositories.
The final presentation of the session, from Zoltán Miklós (of work carried out jointly
with Bernd Simon), described work done in the ELENA project, “creating a smart space
for learning”.
ELENA, like both SeLeNe and Celebrate, is concerned with the sharing of learning
resources that are contained in heterogeneous, distributed repositories. In Smart Spaces
11
for Learning metadata repositories are connected in a peer-to-peer fashion, and Semantic
Web techniques are used to achieve interoperability. Personal Learning Assistants support
learners in selecting appropriate learning services from a large number of available sources.
The metadata for learning services is based on a common formal ontology, but learners
do not need to be familiar with the domain ontology in detail as they can define views
of the ontology using the TRIPLE language. These views allow queries to be formulated
in terms of a user-specific ontology. A Simple Query Interface translates queries into an
appropriate form, establishing interoperability among heterogeneous learning repositories.
The presentations in this session brought to light several core issues that arise for
systems providing personalised e-learning. In systems that employ a user profile two main
issues are content and representation: what information about the user is needed, and
what format should it be stored in? There is also the issue of where the information
for the profile comes from — is it user-supplied, teacher-supplied, automatically derived
somehow, or some combination of all these three?
Once answers to questions about the generation and maintenance of the profile have
been decided, the remaining issue (and perhaps the issue that has so-far been least explored)
is the resolution of the profile with LO metadata — how can the profile be used to provide
the most useful personalised LOs or personalised ranking? It seems that there is scope for
much more work in empirically testing different matching algorithms in different learning
situations — present methods generally seem to be “sensible” ad-hoc choices rather than
empirically validated solutions.
Another area requiring future investigation is learning style taxonomies — which ones
are most useful in the context of e-learning, and what the relationships are between different
learning style taxonomies.
12
3 Concluding Remarks
From the above summaries of the four Workshop sessions, we see three sets of research
challenges emerging in the area of metadata management for Grid and peer-to-peer sys-
tems:
1. Challenges stemming from the distribution, autonomy and heterogeneity of informa-
tion and services, leading to the need for:
• metadata describing information and services available at the nodes of the
Grid/P2P system;
• searching and matching techniques utilising this metadata for discovery of in-
formation and services;
• metadata and techniques for controlling access to, and privacy of, information
and services;
• techniques for automatic service composition and orchestration;
• metadata and techniques for translation of queries and query results in the
absence of a controlled global schema;
• metadata supporting replication and consistency of information;
• automatic/semi-automatic extraction of metadata from large volumes of het-
erogeneous data.
2. Challenges arising from the dynamicity of Grid/P2P environments, e.g. changes in
the network topology, information content at nodes, and service availability at nodes:
• this leads to the need for the techniques being developed under (1) to be scalable,
adaptive, extensible and fault tolerant.
3. Challenges arising from the heterogeneity of users accessing Grid/P2P systems:
• this leads to the need for techniques that personalise content and presentation
to different users’ needs and preferences.
During the discussion at the conclusion of the Workshop it was generally agreed that the
Workshop had been very beneficial and timely in bringing together these various common
strands of research from the Grid, P2P and applications communities, and that a similar
event in a year’s time should be aimed for. We very much enjoyed organising and hosting
this Workshop, and we plan to pursue the possibility of a similar, possibly larger, event
next year.
13
Appendices
A Participation Statistics
A.1 Number of Attendees
We expected the number of participants external to the SeLeNe consortium to be around
75% of the total attendance, and so set a minimum of 30 external attendees out of 50 as
a target.
Number Percentage
SeLeNe consortium members 11 26%
Non-SeLeNe participants 32 74%
Total 43
Table 1: Attendance figures for the Workshop
As can be seen from Table 1, the target of 30 external attendees was met, despite there
being slightly fewer participants overall than anticipated.
A.2 IST Participation
We set a target that a minimum of 50% of attendees should be from the IST community.
