International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 69– No.27, May 2013 34 Context Enabled Query and Minimalist Metadata Visualization: A Context Bound Approach for User and Content Fausto Giunchiglia Department of Computer Science University of Trento, Trento, Italy Khandaker Tabin Hasan Department of Computer Science University of Trento, Trento, Italy Rezwan Ahmed Department of Computer Science American International University-Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh Sheikh Shaugat Abdullah Department of Computer Science American International University-Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh ABSTRACT The principle of this study is to minimize and categorize the large scale metadata to hasten an entity search in a well- organized way. The objective is to addresses the fundamental issues of minimalist metadata visualization that make an entity identifiable by human assessment. It is very important to understand the dependency between an entity and the context of use of that entity to find the minimalist metadata visualization i.e., who is asking for what/whom at when and where. Hence, the study seeks to distinguish the need for requisite types, amount and order of metadata in different context. A survey result and user study on popular video sharing website is presented revealing interesting facts based on the common understanding and practice of metadata visualization. The results of our study will help to recognize the importance of the minimal attribute set to identify an entity. Finally, base on our findings, we proposed a solution which we believe can hasten any sort of entity search in an efficient way. 1 General Terms Data Visualization. Keywords Metadata, Minimalist Metadata Visualization, Entity, Context Boundary, Context Query. 1. INTRODUCTION Metadata are data that defines higher level of data. Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource. Metadata is often called data about data or information about information [9]. For example what is the name of the data set? Who developed the data set? What geographic area does it cover? What themes of information does it include? How current are the data? Are there restrictions on accessing or using the data? The relation between data and metadata remains always the same from one level to another in the information hierarchy. Use of metadata is extremely important both in machine reasoning as well as for human inspection in large information space. Metadata is 1 This work has been partially done during the PhD thesis research of Hasan K. T. uŶder the title A User CeŶtric IŶterface for the MaŶageŵeŶt of Past, PreseŶt aŶd Future EveŶts at the UŶiversity of TreŶto, Italy iŶ ϮϬϭϭ[1]. capable of performing to describe what resources are and what they are about, and organizing those resources according to controllable criteria, allowing resources to be found by relevant criteria and providing digital identification and description for archiving and the preservation of resources. Data describing data are often more ambiguous and/or confusing than the data itself and appears out of context. Data have been categorized, modeled and recorded by researchers and practitioners based on their metadata. This study treats entity for data and property for metadata. Set of properties being associated with each entity is not completely intended for human comprehension, rather only a part of it is to be visualized. There is a need for quick preview of entity properties. Another important aspect of the design is to determine the order of their arrangement i.e. setting the order of precedence of metadata visualization. Minimalist metadata visualization for each entity type is subject to the context of use. Therefore, a user survey has been done to understand the need for required types, amount and order of metadata to find an entity in different context. The study took one entity type with five different contexts to illustrate how variant the user response in such understanding of requirements. There were 40 participants in the study seeking for a person in five different contexts given a set of properties (metadata) presented to them. An online survey tool has been used to perform the study. There are many fundamental questions we had to encounter: What are the metadata to be visualized to make an entity identifiable by human inspection? How much is sufficient? Or In which order? Answering these questions is not a trivial task; therefore, no simple solution exists. For each entity, there exist numerous contexts where the answer varies. However, from the user survey this study came out with some very significant and exciting findings which specify that we really don’t need much metadata to find an entity in a specific context. Afterward, a case study has been done on a popular video sharing website in different contexts where the target was to plot those findings. This work prepared five contexts and asked the user to search each of them in that website using a given set of keywords. These keywords are taken from frequently searched queries stored by Google engine. There were 50 participants in the study seeking for a specific video in five different contexts given a set of keywords (metadata) presented to them. Some key problems have been identified