An LDAP-based User Modeling Server and its Evaluation

Abstract

Representation components of user modeling servers have been traditionally based on simple file structures and database systems. We propose directory systems as an alternative, which offer numerous advantages over the more traditional approaches: international vendor-independent standardization, demonstrated performance and scalability, dynamic and transparent management of distributed information, built-in replication and synchronization, a rich number of pre-defined types of user information, and extensibility of the core representation language for new information types and for data types with associated semantics. Directories also allow for the virtual centralization of distributed user models and their selective centralized replication if better performance is needed. We present UMS, a user modeling server that is based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). UMS allows for the representation of different models (such as user and usage profiles, and system and service models), and for the attachment of arbitrary components that perform user modeling tasks upon these models. External clients such as user-adaptive applications can submit and retrieve information about users. We describe a simulation experiment to test the runtime performance of this server, and present a theory of how the parameters of such an experiment can be derived from empirical web usage research. The results show that the performance of UMS meets the requirements of current small and medium websites already on very modest hardware platforms, and those of very large websites in an entry-level business server configuration.