An adaptive service oriented architecture: Automatically solving interoperability problems.

Organizations desire to be able to easily cooperate with other companies and still be flexible. The IT infrastructure used by these companies should facilitate these wishes. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Autonomic Computing (AC) were introduced in order to realize such an infrastructure, however both have their shortcomings and do not fulfil these wishes. This dissertation addresses these shortcomings and presents an approach for incorporating (self-) adaptive behavior in (Web) services. A conceptual foundation of adaptation is provided and SOA is extended to incorporate adaptive behavior, called Adaptive Service Oriented Architecture (ASOA). To demonstrate our conceptual framework, we implement it to address a crucial aspect of distributed systems, namely interoperability. In particular, we study the situation of a service orchestrator adapting itself to evolving service providers.

An adaptive service oriented architecture:Automatically solving interoperability problems

Organizations desire to be able to easily cooperate with other companies and still be flexible. The IT infrastructure used by these companies should facilitate these wishes. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Autonomic Computing (AC) were introduced in order to realize such an infrastructure, however both have their shortcomings and do not fulfil these wishes. This dissertation addresses these shortcomings and presents an approach for incorporating (self-) adaptive behavior in (Web) services. A conceptual foundation of adaptation is provided and SOA is extended to incorporate adaptive behavior, called Adaptive Service Oriented Architecture (ASOA). To demonstrate our conceptual framework, we implement it to address a crucial aspect of distributed systems, namely interoperability. In particular, we study the situation of a service orchestrator adapting itself to evolving service providers.

Leveraging service-oriented business applications to a rigorous rule-centric dynamic behavioural architecture.

Today’s market competitiveness and globalisation are putting pressure on organisations to join their efforts, to focus more on cooperation and interaction and to add value to their businesses. That is, most information systems supporting these cross-organisations are characterised as service-oriented business applications, where all the emphasis is put on inter-service interactions rather than intra-service computations. Unfortunately for the development of such inter-organisational service-oriented business systems, current service technology proposes only ad-hoc, manual and static standard web-service languages such as WSDL, BPEL and WS-CDL [3, 7]. The main objective of the work reported in this thesis is thus to leverage the development of service-oriented business applications towards more reliability and dynamic adaptability, placing emphasis on the use of business rules to govern activities, while composing services. The best available software-engineering techniques for adaptability, mainly aspect-oriented mechanisms, are also to be integrated with advanced formal techniques. More specifically, the proposed approach consists of the following incremental steps. First, it models any business activity behaviour governing any service-oriented business process as Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules. Then such informal rules are made more interaction-centric, using adapted architectural connectors. Third, still at the conceptual-level, with the aim of adapting such ECA-driven connectors, this approach borrows aspect-oriented ideas and mechanisms, and proposes to intercept events, select the properties required for interacting entities, explicitly and separately execute such ECA-driven behavioural interactions and finally dynamically weave the results into the entities involved. To ensure compliance and to preserve the implementation of this architectural conceptualisation, the work adopts the Maude language as an executable operational formalisation. For that purpose, Maude is first endowed with the notions of components and interfaces. Further, the concept of ECA-driven behavioural interactions are specified and implemented as aspects. Finally, capitalising on Maude reflection, the thesis demonstrates how to weave such interaction executions into associated services

Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration and Knowledge Emergence as a Business Web Strategy Enabler

The Web is becoming in many respects a powerful tool for supporting business strategy as companies are quickly becoming more and more reliant on new Web-based technologies to capitalize on new business opportunities. However, this introduces additional managerial problems and risks that have to be taken into consideration, if they are not to be left behind. In this chapter we explore the Web’s present and future potential in relation to information sharing, knowledge management, innovation management, and the automation of cross-organizational business transactions. The suggested approach will provide entrepreneurs, managers, and IT leaders with guidance on how to adopt the latest Web 2.0-based technologies in their everyday work with a view to setting up a business Web strategy. Specifically, Enterprise 2.0 is presented as a key enabler for businesses to expand their ecosystems and partnerships. Enterprise 2.0 also acts as a catalyst for improving innovation processes and knowledge work

