XML Integrated Environment for Service-Oriented Data Management

The proliferation of XML as a family of related standards including a markup language (XML), formatting semantics (XSL style sheets), a linking syntax (XLINK), and appropriate data schema standards have emerged as a de facto standard for encoding and sharing data between various applications. XML is designed to be simple, easily parsed and self-describing. XML is based on and support the idea of separation of concerns: information content is separated from information rendering, and relationships between data elements are provided via simple nesting and references. As the XML content grows, the ability to handle schemaless XML documents becomes more critical as most XML documents do not have schema or Document Type Definitions (DTDs). In addition, XML content and XML tools are often required to be combined in effective ways for better performance and higher flexibility. In this research, we proposed XML Integrated Environment (XIE) which is a general-purpose service-oriented architecture for processing XML documents in a scalable and efficient fashion. The XIE supports a new software service model that provides a proper abstraction to describe a service and divide it into four components: structure, connection, interface and logic. We also proposed and implemented XIE Service Language (XIESL) that can capture the creation and maintenance of the XML processes and the data flow specified by the user and then orchestrates the interactions between different XIE services. Moreover, XIESL manages the complexity of XML processing by implementing an XML processing pipeline that enables better management, control, interpretation and presentation of the XML data even for non-professional users. The XML Integrated Environment is envisioned to revolutionize the way non-professional programmers see, work and manage their XML assets. It offers them powerful tools and constructs to fully utilize the XML processing power embedded in its unified framework and service-oriented architecture

Web service composition: A survey of techniques and tools

Web services are a consolidated reality of the modern Web with tremendous, increasing impact on everyday computing tasks. They turned the Web into the largest, most accepted, and most vivid distributed computing platform ever. Yet, the use and integration of Web services into composite services or applications, which is a highly sensible and conceptually non-trivial task, is still not unleashing its full magnitude of power. A consolidated analysis framework that advances the fundamental understanding of Web service composition building blocks in terms of concepts, models, languages, productivity support techniques, and tools is required. This framework is necessary to enable effective exploration, understanding, assessing, comparing, and selecting service composition models, languages, techniques, platforms, and tools. This article establishes such a framework and reviews the state of the art in service composition from an unprecedented, holistic perspective

Software documentation

This thesis report is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, 2006.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis report.Includes bibliographical references (page 92).The main objective of my thesis is to generate a user manual that would be very much comprehensible at the same time well structured and would act as an effective navigator. Documentation is mainly requisite for better communication among the different members of a software development team, such as designers of finer grained components, builders of interfacing system, implementers, testers, performance engineers, technical managers, analysts, quality specialists. In order to develop a very comprehensive documentation there are certain conventions that are requisite to be taken care of. Those conventions and rules have been high lighted extensively. There are different types of documentation based on the requirements of each individual associated with the software development life cycle and they are design, code, user, architectural, trade study and marketing are few to mention. However, my focus area is user documentation. Unlike code documents, user documents are usually far divorced from the source code of the program, and instead simply describe how it is used. The use of XML and Docbook is there. DocBook simply provides a framework. All the presentation issues are devolved to style sheets.Tahmina Zaman KhanB. Computer Science and Engineerin

Designing a Framework for Exchanging Partial Sets of BIM Information on a Cloud-Based Service

The rationale behind this research study was based on the recognised difficulty of exchanging data at element or object level due to the inefficiencies of compatible hardware and software. Interoperability depicts the need to pass data between applications, allowing multiple types of experts and applications to contribute to the work at hand. The only way that software file exchanges between two applications can produce consistent data and change management results for large projects is through a building model repository. The overall aim of this thesis was to design and develop an integrated process that would advance key decisions at an early design stage through faster information exchanges during collaborative work. In the construction industry, Building Information Modeling is the most integrated shared model between all disciplines. It is based on a manufacturing-like process where standardised deliverables are used throughout the life cycle with effective collaboration as its main driving force. However, the dilemma is how to share these properties of BIM applications on one single platform asynchronously. Cloud Computing is a centralized heterogeneous network that enables different applications to be connected to each other. The methodology used in the research was based on triangulation of data which incorporated many techniques featuring a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results identified the need to re-engineer Simplified Markup Language, in order to exchange partial data sets of intelligent object architecture on an integrated platform. The designed and tested prototype produced findings that enhanced project decisions at a relatively early design stage, improved communication and collaboration techniques and cross disciple co-ordination