In calculating the figures we have excluded members of the SeLeNe consortium, who also
are obviously “IST participants”.
Number Percentage
Attendees involved in IST projects 18 56%
Non-IST Attendees 14 44%
Total 32
Table 2: IST participation in the Workshop
As can be seen from Table 2, we met our target for IST participation in the Workshop.
A.3 Breadth of European Representation
The targets we set for European representation were that participants would be from at
least 6 different countries, and that about 60% of the attendees would be from outside the
UK.
In fact, 8 different European countries were represented at the Workshop: Austria,
Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the UK, meaning that our target for
14
Non-SeLeNe All
participants participants
United Kingdom 18 (56%) 25 (58%)
Non-UK 14 (44%) 18 (42%)
Total 32 43
Table 3: UK vs. non-UK participation in the Workshop
the number of countries represented was exceeded. However, as can be seen from Table 3,
the overall percentage of non-UK participants fell short of our target. This is likely to
be the result of higher expenses for participants from abroad (who had to meet their own
travel costs).
A.4 Presentation of IST results
As this was an IST event, we set a target for a minimum of 50% of the speakers to be
from, and to present results of, relevant IST projects.
Number of Presentations Percentage
Presentations of IST Results 9 64%
Non-IST Presentations 5 36%
Total 14
Table 4: Number of IST presentations at the Workshop
As can be seen from Table 4, the proportion of talks presenting IST project results was
above our target.
B Responses to the Evaluation Questionnaires
Participants at the Workshop were asked to complete two evaluation questionnaires to
assess the quality of the event — one at the end of the morning and one at the end of the
afternoon sessions. The afternoon questionnaire contained additional questions about the
quality of the Workshop as a whole. Both questionnaire forms can be found in Appendix C.
The responses (only from participants who are not part of the SeLeNe consortium) are
summarised in the sections below. The results are compared with the target that we set
ourselves:
We expect to obtain an overall average score of at least 4 for each of the morning and
afternoon sessions and for the Workshop as a whole.
15
B.1 Morning Sessions
A total of 26 evaluation questionnaires were returned completed at the end of the morning
session. The responses were as follows:
1. Were the talks in the morning session stimulating?
not at all a little average quite very much so
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 0 5 16 5
Average score: 4
2. How relevant were the morning’s talks to the aims of the Workshop?
not at all a little fair quite very relevant
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 0 2 14 10
Average score: 4.31
3. How informative were the morning’s presentations?
not at all weak average good very informative
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 1 4 17 4
Average score: 3.92
4. How satisfied were you overall with the morning sessions?
not at all somewhat fairly very entirely satisfied
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 0 4 15 7
Average score: 4.11
The overall average score for the morning session (i.e. the average score for all questions)
is 4.09, meeting our target of 4.
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B.2 Afternoon Sessions
A total of 17 evaluation questionnaires were returned completed at the end of the afternoon
session. The responses were as follows:
1. Were the talks in the afternoon session stimulating?
not at all a little average quite very much so
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 1 6 4 6
Average score: 3.88
2. How relevant were the afternoon’s talks to the aims of the Workshop?
not at all a little fair quite very relevant
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 0 2 9 6
Average score: 4.23
3. How informative were the afternoon’s presentations?
not at all weak average good very informative
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 3 4 5 5
Average score: 3.7
4. How satisfied were you overall with the afternoon sessions?
not at all somewhat fairly very entirely satisfied
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 1 6 6 4
Average score: 3.76
The overall average score for the afternoon session (i.e. the average score for all questions)
is 3.90, which falls slightly short of our target of 4. This is slightly disappointing, but the
afternoon has still been judged to be well above average.
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B.3 Workshop as a Whole
The final two questions on the afternoon questionnaire concerned the Workshop as a whole.
