Active databases, business rules and reactive agents - what is the connection?

These three technologies were and still are mainly treated separately. Since not much work has been carried out in defining and combining them together, we are going to present what has been done and put accent on what could be done. Namely, they rely upon similar paradigms and concepts, as will be shown later on, and can be treated as complementary technologies. In this paper we will show that reactive agents react according to some set of business rules and active databases can be used as a suitable means for implementing business rules and in those way reactive agents as well. Since reactive agents have been well defined, recent improvements in the fields of active databases technology and especially business rules provide the reason to consider the benefits to be achieved from combining these fields

Active databases, business rules and reactive agents - what is the connection?

These three technologies were and still are mainly treated separately. Since not much work has been carried out in defining and combining them together, we are going to present what has been done and put accent on what could be done. Namely, they rely upon similar paradigms and concepts, as will be shown later on, and can be treated as complementary technologies. In this paper we will show that reactive agents react according to some set of business rules and active databases can be used as a suitable means for implementing business rules and in those way reactive agents as well. Since reactive agents have been well defined, recent improvements in the fields of active databases technology and especially business rules provide the reason to consider the benefits to be achieved from combining these fields

A Multimodal Biometric System Based on an Active Database Paradigm

Today, on many occasions and in many different places, one must be authorised in order to use certain services or applications or to access protected data. A user (person) can be authorised in three different ways or combinations of ways: it is either information that the user knows, something that the user possesses or a measurement of some physical or psychological characteristics unique to that user, i.e. biometric characteristics. In this paper we emphasize this third possibility. When talking about biometrics we can distinguish two basic types of systems: unimodal and multimodal. The main difference is that the unimodal biometric system is based solely on a single biometric feature, while multimodal biometric systems combine several features. We intend to show how active databases could be used in order to implement a multimodal (unimodal) biometric system and reduce the time needed for authorisation (identification or verification). Specifically, the concept of reactivity upon which active databases rely could be the core of a multimodal biometric system, as will be shown in the paper. We will especially consider the use of complex events used in active databases for authorisation purposes. Key words: ADBMS, active database, complex events, biometrics, biometric systemDandanes se velikokrat dogodi, da ljudje, ki hočejo koristiti določene storitve ali aplikacije ali želijo dobiti pristop do zaščitenih podatkov itd., potrebujejo avtorizacijo. Uporabnik se lahko avtorizira na tri različne načine oziroma s kombinacijo teh treh načinov: s pomočjo nečesa, kar uporabnik pozna, s pomočjo nečesa, kar uporabnik poseduje, ali s pomočjo merjenja določenih fizičnih ali psihičnih značilnosti, ki so lastne in enkratne vsaki osebi, tj. tako imenovanih biometričnih značilnosti. V tem prispevku bo poudarek na tem zadnjem, tretjem načinu. Ko govorimo o biometriki, lahko razlikujemo med dvema osnovnima tipoma biometričnih sistemov - enomodalnim in večmodalnim biometričnim sistemom. Glavna razlika med njima je v tem, da enomodalni biometrični sistem temelji le na eni biometrični značilnosti, medtem ko večmodalni biometrični sistem za avtoriziranje posameznika kombinira več biometričnih značilnosti. V tem prispevku bomo pokazali, kako se lahko pri vgradnji večmodalnega (enomodalnega) biometričnega sistema uporabijo aktivne baze podatkov, s čimer se skrajša čas, ki je potreben za avtorizacijo (identifikacijo ali verifikacijo). Med drugim bomo pokazali, da je koncept reaktivnosti, na katerem temeljijo aktivne baze podatkov, lahko jedro večmodalnih biometričnih sistemov. Posebno pozornost bomo posvetili kompleksnim dogodkom za avtorizacijske namene, ki se v glavnem uporabljajo v aktivnih bazah podatkov. Ključne besede: ADBMS, aktivna baza podatkov, kompleksni dogodki, biometrika, biometrični siste

