Talea: An Ontology-based Framework for e-Business Applications Development

In this paper we present Talea, a platform aimed at supporting the development of web-based e-business applications. Talea supports a flexible matching between service provision and request. The platform can be easily customized thanks to XML-based communication, Semantic Web technologies, and the exploitation of a generator/performer design pattern which greatly simplifies the task of adding new functionality. Moreover, Talea provides multidevice access to both service providers and final users. An ontological description of the application domain, expressed in RDF/RDFS format, is exploited in order to facilitate the customization and to provide personalized navigation as well as semantic-based search. The ontology-driven personalized navigation is particularly useful for limited display devices (like smartphones or PDAs), since it reduces the amount of information displayed. A first evaluation of the current prototype is planned with a restricted number of users and will be carried on by the Local Tourist Organization.