Using social networking and semantic web technology in software engineering – Use cases, patterns, and a case study

We present an approach that uses social networking and semantic web technology to share knowledge within the software engineering community. We propose to use existing Web 2.0 services such as social bookmarking and blogs as the infrastructure to share knowledge artefacts. Due to the openness of these services, it is crucial to provide support to establish the trustworthiness of knowledge artefacts. The solution proposed is designed following the original semantic web stack architecture and uses existing and emerging W3C semantic web standards such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). The WebOfPatterns project is presented as a case study, which includes an Eclipse plug-in that can be used to discover design pattern definitions in social networks, to define and publish patterns, to rate patterns, to establish the trustworthiness of patterns found, and finally to scan Java projects for instances of discovered patterns. We also propose the ContributedProperties design pattern that can be used to bridge the conceptual gap between RDF resources and objects in an object-oriented programming language.