Visualizing contributions in a forge -Case study on PicoForge

Visualizing contributions in a forgeCase study on PicoForge

Olivier BERGER, Quang-Vu DANGTELECOM & Management SudParis (ex. GET/INT)INF Departement<olivier.berger@itsudparis.eu>

10/09/2008WOPDASD @ OSS 2008Milano (Italy)

Olivier BERGER WOPDASD @ OSS 2008

Summary

IntroductionSemantic Web standards (RDF)Visualizing contributions in a forgeCase study on PicoForge


Context of Vu's PhD thesis

OSS Software development• Collaborative development environments : Forges• Provide collaborative tools: Source versioning,

Mailing list, Wiki, Bug tracker, forum, chat ...

Missing features• Give users a vision of the project's status• Provide visualisations about the process of

production• Predict the evolution of project and community


Objective of Vu's PhD thesis

Measuring software quality by focusing on process• Find metrics to measure quality of the process• Find relationship between the quality of the product and

the quality of the process

Develop a “Supervision” Tool in a forge• Help to improve community awareness• Provide indicator for analysis of process/product quality


Plug analysis tools to forges : RDF

svn ...bug svn ...bugData public

Tools

Results

CVSAnalyMailingListStatsSLOCCount...

[http://flossmetrics.org/sections/deliverables/docs/deliverables/WP2/D2.1-Retrieval_System_Design.pdf]


Data collection approach

Extract and standardize semantical data from collaborative tools• Forge's tools provide RSS feeds to track activity• A RSS item is the result of an action

Enrich information in the RSS/RDF semantically• using FOAF, DOAP, DC, etc.

Collect all RSS feeds of a project


New potential ?

Live information

Across tools, across platform=> Real time and complete vision about project and

community

Using Semantic Web standards => Publish semantic notifications of project activity


What Is RDF?

Resource Description Framework• RDF Graph: a set of RDF Triples• RDF Triples: a 3-tuple: (Subject, Predicate, Object)• XML format using predefined vocabularies• Predicates typed in Schemas

General Standards : schemas• RDF (RDFS, etc.) : RDF machinery• Dublin Core (DC) : documentation meta-info• RSS 1.0 : news• + Your own schemas (consensus / standard)

Brings semantic “namespaces” to XML documents


<?xml version="1.0"?><rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:ex="http://example.org/stuff/1.0/"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar" dc:title="RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)"> <ex:editor> <rdf:Description ex:fullName="Dave Beckett"> <ex:homePage rdf:resource="http://purl.org/net/dajobe/"/> </rdf:Description> </ex:editor> </rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>

RDF Model Example


RSS

RSS: Web content syndication format (Really Simple Syndication)• channel: title, description, link,...• item: title, description, link, pubDate, author ...

RSS 1.0: RDF Site Summary• Extensible with other RDF standards

0.91 0.92 2.0 Atom

0.9 1.0

Simple: Plain XML

Extensible: RDF/XML


Friend Of A Friend (FOAF)

XML/RDF Schema to describe people and the relationships between them and the things they create and do

FOAF Basics• foaf:name, foaf:nick, foaf:mbox, ...

Personal Information• foaf:knows, foaf:currentProject, foaf:publications,

foaf:topic_interest, ...

[http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/]


[http://xml.mfd-consult.dk/foaf/explorer/]


Description Of A Project (DOAP)

XML/RDF schema to describe software projects and in particular open source projects.

Vocabulary• name, homepage, description, created,mailing-list ...• developer, maintainer, translator ... • repository, bug-database, screenshots,

release/version ...DOAP stores

• http://doapstore.org/ and http://doapspace.org/• http://www.sourcekibitzer.org/

[http://trac.usefulinc.com/doap]

http://doapstore.org/

http://doapspace.org/

http://www.sourcekibitzer.org/


RSS Example

<rss:channel> <rss:title>projetA</rss:title> <rss:description>

WebSVN RSS feed – projetA </rss:description> <rss:link>http://forgedemo.org/projetA.html </rss:link> <doap:Project> <doap:name>projetA</doap:name> <rdfs:seeAlso>

http://forgedemo.org/projetA.rdf </rdfs:seeAlso> </doap:Project></rss:channel>

http://forgedemo.org/projetA.html


RSS Example

<rss:item> <rss:title>minor fixes in version 2 branch </rss:title> <rss:link>http://forgedemo.org/projetA</rss:link> <rss:description> Rev 2463 - toto (3 file(s) modified) minor fixes in version 2 branch</rss:description> <foaf:person>

<foaf:nick>toto</foaf:nick><foaf:mbox>[email protected]</foaf:mbox><rdfs:seeAlso>http://forgedemo.org/toro.rdf</rdfs:seeAlso>

</foaf:person> <dc:date>Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:18:02</dc:date></rss:item>


Data analysis

Metrics• The total number of actions• Number of active members with the number of

actions of each members• Number of used tools with numbers of actions in each

toolConstructing Social Network

• Heterogeneous relationships: co-commit on SVN, co-drafting on Wiki or discussion on mailing list, bug tracker

Activity Pattern Analysis• monthly activity, daily activity, hourly activity


Supervision tool on PicoForge

DirectoryLDAP

PortalProject

TWiki Sympa WebSVN Mantis

Publicfeeds

Semantic DataBase

RDF Document

RSS Document

FOAF Document

DOAP Document

Supervisionmodule


Supervision tool on PicoForge

Implementation• RSS_PHP [http://rssphp.net/]

- RSS/XML parser using DOMDocument

• RAP [http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bizer/rdfapi/]- RDF API for PHP- parse, store, query, manipulate, serialize and serve RDF

• LibChart [http://naku.dohcrew.com/libchart/]- a PHP library to create charts such as Bar charts (horizontal or

vertical), Line charts, Pie charts

• TouchGraph [http://www.touchgraph.com/]- visualization of graphs such as social networks


First results


Conclusion

RDF may provide a realtime feed of open source projects/process facts from forges to analysis tools

Integration in researchers' workflows ?Semantics information (standardization ?)Feedback to the communities realtimeBetter community awarenessCalibration of research methodology (feedback

from developpers) ?Privacy issues ?Use of other meta-info formats

(microformats ?)

WOPDASD @ OSS 2008

Copyright / license

This presentation is Copyright :• Quang Vu DANG• Olivier BERGER• Institut TELECOM, SudParis

License• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.• (The license can be found in

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

Visualizing contributions in a forge -Case study on PicoForge

Technology

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