Semantic Components Glossary

Term Definition
Application An application, in the context of Semantic Components, is a runnable, and standalone, piece of software. In that context, it can be an embedded Flash movie in a Web page, or a standalone Air application.
Attribute The term "attribute" is used interchangeably with the terms "edge", "predicate" or "property". Attributes are often the descriptive characteristics of specific things or entities, and may be provided ranging from string literals to controlled vocabularies to numerics, dates or geolocational coordinates.
Bound Attribute Bound attributes are attributes used to describe record(s) that are associated-to (bound) to a particular user interface component within a user interface.
Component A component, is a reusable and extendable control in Flex.
Control A control is a component that a user can see and/or interact with. It is normally what is rendered in an application. A control is closely related (if not inter-changeable) with component. It may also be termed a "widget"
Feature (GIS) A feature in a GIS context is an entity with a geographic location.
Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to Web pages. Flash began as a platform for advertisements and games; more recently, it has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" (RIAs)
Flash Variables (aka flashVars) flashVars are a way to pass data to a Flex application without having to recompile the entire application.
Flex Adobe Flex is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs) based on the Adobe Flash platform.
GATE A generalized computer architecture with many plug-ins for a broad range of Natural Language Processing tasks.
GIS A geographic information system (GIS), or geographical information system, is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that is linked to location. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography and database technology.
irON irON (instance record and Object Notation) is a abstract notation and associated vocabulary for specifying RDF triples and schema in non-RDF forms. Its purpose is to allow users and tools in non-RDF formats to stage interoperable datasets using RDF.
irXML This sub-part of the irON specification describes the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) serialization of irON, irXML.
Named Entities Named entities are instances or individuals, often prominent and often with proper names. Notable places, things, people, organizations and events are example named entities. Named entities and their attributes are generally known as "records".
MXML MXML is an XML-based user interface markup language first introduced by Macromedia in March 2004. MXML is used mainly to declaratively lay out the interface of applications and can also be used to implement business logic and internet application behaviors. It can contain chunks of ActionScript code, either when creating the body of an event handler function, or with data binding where the curly braces ({) syntax is used.
Portable Control Application A Portable Control Application is a Flex application that can be embedded as a Flash movie in a Web page, or may that run as a Air desktop application. The Portable Control Application is a shell that embeds Semantic Components. It takes record(s) description(s) and schema(s) as inputs, and then feeds it to and embeds them within an sControl (the generic semantic control). This sControl then properly selects the semantic control to use to display the description of the record(s) according to the schema(s) used.
Predicate The term "predicate" is used interchangeably with the terms "attribute" and "property."
Property The term "property" is used interchangeably with the terms "predicate" and "attribute."
Record It is used, interchangeably with the term "subject".
Record Description A record description is the complete description of a record entity. The description of a record is done with <attribute,value> pairs. The entire record is seen as a triple <record, attribute, value>. The record description is the complete list of all the attributes-values defined to describe a record.
Record Box A record box is a canvas where all the attributes of a record description should be bound to a child component of that record box. Such a "record-box canvas" is the sHBox semantic component.
Resultset A resultset is a set of subject descriptions that are returned by a structWSF Web service endpoint. Resultset is also the data structure used to feed data to Semantic Components.
Schema A schema is a vocabulary used to describe the types and attributes used to describe subjects of a resultset.
SCO (ontology) The SCO (Semantic Component Ontology) ontology is a set of terms used to annotate (OWL 2's Annotation Predicate) classes and predicates of an ontology. These annotations "drive" (specify the components and behavior of) the Semantic Component Library. SCO is the vocabulary used to instruct the system what to do (which semantic component to use) when a record is described with some attributes and types.
Semantic Component A semantic component is a Flex component that takes record(s) description(s) and irXML schema(s) as input, and then outputs some (possibly interactive) visualization(s) of that record. Depending on the logic described in the input schema(s) and the input record(s) description(s), the semantic component may behave differently or provide presentation options to users.
semanticDataProvider The semantic data provider of a semantic component is a Resultset object that is feed to a semantic component. The resultset contains one, or multiple, record descriptions that have to be processed by the semantic component.
Settings In the context of semantic components, settings are configuration parameters, serialized in XML files, used by semantic component. These settings are all the "non-semantic" ones. These settings are defining all the characteristics of the components that are strictly related to a specific implementation such as: colors of highlighted features, how a <a> HTML element should react (a new window, the current window, etc.), what structWSF endpoint the components should be using, etc.
Story A story is a an informative document where subject concepts and named entities are tagged and displayed by the sStory semantic component.
structWSF [1] is a RESTful middleware layer that provides the bridge between existing content and structure and content management systems and available indexing engines and RDF data stores. structWSF also provides a platform-independent means for distributed collaboration via an innovative dataset access paradigm.
structXML structXML is the internal XML data format used by structWSF, the Semantic Components and conStruct. It is a simple and naive RDF serialization format.
Styles In the context of Flex applications, styles are Flex cascade style sheets (CSS). These styles can define the visual styles of multiple elements of any semantic component.
Subject A subject is the term used to refer to a record description that is part of a structWSF resultset. It is used interchangeably with the term "record".
targetAttributes, targetTypes, targetRecords, targetSchemas These targetXYZ are the four main variable inputs to any semantic component. Semantic components will react differently depending upon the specification in each of these target variables.
Theme A theme in the context of semantic components defines the look and feel of a Flex application. A theme can define something as simple as the color scheme or common font for an application, or it can be a complete re-skinning of all the components used by the application.

Themes usually take the form of a SWC file. However, themes can also be a CSS file or embedded graphical resources, such as symbols from a SWF file. Theme SWC files can also be compiled into style SWF files so that they can be loaded at run time.