Tagging / annotation workplan

Current Situation

1. There is a single fixed ontology.
2. Annotation is made by associating terms from the ontology with services.
3. The annotation is created by a single person, almost always not the user of Taverna, and is stored in a single registry.
4. Annotation is only possible on some types of services. All other objects, including configured services that are actually run, cannot be annotated.
5. Searching is specified using the terms of the ontology.
6. Searching only considers the services described in the registry.

Future Plans

1. Identity which types of objects should be annotatable. The default position will be that all objects are annotatable. Annotation must be allowed on service definitions, configured services, service instances, service occurrences and enacted service occurrences.
2. Taverna must be altered so that the objects that need to be tagged are uniquely and consistently identifiable.
3. The identification and tagging mechanisms must cope with (or explicitly fail to cope with) versions and variants of objects.
4. Annotation will be by the association of tags with objects. Tagging can be ad hoc, guided from a folksonomy and also from fixed ontologies.
5. The system must allow the user-specification of preferred folksonomies and ontologies.
6. The tagging system must allow the migration of ad hoc tags via folksonomies into ontologies. This allows the solidification and maturing of domains.
7. Tagging of objects will be allowed by many people, including the user.
8. The tag values must be exportable to other systems, possibly via a microformat such as xfolk.
9. The currently held annotation and ontology must be leveraged. The most obvious mechanism is by encapsulated the current Feta registry as a tag deliverer.
10. There must be mechanisms for delivering tags from pre-existing registries of objects and scavenged objects.
11. The system will allow linkage from objects to information such as examples and fully annotated data sheets (such as Franck and Antoon's workflow descriptions). This may possibly just be a case of allowing tags to have values.
12. There will be multiple deliverers of tags. Delivered tags may be seen by the user and also used by the search system. At a minimum the delivers of tags will include a user-specific registry and a global registry.
13. Searching will be performed using the tags. There will be mechanisms for refinement of search results and possibly for ontology-guided advanced search.
14. The searching system must allow searching over tag values delivered by systems where the tags were not generated within Taverna. This allows the possibility of external deliverers such as QoS^? measures and rating systems.
15. The tagging and searching mechanisms must present a consistent interface to the user.
16. The tagging and searching mechanisms must work seamlessly with Taverna plugins.