MATrA: meta-modelling approach to traceability for avionics

PhD ThesisTraceability is the common term for mechanisms to record and navigate relationships between artifacts produced by development and assessment processes. Effective management of these relationships is critical to the success of projects involving the development of complex aerospace products. Practitioners use a range of notations to model aerospace products (often as part of a defined technique or methodology). Those appropriate to electrical and electronic systems (avionics) include Use Cases for requirements, Ada for development and Fault Trees for assessment (others such as PERT networks support product management). Most notations used within the industry have tool support, although a lack of well-defined approaches to integration leads to inconsistencies and limits traceability between their respective data sets (internal models). Conceptually, the artifacts produced using such notations populate four traceability dimensions. Of these, three record links between project artifacts (describing the same product), while the fourth relates artifacts across different projects (and hence products), and across product families within the same project. The scope of this thesis is to define a meta-framework that characterises traceability dimensions for aerospace projects, and then to propose a concrete framework capturing the syntax and semantics of notations used in developing avionics for such projects which enables traceability across the four dimensions. The concrete framework is achieved by exporting information from the internal models of tools supporting these notations to an integrated environment consisting of. i) a Workspace comprising a set of structures or meta-models (models describing models) expressed in a common modelling language representing selected notations (including appropriate extensions reflecting the application domain); ii) well-formedness constraints over these structures capturing properties of the notations (and again, reflecting the domain); and iii) associations between the structures. To maintain consistency and identify conflicts, elements of the structures are verified against a system model that defines common building blocks underlying the various notations. The approach is evaluated by (partial) tool implementation of the structures which are populated using case study material derived from actual commercial specifications and industry standards

Event-Oriented Dynamic Adaptation of Workflows: Model, Architecture and Implementation

Workflow management is widely accepted as a core technology to support long-term business processes in heterogeneous and distributed environments. However, conventional workflow management systems do not provide sufficient flexibility support to cope with the broad range of failure situations that may occur during workflow execution. In particular, most systems do not allow to dynamically adapt a workflow due to a failure situation, e.g., to dynamically drop or insert execution steps. As a contribution to overcome these limitations, this dissertation introduces the agent-based workflow management system AgentWork. AgentWork supports the definition, the execution and, as its main contribution, the event-oriented and semi-automated dynamic adaptation of workflows. Two strategies for automatic workflow adaptation are provided. Predictive adaptation adapts workflow parts affected by a failure in advance (predictively), typically as soon as the failure is detected. This is advantageous in many situations and gives enough time to meet organizational constraints for adapted workflow parts. Reactive adaptation is typically performed when predictive adaptation is not possible. In this case, adaptation is performed when the affected workflow part is to be executed, e.g., before an activity is executed it is checked whether it is subject to a workflow adaptation such as dropping, postponement or replacement. In particular, the following contributions are provided by AgentWork: A Formal Model for Workflow Definition, Execution, and Estimation: In this context, AgentWork first provides an object-oriented workflow definition language. This language allows for the definition of a workflow\u92s control and data flow. Furthermore, a workflow\u92s cooperation with other workflows or workflow systems can be specified. Second, AgentWork provides a precise workflow execution model. This is necessary, as a running workflow usually is a complex collection of concurrent activities and data flow processes, and as failure situations and dynamic adaptations affect running workflows. Furthermore, mechanisms for the estimation of a workflow\u92s future execution behavior are provided. These mechanisms are of particular importance for predictive adaptation. Mechanisms for Determining and Processing Failure Events and Failure Actions: AgentWork provides mechanisms to decide whether an event constitutes a failure situation and what has to be done to cope with this failure. This is formally achieved by evaluating event-condition-action rules where the event-condition part describes under which condition an event has to be viewed as a failure event. The action part represents the necessary actions needed to cope with the failure. To support the temporal dimension of events and actions, this dissertation provides a novel event-condition-action model based on a temporal object-oriented logic. Mechanisms for the Adaptation of Affected Workflows: In case of failure situations it has to be decided how an affected workflow has to be dynamically adapted on the node and edge level. AgentWork provides a novel approach that combines the two principal strategies reactive adaptation and predictive adaptation. Depending on the context of the failure, the appropriate strategy is selected. Furthermore, control flow adaptation operators are provided which translate failure actions into structural control flow adaptations. Data flow operators adapt the data flow after a control flow adaptation, if necessary. Mechanisms for the Handling of Inter-Workflow Implications of Failure Situations: AgentWork provides novel mechanisms to decide whether a failure situation occurring to a workflow affects other workflows that communicate and cooperate with this workflow. In particular, AgentWork derives the temporal implications of a dynamic adaptation by estimating the duration that will be needed to process the changed workflow definition (in comparison with the original definition). Furthermore, qualitative implications of the dynamic change are determined. For this purpose, so-called quality measuring objects are introduced. All mechanisms provided by AgentWork include that users may interact during the failure handling process. In particular, the user has the possibility to reject or modify suggested workflow adaptations. A Prototypical Implementation: Finally, a prototypical Corba-based implementation of AgentWork is described. This implementation supports the integration of AgentWork into the distributed and heterogeneous environments of real-world organizations such as hospitals or insurance business enterprises

