Visual interaction with XML metadata

This paper explores the possibility of developing interactive visually-rich interfaces that enable Web users to access and manipulate XML metadata and underlying ontologies. Native visualisations, i.e. those that are integral parts of the process of creating and displaying XML documents, are analysed in order to utilise their potential in our interface design. As a result of adapting and merging various native visualisations, a novel and efficient representation of the XML document ontology has been developed-the Generalised Document Object Model Tree (G-DOM-Tree) Interface. This interface represents XML metadata and their structure in a comprehensive, intelligible and compact way that is suitable for the Web-based manipulation of its elements. After reviewing the main existing technologies for implementing the G-DOM-Tree Interface, a working prototype of an XML Ontology Translator is presented. This application generates dynamically ontological models of two XML documents in the G-DOM-Tree form and then allows Web users to map them in order to establish XSLT-based communications between XML dialects that are syntactically dissimilar but describe the same domain. The paper shows that visual interaction with XML ontologies can provide a simple but effective way of dealing with the problem of semantic interoperability of XML documents within real-life Web-based applications.