A monitoring approach for runtime service discovery

Effective runtime service discovery requires identification of services based on different service characteristics such as structural, behavioural, quality, and contextual characteristics. However, current service registries guarantee services described in terms of structural and sometimes quality characteristics and, therefore, it is not always possible to assume that services in them will have all the characteristics required for effective service discovery. In this paper, we describe a monitor-based runtime service discovery framework called MoRSeD. The framework supports service discovery in both push and pull modes of query execution. The push mode of query execution is performed in parallel to the execution of a service-based system, in a proactive way. Both types of queries are specified in a query language called SerDiQueL that allows the representation of structural, behavioral, quality, and contextual conditions of services to be identified. The framework uses a monitor component to verify if behavioral and contextual conditions in the queries can be satisfied by services, based on translations of these conditions into properties represented in event calculus, and verification of the satisfiability of these properties against services. The monitor is also used to support identification that services participating in a service-based system are unavailable, and identification of changes in the behavioral and contextual characteristics of the services. A prototype implementation of the framework has been developed. The framework has been evaluated in terms of comparison of its performance when using and when not using the monitor component

Implementing a map based simulator for the location API for J2ME

The Java Location API for J2METM integrates generic positioning and orientation data with persistent storage of landmark objects. It can be used to develop location based service applications for small mobile devices, and these applications can be tested using simulation environments. Currently the only simulation tools in the public domain are proprietary mobile device simulators that are driven by GPS data log files, but it is sometimes useful to be able to test location based services using interactive map-based tools. In addition, we may need to experiment with extensions and changes to the standard API to support additional services, requiring an open source environment. In this paper we describe the implementation of an open source map-based simulation tool compatible with other commonly used development and deployment tools

Component-aware Orchestration of Cloud-based Enterprise Applications, from TOSCA to Docker and Kubernetes

Enterprise IT is currently facing the challenge of coordinating the management of complex, multi-component applications across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Containers and container orchestrators provide a valuable solution to deploy multi-component applications over cloud platforms, by coupling the lifecycle of each application component to that of its hosting container. We hereby propose a solution for going beyond such a coupling, based on the OASIS standard TOSCA and on Docker. We indeed propose a novel approach for deploying multi-component applications on top of existing container orchestrators, which allows to manage each component independently from the container used to run it. We also present prototype tools implementing our approach, and we show how we effectively exploited them to carry out a concrete case study

Effect of oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) fibers to the compressive strength and water absorption of concrete

Growing popularity based on environmentally-friendly, low cost and lightweight building materials in the construction industry has led to a need to examine how these characteristics can be achieved and at the same time giving the benefit to the environment and maintain the material requirements based on the standards required. Recycling of waste generated from industrial and agricultural activities as measures of building materials is not only a viable solution to the problem of pollution but also to produce an economic design of building

Every Cloud Has a Push Data Lining: Incorporating Cloud Services in a Context-Aware Application

We investigated context-awareness by utilising multiple sources of context in a mobile device setting. In our experiment we developed a system consisting of a mobile client, running on the Android platform, integrated with a cloud-based service. These components were integrated using pushmessaging technology.One of the key featureswas the automatic adaptation of smartphones in accordance with implicit user needs. The novelty of our approach consists in the use of multiple sources of context input to the system, which included the use of calendar data and web based user configuration tool, as well as that of an external, cloud-based, configuration file storing user interface preferences which, pushed at log-on time irrespective of access device, frees the user from having to manually configure its interface.The systemwas evaluated via two rounds of user evaluations (n = 50 users), the feedback of which was generally positive and demonstrated the viability of using cloud-based services to provide an enhanced context-aware user experience

Supporting public availability and accessibility with Elvin: experiences and reflections.

We provide a retrospective account of how a generic event notification service called Elvin and a suite of simple client applications: CoffeeBiff, Tickertape and Tickerchat, came to be used within our organisation to support awareness and interaction. After overviewing Elvin and its clients, we outline various experiences from data collated across two studies where Elvin and its clients have been used to augment the workaday world to support interaction, to make digital actions visible, to make physical actions available beyond the location of action, and to support content and socially based information filtering. We suggest there are both functional and technical reasons for why Elvin works for enabling awareness and interaction. Functionally, it provides a way to produce, gather and redistribute information from everyday activities (via Elvin) and to give that information a perceptible form (via the various clients) that can be publicly available and accessible as a resource for awareness. The integration of lightweight chat facilities with these information sources enables awareness to easily flow into interaction, starting to re-connect bodies to actions, and starting to approximate the easy flow of interaction that happens when we are co-located. Technically, the conceptual simplicity of the Elvin notification, the wide availability of its APIs, and the generic functionality of its clients, especially Tickertape, have made the use of the service appealing to developers and users for a wide range of uses

GSO: Designing a Well-Founded Service Ontology to Support Dynamic Service Discovery and Composition

A pragmatic and straightforward approach to semantic service discovery is to match inputs and outputs of user requests with the input and output requirements of registered service descriptions. This approach can be extended by using pre-conditions, effects and semantic annotations (meta-data) in an attempt to increase discovery accuracy. While on one hand these additions help improve discovery accuracy, on the other hand complexity is added as service users need to add more information elements to their service requests. In this paper we present an approach that aims at facilitating the representation of service requests by service users, without loss of accuracy. We introduce a Goal-Based Service Framework (GSF) that uses the concept of goal as an abstraction to represent service requests. This paper presents the core concepts and relations of the Goal-Based Service Ontology (GSO), which is a fundamental component of the GSF, and discusses how the framework supports semantic service discovery and composition. GSO provides a set of primitives and relations between goals, tasks and services. These primitives allow a user to represent its goals, and a supporting platform to discover or compose services that fulfil them

Context constraint integration and validation in dynamic web service compositions

System architectures that cross organisational boundaries are usually implemented based on Web service technologies due to their inherent interoperability benets. With increasing exibility requirements, such as on-demand service provision, a dynamic approach to service architecture focussing on composition at runtime is needed. The possibility of technical faults, but also violations of functional and semantic constraints require a comprehensive notion of context that captures composition-relevant aspects. Context-aware techniques are consequently required to support constraint validation for dynamic service composition. We present techniques to respond to problems occurring during the execution of dynamically composed Web services implemented in WS-BPEL. A notion of context { covering physical and contractual faults and violations { is used to safeguard composed service executions dynamically. Our aim is to present an architectural framework from an application-oriented perspective, addressing practical considerations of a technical framework

Localization to Enhance Security and Services in Wi-Fi Networks under Privacy Constraints

Developments of seamless mobile services are faced with two broad challenges, systems security and user privacy - access to wireless systems is highly insecure due to the lack of physical boundaries and, secondly, location based services (LBS) could be used to extract highly sensitive user information. In this paper, we describe our work on developing systems which exploit location information to enhance security and services under privacy constraints. We describe two complimentary methods which we have developed to track node location information within production University Campus Networks comprising of large numbers of users. The location data is used to enhance security and services. Specifically, we describe a method for creating geographic firewalls which allows us to restrict and enhance services to individual users within a specific containment area regardless of physical association. We also report our work on LBS development to provide visualization of spatio-temporal node distribution under privacy considerations