Assessing the suitability of ship design for human factors issues associated with evacuation and normal operations

Evaluating ship layout for human factors (HF) issues using simulation software such as maritimeEXODUS can be a long and complex process. The analysis requires the identification of relevant evaluation scenarios; encompassing evacuation and normal operations; the development of appropriate measures which can be used to gauge the performance of crew and vessel and finally; the interpretation of considerable simulation data. In this paper we present a systematic and transparent methodology for assessing the HF performance of ship design which is both discriminating and diagnostic. The methodology is demonstrated using two variants of a hypothetical naval ship

Machine learning methods for discriminating natural targets in seabed imagery

The research in this thesis concerns feature-based machine learning processes and methods for discriminating qualitative natural targets in seabed imagery. The applications considered, typically involve time-consuming manual processing stages in an industrial setting. An aim of the research is to facilitate a means of assisting human analysts by expediting the tedious interpretative tasks, using machine methods. Some novel approaches are devised and investigated for solving the application problems. These investigations are compartmentalised in four coherent case studies linked by common underlying technical themes and methods. The first study addresses pockmark discrimination in a digital bathymetry model. Manual identification and mapping of even a relatively small number of these landform objects is an expensive process. A novel, supervised machine learning approach to automating the task is presented. The process maps the boundaries of ≈ 2000 pockmarks in seconds - a task that would take days for a human analyst to complete. The second case study investigates different feature creation methods for automatically discriminating sidescan sonar image textures characteristic of Sabellaria spinulosa colonisation. Results from a comparison of several textural feature creation methods on sonar waterfall imagery show that Gabor filter banks yield some of the best results. A further empirical investigation into the filter bank features created on sonar mosaic imagery leads to the identification of a useful configuration and filter parameter ranges for discriminating the target textures in the imagery. Feature saliency estimation is a vital stage in the machine process. Case study three concerns distance measures for the evaluation and ranking of features on sonar imagery. Two novel consensus methods for creating a more robust ranking are proposed. Experimental results show that the consensus methods can improve robustness over a range of feature parameterisations and various seabed texture classification tasks. The final case study is more qualitative in nature and brings together a number of ideas, applied to the classification of target regions in real-world sonar mosaic imagery. A number of technical challenges arose and these were surmounted by devising a novel, hybrid unsupervised method. This fully automated machine approach was compared with a supervised approach in an application to the problem of image-based sediment type discrimination. The hybrid unsupervised method produces a plausible class map in a few minutes of processing time. It is concluded that the versatile, novel process should be generalisable to the discrimination of other subjective natural targets in real-world seabed imagery, such as Sabellaria textures and pockmarks (with appropriate features and feature tuning.) Further, the full automation of pockmark and Sabellaria discrimination is feasible within this framework