SEMANTICALLY INTEGRATED E-LEARNING INTEROPERABILITY AGENT

Educational collaboration through e-learning is one of the fields that have been worked on since the emergence of e-learning in educational system. The e-learning standards (e.g. learning object metadata standard) and e-learning system architectures or frameworks, which support interoperation of correlated e-learning systems, are the proposed technologies to support the collaboration. However, these technologies have not been successful in creating boundless educational collaboration through e-learning. In particular, these technologies offer solutions with their own requirements or limitations and endeavor challenging efforts in applying the technologies into their elearning system. Thus, the simpler the technology enhances possibility in forging the collaboration. This thesis explores a suite of techniques for creating an interoperability tool model in e-learning domain that can be applied on diverse e-learning platforms. The proposed model is called the e-learning Interoperability Agent or eiA. The scope of eiA focuses on two aspects of e-learning: Learning Objects (LOs) and the users of elearning itself. Learning objects that are accessible over the Web are valuable assets for sharing knowledge in teaching, training, problem solving and decision support. Meanwhile, there is still tacit knowledge that is not documented through LOs but embedded in form of users' expertise and experiences. Therefore, the establishment of educational collaboration can be formed by the users of e-learning with a common interest in a specific problem domain. The eiA is a loosely coupled model designed as an extension of various elearning systems platforms. The eiA utilizes XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology, which has been accepted as the knowledge representation syntax, to bridge the heterogeneous platforms. At the end, the use of eiA as facilitator to mediate interconununication between e-leaming systems is to engage the creation of semantically Federated e-learning Community (FeC). Eventually, maturity of the FeC is driven by users' willingness to grow the community, by means of increasing the elearning systems that use eiA and adding new functionalities into eiA

Encoding, Storing and Searching of Analytical Properties and Assigned Metabolite Structures

Informationen über Metabolite und andere kleine organische Moleküle sind von entscheidender Bedeutung in vielen verschiedenen Bereichen der Naturwissenschaften. Sie spielen z.B. eine entscheidende Rolle in metabolischen Netzwerken und das Wissen über ihre Eigenschaften, hilft komplexe biologische Prozesse und komplette biologische Systeme zu verstehen. Da in biologischen und chemischen Laboren täglich Daten anfallen, welche diese Moleküle beschreiben, existiert eine umfassende Datengrundlage, die sich kontinuierlich erweitert. Um Wissenschaftlern die Verarbeitung, den Austausch, die Archivierung und die Suche innerhalb dieser Informationen unter Erhaltung der semantischen Zusammenhänge zu ermöglichen, sind komplexe Softwaresysteme und Datenformate nötig. Das Ziel dieses Projektes bestand darin, Anwendungen und Algorithmen zu entwickeln, welche für die effiziente Kodierung, Sammlung, Normalisierung und Analyse molekularer Daten genutzt werden können. Diese sollen Wissenschaftler bei der Strukturaufklärung, der Dereplikation, der Analyse von molekularen Wechselwirkungen und bei der Veröffentlichung des so gewonnenen Wissens unterstützen. Da die direkte Beschreibung der Struktur und der Funktionsweise einer unbekannten Verbindung sehr schwierig und aufwändig ist, wird dies hauptsächlich indirekt, mit Hilfe beschreibender Eigenschaften erreicht. Diese werden dann zur Vorhersage struktureller und funktioneller Charakteristika genutzt. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden Programmmodule entwickelt, welche sowohl die Visualisierung von Struktur- und Spektroskopiedaten, die gegliederte Darstellung und Veränderung von Metadaten und Eigenschaften, als auch den Import und Export von verschiedenen Datenformaten erlauben. Diese wurden durch Methoden erweitert, welche es ermöglichen, die gewonnenen Informationen weitergehend zu analysieren und Struktur- und Spektroskopiedaten einander zuzuweisen. Außerdem wurde ein System zur strukturierten Archivierung und Verwaltung großer Mengen molekularer Daten und spektroskopischer Informationen, unter Beibehaltung der semantischen Zusammenhänge, sowohl im Dateisystem, als auch in Datenbanken, entwickelt. Um die verlustfreie Speicherung zu gewährleisten, wurde ein offenes und standardisiertes Datenformat definiert (CMLSpect). Dieses erweitert das existierende CML (Chemical Markup Language) Vokabular und erlaubt damit die einfache Handhabung von verknüpften Struktur- und Spektroskopiedaten. Die entwickelten Anwendungen wurden in das Bioclipse System für Bio- und Chemoinformatik eingebunden und bieten dem Nutzer damit eine hochqualitative Benutzeroberfläche und dem Entwickler eine leicht zu erweiternde modulare Programmarchitektur

Federating Heterogeneous Digital Libraries by Metadata Harvesting

This dissertation studies the challenges and issues faced in federating heterogeneous digital libraries (DLs) by metadata harvesting. The objective of federation is to provide high-level services (e.g. transparent search across all DLs) on the collective metadata from different digital libraries. There are two main approaches to federate DLs: distributed searching approach and harvesting approach. As the distributed searching approach replies on executing queries to digital libraries in real time, it has problems with scalability. The difficulty of creating a distributed searching service for a large federation is the motivation behind Open Archives Initiatives Protocols for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAI-PMH supports both data providers (repositories, archives) and service providers. Service providers develop value-added services based on the information collected from data providers. Data providers are simply collections of harvestable metadata. This dissertation examines the application of the metadata harvesting approach in DL federations. It addresses the following problems: (1) Whether or not metadata harvesting provides a realistic and scalable solution for DL federation. (2) What is the status of and problems with current data provider implementations, and how to solve these problems. (3) How to synchronize data providers and service providers. (4) How to build different types of federation services over harvested metadata. (5) How to create a scalable and reliable infrastructure to support federation services. The work done in this dissertation is based on OAI-PMH, and the results have influenced the evolution of OAI-PMH. However, the results are not limited to the scope of OAI-PMH. Our approach is to design and build key services for metadata harvesting and to deploy them on the Web. Implementing a publicly available service allows us to demonstrate how these approaches are practical. The problems posed above are evaluated by performing experiments over these services. To summarize the results of this thesis, we conclude that the metadata harvesting approach is a realistic and scalable approach to federate heterogeneous DLs. We present two models of building federation services: a centralized model and a replicated model. Our experiments also demonstrate that the repository synchronization problem can be addressed by push, pull, and hybrid push/pull models; each model has its strengths and weaknesses and fits a specific scenario. Finally, we present a scalable and reliable infrastructure to support the applications of metadata harvesting

