User Profile Illustration
Here is a short description/explanation of the figure:
User profiles are stored in a user profile storage (e.g. a server, or a local storage).
A user profile is transferred from the user profile storage to the preference handler/translator in a serialized format (XML, JSON, etc.).
The preference handler/translator reads the user profile and its property names (which are URIs).
The GPI registry for user profile properties (e.g. at http://gpii.net/upreg) contains a list of core and live property names. For each property name, human-readable labels are defined in multiple languages, and the value space is defined in a machine-readable fashion. Also, a pointer into a property definition document may be provided.
A property definition document contains a machine-readable definition of a property (e.g. as RDF Schema file, plain text, etc.). For core properties, these property definition documents are hosted by GPII. For live properties, they may be hosted by other entities.
The preference handler/translator computes a „best match“ for the application-specific settings, based on the user profile.
Application-specific settings are transferred from the preference handler/translator to an application-specific settings handler in a serialized format (XML, JSON, etc.).