Easyrec
| Company type | Open-source software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Personalization, Recommendation systems |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Studio Smart Agent Technologies |
| Headquarters | Austria |
| Products | Personalized recommendation platform, RESTful Web services API |
| Owner | Studio Smart Agent Technologies |
| Website | sourceforge |
easyrec is an open-source solution that delivers customized recommendations through RESTful Web services, designed for seamless integration into web-based applications. Created by Studio Smart Agent Technologies, it is available under the GNU General Public License and maintained on SourceForge. Developed with Java, it operates using a MySQL database and features an administrative interface.
History
The inception of easyrec originated from research initiatives at Studio Smart Agent Technologies, centered on Adaptive Personalization to improve large-scale mobile music platforms. By 2008, the foundational capabilities were established, supporting experimental projects in the music sector such as MusicExplorer. In June 2009, a beta release featuring fundamental administration tools was deployed within a movie streaming service for testing purposes.
In September 2009, easyrec earned distinction in the “Award for Innovations – IT Innovations for an economic upswing” category at the Austrian multimedia and e-business state awards. After undergoing code refinement and evaluation integration, easyrec was launched on SourceForge in February 2010. Subsequently, it secured the German “INNOVATIONSPREIS-IT 2011” accolade at the CeBIT exhibition in Hanover.
Principles
The design and development of easyrec were driven by five primary objectives:
- Provide a fully operational application rather than solely an algorithmic toolkit
- Facilitate straightforward installation, integration, and management
- Guarantee durability and scalability suitable for practical deployment
- Distribute the software at no cost to promote widespread personalization adoption
- Encourage contributions and development from the user community
Uses
easyrec functions as a personalization platform independent of any specific domain, with its Web service API mainly optimized for e-commerce websites. It offers small to medium-sized businesses an easy-to-implement solution for adding personalization capabilities.
Features
Among its principal features are detailed usage analytics and business-oriented insights accessible through an administrative dashboard. Administrators have control over configuration settings and can manually import or modify business logic rules. Developers gain access to lightweight REST and SOAP Web service APIs as well as a step-by-step installation assistant.
Personalization functionalities include:
- Generic recommendations such as "other users also bought/viewed..."
- Tailored suggestions based on user-specific preferences
- Item rankings like "most purchased" or "most viewed"
A MediaWiki extension is included to demonstrate integration possibilities.
Future plans involve assessing additional recommendation algorithms and implementing a plugin architecture.
Architecture
easyrec’s system architecture prioritizes reliability and scalability by decoupling resource-intensive computation from real-time recommendation generation.
It consists of three tiers:
- The database layer, which stores user interactions and precomputed business rules
- The application layer, responsible for both online and offline recommendation services
- The API layer, which provides multiple Web service interfaces
A generator server executes item association algorithms that produce business rules defining item relationships.