Oasis – Open architecture for Accessible Services Integration and Standardization
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- Methodology
- Structure of the database
2.BenchmarkingA thorough literature and market survey has been performed in the area of autonomous mobility and smart workplaces. Not only past and existing systems have been collected and reviewed, but also relevant projects and services. Issues that have been considered are related to technological aids, systems and services to support the elderly in pre-trip and on-trip info, using public and private transportation means, as well as flexible on-demand services, utilizing specialized travel packages. Furthermore, the support of the elderly as tourists or workers, working from home or at the workplace without a fixed office, or even as mobile workers has been taken into account. All the retrieved results have been directly inserted in an on-line database that was developed, allowing clustering of and a structured presentation of the results. The aim of this database is to gather and present all the existing Products, Services and Research Projects in the area of autonomous mobility and smart workplaces, that are appropriate for elderly people (SP3). As a similar benchmarking activity was running in the project for the independent living applications area (SP2), it was decided to include all the benchmarking results in this common database. The database of relevant technologies provides useful information for each identified entity, such as relevant technical characteristics, costs and producer/promoter details, as well as - when available - information on compliance to an ontology, applications used in, type of users, method of use, usability issues, etc. The database interface was implanted in MS SQL Server 2005. It is published on the project web site (www.oasis-project.eu), and it can be considered as an active tool, where the user is able not only to search on-line for entities that he/she is interested in, but also to insert new ones. In other words, the “edit” and “search” functions are supported. It is easily accessible and does not require installation of specific software on the computer of the user, which increases significantly both its accessibility and the usability. While in order to add, edit or delete an entry, a specific username and password is needed, the database contents are public and can be viewed by all, without the need of access codes. Currently, the database consists of 641 Products, 47 Services and 78 Research Projects. However, the number of entries is expected to be increased, as the population of the database is ongoing, and will continue until the end of the project, in order to keep it up-to-dated. The methodology followed in order to gather the data, the structure of the content and its implementation are presented in the following sections. Furthermore, the layout of the database interface and its functionalities are explained in detail.
Initially, a template was created, with the exact areas for which information is needed. After the template was finalised, it was transformed into a database field and OASIS partners used it online to provide the relevant entries. The relevant form can be found in Annex 1. The database population is still ongoing and will be kept open, until the end of the project. For data input to the database, a unique access code was provided to each partner. There are 3 main areas and more sub-areas defined, based on which each result is clustered. These areas cover all the main development workpackages of OASIS (i.e. the WPs where innovative systems are to be developed). These areas are listed below:
For each entry, several data files are included, such as description, technical specifications, product and manufacturer name, indicative cost, technical limitations, specification of ontology communication interface, end-user category, etc. The database contains also some fields with business and market issues questions, such as ‘Which companies could benefit from the technology/product/service/R&D-Projects?’, ‘Who could be the possible end users from the technology/ product/ service/ R&D-Projects?’, etc. this material can be used as input to WP5.4 ‘Cost effectiveness, business scenarios and exploitation plans’ of OASIS.
This section presents the fields of the technologies benchmarking (common WP2.1 and WP3.1) database that has be developed within OASIS. This database is designed in order to include also information about the existing ontologies, thus covering also WP1.1. The template is divided in 3 areas: products, services and research results. Most fields are common for these 3 categories, but there are also some different fields for each. In addition, there are certain areas defined, according to the services offered by the project, which are common for the 3 categories. Finally, the search options (by which the users will be able to search the content of the database) are provided. Figure 1 shows the structure of the database. 
Figure 2: Structure of OASIS benchmarking database. According to the figure above, the database consists of five main tables, i.e.:
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