Databases and information systems are crucial for a large variety of today’s networked applications. Together with Web technology they form the major tools to manage the information flood on the Internet and provide pervasive information access anytime anywhere. The emerging techniques of Web services and the Semantic Web already address some of the challenges by trying to standardize semantic descriptions, addressing security issues and fostering interoperability and seamless service integration. However, these problems cannot be solved by information technology alone. Modeling semantics for intended goals relies on human cognition and cultural notions and thus needs strong interdisciplinary research.
Recent research on the nature of commonly used preferences and their integration into information systems has already gained broad attention. In today’s systems, however, personalization capabilities are mostly restricted to simple keyword matching, subscribing to different channels or customizing features like the layout or presentation of information. The benefits of personalized web-based information services are pervasive information access with services for information filtering, collaboration and information sharing. Together with innovative wireless technologies and powerful client devices these services can help to pave the way towards unrestricted mobility.
The APIS project is committed to bring together researchers from different disciplines to improve the personalization capabilities in today’s information services. This project is carried out by the APIS research group that was founded by Wolf-Tilo Balke at University of California at Berkeley, USA in 2002. In November 2004 the APIS group moved to the L3S research center of University of Hannover, Germany, where Wolf-Tilo Balke is now an associate research director. The APIS project is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Emmmy Noether excellence program.