IS2020 A Competency Model for Undergraduate Programs in Information Systems: The Joint ACM/AIS IS2020 Task Force

The IS2020 report is the latest in a series of model curricula recommendations and guidelines for undergraduate degrees in Information Systems (IS). The report builds on the foundations developed in previous model curricula reports to develop a major revision of the model curriculum with the inclusion of significant new characteristics. Specifically, the IS2020 report does not directly prescribe a degree structure that targets a specific context or environment. Rather, the IS2020 report provides guidance regarding the core content of the curriculum that should be present but also provides flexibility to customize curricula according to local institutional needs

Dynamic variability support in context-aware workflow-based systems

Workflow-based systems are increasingly becomingmore complex and dynamic. Besides the large sets of process variants to be managed, process variants need to be context sensitive in order to accommodate new user requirements and intrinsic complexity. This paradigm shift forces us to defer decisions to run time where process variants must be customized and executed based on a recognized context. However, few efforts have been focused on dynamic variability for process families. This dissertation proposes an approach for variant-rich workflow-based systems that can comprise context data while deferring process configuration to run time. Whereas existing early process variability approaches, like Worklets, VxBPEL, or Provop handle run-time reconfiguration, ours lets us resolve variants at execution time and supports multiple binding required for dynamic environments. Finally, unlike the specialized reconfiguration solutions for some workflow-based systems, our approach allows an automated decision making, enabling different run-time resolution strategies that intermix constraint solving and feature models. We achieve these results through a simple extension to BPMN that adds primitives for process variability constructs. We show that this is enough to eficiently model process variability while preserving separation of concerns. We implemented our approach in the LateVa framework and evaluated it using both synthetic and realworld scenarios. LateVa achieves a reasonable performance over runtime resolution, which means that can facilitate practical adoption in context-aware and variant-rich work ow-based systems

Spanish fact-checking services: an approach to their business models

The proliferation of fact-checking services is a fast-growing global phenomenon, especially in Western countries. These services are the response of journalism to disinformation, that has transformed a common internal procedure of journalistic work in the core of a business directed to the general public, also offered to the companies of mass media and social media. Literature review shows that the research on fact-checking has focused on the origin, funding, relationship with the media, procedures, and experiences related to politics and COVID-19. However, the ownership structure of the fact-checking services has been superficially analysed and the business model of these platforms has not yet been studied in detail and depth. The objective of this article is to identify and analyse the business model of the nine Spanish active fact-checking services through a documentary research of public information sources and the information that these services give about themselves. This paper explains their ownership structure and income provenance, from open information sources. The findings are that the fact-checking services that depend on media groups are no strangers to the trend of opacity usual in these groups, but in the case of fact-checking services that are born as initiatives of journalists, the trend towards transparency is, in the majority of cases, clear. However, the information provided by the Spanish fact-checking services is deficient and does not allow us to discover their business models, except in the case of Newtral and, to a certain extent, Maldita

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy

A Governance Reference Model For Service-oriented Architecture-based Common Data Initialization A Case Study Of Military Simulation Federation Systems

Military simulation and command and control federations have become large, complex distributed systems that integrate with a variety of legacy and current simulations, and real command and control systems locally as well as globally. As these systems continue to become increasingly more complex so does the data that initializes them. This increased complexity has introduced a major problem in data initialization coordination which has been handled by many organizations in various ways. Serviceoriented architecture (SOA) solutions have been introduced to promote easier data interoperability through the use of standards-based reusable services and common infrastructure. However, current SOA-based solutions do not incorporate formal governance techniques to drive the architecture in providing reliable, consistent, and timely information exchange. This dissertation identifies the need to establish governance for common data initialization service development oversight, presents current research and applicable solutions that address some aspects of SOA-based federation data service governance, and proposes a governance reference model for development of SOA-based common data initialization services in military simulation and command and control federations