A Configurable Matchmaking Framework for Electronic Marketplaces

E-marketplaces constitute a major enabler of B2B and B2C e-commerce activities. This paper proposes a framework for one of the central activities of e-marketplaces: matchmaking of trading intentions lodged by market participants. The framework identifies a core set of concepts and functions that are common to all types of marketplaces and can serve as the basis for describing the distinct styles of matchmaking employed within various market mechanisms. A prototype implementation of the framework based on Web services technology is presented, illustrating its ability to be dynamically configured to meet specific market needs and its potential to serve as a foundation for more fully fledged e-marketplace frameworks

An Integration of Rule Types and XML

Meta data types for providing business rules are described. These business rules form part of the knowledge base of an organisation. The integration of knowledge with data and information is discussed. FORM, a natural language based, conceptual modelling technique is used to describe the meta data types. XML has been recognised by many in the industry as the preferred data interchange language. XML is currently being used to interchange data and its schema. The use of XML to interchange rules is being investigated, in this paper. This will enable organisations to interchange business rules and their meta data, in addition to data and their schema. Such business rules can be interpreted and applied by the receiving systems, thus providing a basis for intelligent behavior when dealing with information being interchange

Conceptual Modelling and The Quality of Ontologies: Endurantism Vs. Perdurantism

Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach

Educating Educators On Mastery Learning And Spiral Learning

There are many barriers that hinder teachers from educating themselves on effective teaching and learning methods they can use in the classroom. Along with shortness of time and energy, the inaccessibility of reliable information and the time it takes to sift through all of the extensive amount of information all pose as problems. For this project, information and research on two methods of teaching and learning: mastery and spiral learning will be collected and summarized and the advantages and disadvantages of each will be presented in order to help educate teachers and educators on effective methods of teaching

Mobile-cloud Cross Development (McX)

There is a multitude of Mobile Operating Systems (MOSs) with iOS, Android, Windows Phone and, BlackBerry leading the space. New players continue to enter the market. Without a de-facto leader in this space, it has become necessary for businesses & developers to target multiple devices & MOSs in order to establish a relevant presence within their target audience. Cross-platform Mobile Development Tools (XMTs) were born out of this need to reduce developer effort in creating mobile applications by providing “write once run anywhere” (WORA) functionality. However, most of these tools sacrifice performance, features or maintainability in order to provide WORA functionality. Furthermore, these tools only attempt to manage the user interface and related client-side functionality. Most mobile applications need to follow the same principals that guide development of non-mobile web or desktop apps. Typical apps are deployed using an n-tier, cloud-based strategy with substantial functionality delegated to cloud resources. Given the above, there are two parts of an application’s anatomy that don’t get much attention – the cloud middleware functionality, and the database/model management features. In this paper I address these problems through creation of a Mobile-cloud Cross Development (McX) tool-chain that includes a type-safe meta-programming language, an integrated cloud node and, an active compiler. In order to effectively understand the problem with the current state of the art, I use 3 of the leading XMTs alongside the developed McX tool-chain and compare the effectiveness of each. The paper further introduces the language; it’s grammar and semantic structure, and provides discussions on how this approach fits the future of cross-platform, cloud-integrated mobile application development along with the associated issues and areas for further research

Interoperability of DRM Systems

The study deals with the cutting-edge subject of electronic contracts which have the potential to automatically process and control the access rights for (electronic) goods. It shows the design and the implementation of a rights expression exchange framework. The framework allows DRM systems to exchange electronic contracts, formulated in a standardized rights expression language, and thus provides DRM system interoperability. The work introduces a methodology for the standardized composition, exchange and processing of electronic contracts or rights expressions

COEL: A Web-based Chemistry Simulation Framework

The chemical reaction network (CRN) is a widely used formalism to describe macroscopic behavior of chemical systems. Available tools for CRN modelling and simulation require local access, installation, and often involve local file storage, which is susceptible to loss, lacks searchable structure, and does not support concurrency. Furthermore, simulations are often single-threaded, and user interfaces are non-trivial to use. Therefore there are significant hurdles to conducting efficient and collaborative chemical research. In this paper, we introduce a new enterprise chemistry simulation framework, COEL, which addresses these issues. COEL is the first web-based framework of its kind. A visually pleasing and intuitive user interface, simulations that run on a large computational grid, reliable database storage, and transactional services make COEL ideal for collaborative research and education. COEL's most prominent features include ODE-based simulations of chemical reaction networks and multicompartment reaction networks, with rich options for user interactions with those networks. COEL provides DNA-strand displacement transformations and visualization (and is to our knowledge the first CRN framework to do so), GA optimization of rate constants, expression validation, an application-wide plotting engine, and SBML/Octave/Matlab export. We also present an overview of the underlying software and technologies employed and describe the main architectural decisions driving our development. COEL is available at http://coel-sim.org for selected research teams only. We plan to provide a part of COEL's functionality to the general public in the near future.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

Content diffusion in ALERT clinical applications

Estágio realizado na ALERT e orientado pelo Eng.º Tiago SilvaTese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Data utilization software for assisting power plant project sales

