9,187 research outputs found
Two Case Studies of Subsystem Design for General-Purpose CSCW Software Architectures
This paper discusses subsystem design guidelines for the software architecture of general-purpose computer supported cooperative work systems, i.e., systems that are designed to be applicable in various application areas requiring explicit collaboration support. In our opinion, guidelines for subsystem level design are rarely given most guidelines currently given apply to the programming language level. We extract guidelines from a case study of the redesign and extension of an advanced commercial workflow management system and place them into the context of existing software engineering research. The guidelines are then validated against the design decisions made in the construction of a widely used web-based groupware system. Our approach is based on the well-known distinction between essential (logical) and physical architectures. We show how essential architecture design can be based on a direct mapping of abstract functional concepts as found in general-purpose systems to modules in the essential architecture. The essential architecture is next mapped to a physical architecture by applying software clustering and replication to achieve the required distribution and performance characteristics
CREOLE: a Universal Language for Creating, Requesting, Updating and Deleting Resources
In the context of Service-Oriented Computing, applications can be developed
following the REST (Representation State Transfer) architectural style. This
style corresponds to a resource-oriented model, where resources are manipulated
via CRUD (Create, Request, Update, Delete) interfaces. The diversity of CRUD
languages due to the absence of a standard leads to composition problems
related to adaptation, integration and coordination of services. To overcome
these problems, we propose a pivot architecture built around a universal
language to manipulate resources, called CREOLE, a CRUD Language for Resource
Edition. In this architecture, scripts written in existing CRUD languages, like
SQL, are compiled into Creole and then executed over different CRUD interfaces.
After stating the requirements for a universal language for manipulating
resources, we formally describe the language and informally motivate its
definition with respect to the requirements. We then concretely show how the
architecture solves adaptation, integration and coordination problems in the
case of photo management in Flickr and Picasa, two well-known service-oriented
applications. Finally, we propose a roadmap for future work.Comment: In Proceedings FOCLASA 2010, arXiv:1007.499
A Database Interface for Complex Objects
We describe a formal design for a logical query language using psi-terms as data structures to interact effectively and efficiently with a relational database. The structure of psi-terms provides an adequate representation for so-called complex objects. They generalize conventional terms used in logic programming: they are typed attributed structures, ordered thanks to a subtype ordering. Unification of psi-terms is an effective means for integrating multiple inheritance and partial information into a deduction process. We define a compact database representation for psi-terms, representing part of the subtyping relation in the database as well. We describe a retrieval algorithm based on an abstract interpretation of the psi-term unification process and prove its formal correctness. This algorithm is efficient in that it incrementally retrieves only additional facts that are actually needed by a query, and never retrieves the same fact twice
Combining Relational Algebra, SQL, Constraint Modelling, and Local Search
The goal of this paper is to provide a strong integration between constraint
modelling and relational DBMSs. To this end we propose extensions of standard
query languages such as relational algebra and SQL, by adding constraint
modelling capabilities to them. In particular, we propose non-deterministic
extensions of both languages, which are specially suited for combinatorial
problems. Non-determinism is introduced by means of a guessing operator, which
declares a set of relations to have an arbitrary extension. This new operator
results in languages with higher expressive power, able to express all problems
in the complexity class NP. Some syntactical restrictions which make data
complexity polynomial are shown. The effectiveness of both extensions is
demonstrated by means of several examples. The current implementation, written
in Java using local search techniques, is described. To appear in Theory and
Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure
DATABASE ACCESS REQUIREMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS
Knowledge bases constitute the core of those Artificial Intelligence
programs which have come to be known as Expert Systems. An
examination of the most dominant knowledge representation schemes used
in these systems reveals that a knowledge base can, and possibly
should, be described at several levels using different schemes,
including those traditionally used in operational databases. This
chapter provides evidence that solutions to the organization and
access problem for very large knowledge bases require the employment
of appropriate database management methods, at least for the lowest
level of description -- the facts or data. We identify the database
access requirements of knowledge-based or expert systems and then
present four general architectural strategies for the design of expert
systems that interact with databases, together with specific
recommendations for their suitability in particular situations. An
implementation of the most advanced and ambitious of these strategies
is then discussed in some detail.Information Systems Working Papers Serie
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
State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity
This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on
the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages
to be carried out within the Rewerse project.
From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of
interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of
the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give
an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs;
in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and
in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks
A software toolkit for web-based virtual environments based on a shared database
We propose a software toolkit for developing complex web-based user interfaces, incorporating such things as multi-user facilities, virtual environments (VEs), and interface agents. The toolkit is based on a novel software architecture that combines ideas from multi-agent platforms and user interface (UI) architectures. It provides a distributed shared database with publish-subscribe facilities. This enables UI components to observe the state and activities of any other components in the system easily. The system runs in a web-based environment. The toolkit is comprised of several programming and other specification languages, providing a complete suite of systems design languages. We illustrate the toolkit by means of a couple of examples
Developing a labelled object-relational constraint database architecture for the projection operator
Current relational databases have been developed in order to improve the handling of
stored data, however, there are some types of information that have to be analysed for
which no suitable tools are available. These new types of data can be represented and treated
as constraints, allowing a set of data to be represented through equations, inequations
and Boolean combinations of both. To this end, constraint databases were defined and
some prototypes were developed. Since there are aspects that can be improved, we propose
a new architecture called labelled object-relational constraint database (LORCDB). This provides
more expressiveness, since the database is adapted in order to support more types of
data, instead of the data having to be adapted to the database. In this paper, the projection
operator of SQL is extended so that it works with linear and polynomial constraints and
variables of constraints. In order to optimize query evaluation efficiency, some strategies
and algorithms have been used to obtain an efficient query plan.
Most work on constraint databases uses spatiotemporal data as case studies. However,
this paper proposes model-based diagnosis since it is a highly potential research area,
and model-based diagnosis permits more complicated queries than spatiotemporal examples.
Our architecture permits the queries over constraints to be defined over different sets
of variables by using symbolic substitution and elimination of variables.Ministerio de Ciencia y TecnologĂa DPI2006-15476-C02-0
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