Pattern-based segmentation of digital documents: model and implementation

This thesis proposes a new document model, according to which any document can be segmented in some independent components and transformed in a pattern-based projection, that only uses a very small set of objects and composition rules. The point is that such a normalized document expresses the same fundamental information of the original one, in a simple, clear and unambiguous way. The central part of my work consists of discussing that model, investigating how a digital document can be segmented, and how a segmented version can be used to implement advanced tools of conversion. I present seven patterns which are versatile enough to capture the most relevant documents’ structures, and whose minimality and rigour make that implementation possible. The abstract model is then instantiated into an actual markup language, called IML. IML is a general and extensible language, which basically adopts an XHTML syntax, able to capture a posteriori the only content of a digital document. It is compared with other languages and proposals, in order to clarify its role and objectives. Finally, I present some systems built upon these ideas. These applications are evaluated in terms of users’ advantages, workflow improvements and impact over the overall quality of the output. In particular, they cover heterogeneous content management processes: from web editing to collaboration (IsaWiki and WikiFactory), from e-learning (IsaLearning) to professional printing (IsaPress)

Extensible metadata repository for information systems

Thesis submitted to Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Computer ScienceInformation Systems are, usually, systems that have a strong integration component and some of those systems rely on integration solutions that are based on metadata (data that describes data). In that situation, there’s a need to deal with metadata as if it were “normal”information. For that matter, the existence of a metadata repository that deals with the integrity, storage, validity and eases the processes of information integration in the information system is a wise choice. There are several metadata repositories available in the market, but none of them is prepared to deal with the needs of information systems or is generic enough to deal with the multitude of situations/domains of information and with the necessary integration features. In the SESS project (an European Space Agency project), a generic metadata repository was developed, based on XML technologies. This repository provided the tools for information integration, validity, storage, share, import, as well as system and data integration, but it required the use of fix syntactic rules that were stored in the content of the XML files. This situation causes severe problems when trying to import documents from external data sources (sources unaware of these syntactic rules). In this thesis a metadata repository that provided the same mechanisms of storage, integrity, validity, etc, but is specially focused on easy integration of metadata from any type of external source (in XML format) and provides an environment that simplifies the reuse of already existing types of metadata to build new types of metadata, all this without having to modify the documents it stores was developed. The repository stores XML documents (known as Instances), which are instances of a Concept, that Concept defines a XML structure that validates its Instances. To deal with reuse, a special unit named Fragment, which allows defining a XML structure (which can be created by composing other Fragments) that can be reused by Concepts when defining their own structure. Elements of the repository (Instances,Concepts and Fragment) have an identifier based on (and compatible with) URIs, named Metadata Repository Identifier (MRI). Those identifiers, as well as management information(including relations) are managed by the repository, without the need to use fix syntactic rules, easing integration. A set of tests using documents from the SESS project and from software-house ITDS was used to successfully validate the repository against the thesis objectives of easy integration and promotion of reuse

Documents as functions

Treating variable data documents as functions over their data bindings opens opportunities for building more powerful, robust and flexible document architectures to meet the needs arising from the confluence of developments in document engineering, digital printing technologies and marketing analysis. This thesis describes a combination of several XML-based technologies both to represent and to process variable documents and their data, leading to extensible, high-quality and 'higher-order' document generation solutions. The architecture (DDF) uses XML uniformly throughout the documents and their processing tools with interspersing of different semantic spaces being achieved through namespacing. An XML-based functional programming language (XSLT) is used to describe all intra-document variability and for implementing most of the tools. Document layout intent is declared within a document as a hierarchical set of combinators attached to a tree-based graphical presentation. Evaluation of a document bound to an instance of data involves using a compiler to create an executable from the document, running this with the data instance as argument to create a new document with layout intent described, followed by resolution of that layout by an extensible layout processor. The use of these technologies, with design paradigms and coding protocols, makes it possible to construct documents that not only have high flexibility and quality, but also perform in higher-order ways. A document can be partially bound to data and evaluated, modifying its presentation and still remaining variably responsive to future data. Layout intent can be re-satisfied as presentation trees are modified by programmatic sections embedded within them. The key enablers are described and illustrated through example