The responses (again, from 17 people) were as follows:
5. Was it a useful forum for the exchange of ideas?
not at all weak fair good very useful
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 0 0 10 7
Average score: 4.41
6. How do you rate the organisation of the Workshop?
very weak weak fair good very good
1 2 3 4 5
Number of respondants 0 0 0 9 8
Average score: 4.47
The overall average score for the questions about the Workshop as a whole (i.e. the average
score for both questions) is 4.44, exceeding our target of 4.
B.4 Comments and Suggestions
The final question, which was optional, asked for further comments and suggestions. Few
people (in fact, four) gave comments, but where they did they were positive, describing the
event as “...an excellent Workshop which promoted exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge
and ideas” and “...a very useful occasion”. There was a suggestion to post the presentations
on the Website, which had always been our intention and has now been done. Another
participant suggested that a printed version of the contributions should be produced, but
we feel that as a small, informal Workshop the availability of all material on the Web is
sufficient.
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C Evaluation Questionnaires
C.1 Morning
IST Workshop on Metadata Management in Grid and P2P systems (MMGPS) Models,
Services and Architectures
Morning Questionnaire
1. Were the talks in the morning session stimulating?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (a little) (average) (quite) (very much so)
2. How relevant were the morning’s talks to the aims of the Workshop?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (a little) (fair) (quite) (very relevant)
3. How informative were the morning’s presentations?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (weak) (average) (good) (very informative)
4. How satisfied were you overall with the morning sessions?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (somewhat) (fairly) (very) (entirely satisfied)
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C.2 Afternoon
IST Workshop on Metadata Management in Grid and P2P systems (MMGPS) Models,
Services and Architectures
Afternoon Questionnaire
The Afternoon session
1. Were the talks in the afternoon session stimulating?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (a little) (average) (quite) (very much so)
2. How relevant were the afternoon’s talks to the aims of the Workshop?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (a little) (fair) (quite) (very relevant)
3. How informative were the afternoon’s presentations?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (weak) (average) (good) (very informative)
4. How satisfied were you overall with the afternoon sessions?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (somewhat) (fairly) (very) (entirely satisfied)
The Workshop as a whole
5. Was it a useful forum for the exchange of ideas?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(not at all) (weak) (fair) (good) (very useful)
6. How do you rate the organisation of the workshop?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
(very weak) (weak) (fair) (good) (very good)
7. Please put any further comments and suggestions on the reverse of this form.
(Optional)
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D List of Participants
Name Country
Kevin Keenoy UK
George Kokkinidis Greece
Mark Levene UK
George Loizou UK
George Papamarkos UK
Donald Peterson UK
Alexandra Poulovassilis UK
Phillipe Rigaux France
George Samaras Cyprus
Nicolas Spyratos France
Peter Wood UK
Table 5: SeLeNe Project Workshop Attendees
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Name Country IST
Mohammed Alfreid UK N
Bob Bentley UK Y
Mario Cannataro Italy Y
Stavros Christodoulakis Greece Y
Simon Courtenage UK N
Philippe Cudré-Mauroux France N
Kevin Davis UK N
Theo Dimitrakos UK Y
Haya El-Ghalayini UK N
Hao Fan UK N
Tamás Hauer UK Y
Klaus Janke Germany Y
Maria Margetti UK N
David Massart Belgium Y
Gavin McCance UK Y
Carlo Meghini Italy Y
Zoltán Miklós Austria Y
Nektarios Moumoutzis Greece Y
Wolfgang Nejdl Germany Y
Henrik Nottelmann Germany Y
Eoghan O’Neill Belgium Y
Kevin O’Neill UK N
Savas Parastatidis UK N
Dmitry Rogulin UK Y
Eric Scharf UK N
Michel School France N
Faezeh Seyedarabi UK N
Tony Solomonides UK Y
Frans Van Assche Belgium Y
Pierangelo Veltri Italy Y
Stephen Williams UK N
Darioush Yarand UK N
Table 6: Non-SeLeNe Workshop Attendees
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