A business opportunity in power plant project sales goes through several stages before a quote can be made. Previously made quotes can offer insight on how earlier projects were sold in certain areas or countries. Therefore, a salesperson working in energy business will often want to compare the cost and scope of current power plant projects with earlier sold projects. The role of web applications continues to grow. Increasing amount of software developers write their software for web browsers. In addition, modern software development tools such as Django and React allow efficient web development. Since the popularity of web applications is increasing, web browsers have become the main platform for new applications. In this thesis, a prototype web application is designed and developed. The application allows a salesperson to compare current power plant projects with previously sold projects. The comparison process should mainly illustrate how the costs of the compared projects differ from one another. The goal of the application is to enable sales personnel to access relevant data and make comparisons by utilizing just a single application instead of using many separate systems. This reduces the workload in sales department and increases the productivity in power plant project sales. The prototype application developed in this thesis will be integrated into energy feasibility tools platform, which hosts several different applications used in energy sales. Furthermore, the application should utilize data located on Wärtsilä Data Platform. The prototype is written with Python and JavaScript programming languages. The backend server is created by utilizing Django web framework. The user interface of the application is constructed with React and Semantic UI libraries. The users of the application are authenticated with the help of OAuth 2.0 authorization framework. In this thesis, a working prototype application was designed and developed. The resulting application allows a salesperson to compare different power plant projects and examine the details of individual projects. The application developed in the thesis can be used in the future as a model for similar systems utilizing Wärtsilä Data Platform data. Currently, the application is mainly designed for engine power plant data. However, in the future the application could be modified to work better with energy storage data. Finally, it should be investigated whether machine learning algorithms could be used to offer recommendations for users based on the data of previous projects.Voimalaitosprojektin myyntiprosessi koostuu useista vaiheista, joiden aikana liiketoimintamahdollisuudesta kehittyy tarjous. Aiemmin tehdyt tarjoukset voivat tarjota tietoa siitä, kuinka edellisiä projekteja on myyty tietyissä maanosissa tai valtioissa. Tästä syystä myyntihenkilöt haluavat usein vertailla meneillään olevien projektien kustannuksia ja laajuutta aiemmin myytyihin projekteihin. Web-sovellusten rooli on kasvanut vuosien varrella. Kasvava joukko sovelluskehittäjiä kirjoittaakin nykyään sovelluksiaan web-selaimille. Tämän lisäksi modernit kehitystyökalut kuten Django ja React lisäävät sovelluskehityksen tehokkuutta. Web-sovellusten kasvava rooli onkin tehnyt web-selaimista tärkeimmäin alustan uusille sovelluksille. Tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena on suunnitella sekä kehittää prototyyppi web-sovellus. Tämä sovellus auttaa myyjiä vertailemaan meneillä olevia voimalaitosprojekteja aiemmin myytyihin projekteihin. Vertailuprosessin päämäärä on lähinnä havainnollistaa, kuinka eri projektien kustannukset eroavat toisistaan. Työn tavoite on auttaa myyjiä hyödyntämään ja vertailemaan voimalaitosprojektien dataa käyttämällä pelkästään yhtä sovellusta. Mikäli voimalaitosdataa voitaisiin vertailla yhdellä sovelluksella useiden hajanaisten sovelluskokonaisuuksien käyttämisen sijaan, myyjien työtaakka vähentyisi ja samalla tuottavuus voimalaitosprojektien myynnissä kasvaisi. Tässä diplomityössä kehitetty prototyyppisovellus liitetään osaksi energy feasibility tools työkalua, joka toimii alustana useille eri voimalaitossovelluksille. Tämän lisäksi työssä kehitetty sovellus hyödyntää Wärtsilä Data Platform yritystietovarastossa olevaa dataa. Työssä toteutettava protyyppisovellus ohjelmoidaan Python ja JavaScript ohjelmointikieliä käyttäen. Palvelimen toiminnallisuudet luodaan käyttämällä Django web-sovelluskehystä. Sovelluksen käyttöliittymä rakennetaan hyödyntämällä React ja Semantic UI kirjastoja. Protyyppisovelluksen käyttäjät tullaan todentamaan käyttämällä OAuth 2.0 kehystä. Tässä diplomityössä suunniteltiin ja kehitettiin toimiva prototyyppisovellus. Tätä sovellusta käyttävät myyjät pystyvät vertailemaan erilaisia voimalaitosprojekteja sekä tarkastelemaan yksittäisten voimalaitosprojektien yksityiskohtia. Työssä kehitetty sovellus voisi toimia tulevaisuudessa mallina vastaavan kaltaisille Wärtsilä Data Platform dataa hyödyntäville sovelluksille. Tällä hetkellä sovellus on suunniteltu lähinnä moottorivoimalaitosprojekteja varten. Tulevaisuudessa sovellusta voitaisiin räätälöidä siten, että se sopisi paremmin myös energian varastointia koskeviin projekteihin. Varteenotettavaa olisi myös tutkia, pystyisikö koneoppimismenetelmillä tarjota käyttäjille dataan perustuvia suosituksia