A Methodology for Engineering Collaborative and ad-hoc Mobile Applications using SyD Middleware

Today’s web applications are more collaborative and utilize standard and ubiquitous Internet protocols. We have earlier developed System on Mobile Devices (SyD) middleware to rapidly develop and deploy collaborative applications over heterogeneous and possibly mobile devices hosting web objects. In this paper, we present the software engineering methodology for developing SyD-enabled web applications and illustrate it through a case study on two representative applications: (i) a calendar of meeting application, which is a collaborative application and (ii) a travel application which is an ad-hoc collaborative application. SyD-enabled web objects allow us to create a collaborative application rapidly with limited coding effort. In this case study, the modular software architecture allowed us to hide the inherent heterogeneity among devices, data stores, and networks by presenting a uniform and persistent object view of mobile objects interacting through XML/SOAP requests and responses. The performance results we obtained show that the application scales well as we increase the group size and adapts well within the constraints of mobile devices

Collaborative e-science architecture for Reaction Kinetics research community

This paper presents a novel collaborative e-science architecture (CeSA) to address two challenging issues in e-science that arise from the management of heterogeneous distributed environments: (i) how to provide individual scientists an integrated environment to collaborate with each other in distributed, loosely coupled research communities where each member might be using a disparate range of tools; and (ii) how to provide easy access to a range of computationally intensive resources from a desktop. The Reaction Kinetics research community was used to capture the requirements and in the evaluation of the proposed architecture. The result demonstrated the feasibility of the approach and the potential benefits of the CeSA

Systematic composition of distributed objects: Processes and sessions

We consider a system with the infrastructure for the creation and interconnection of large numbers of distributed persistent objects. This system is exemplified by the Internet: potentially, every appliance and document on the Internet has both persistent state and the ability to interact with large numbers of other appliances and documents on the Internet. This paper elucidates the characteristics of such a system, and proposes the compositional requirements of its corresponding infrastructure. We explore the problems of specifying, composing, reasoning about and implementing applications in such a system. A specific concern of our research is developing the infrastructure to support structuring distributed applications by using sequential, choice and parallel composition, in the anarchic environment where application compositions may be unforeseeable and interactions may be unknown prior to actually occurring. The structuring concepts discussed are relevant to a wide range of distributed applications; our implementation is illustrated with collaborative Java processes interacting over the Internet, but the methodology provided can be applied independent of specific platforms

Semantic-based policy engineering for autonomic systems

This paper presents some important directions in the use of ontology-based semantics in achieving the vision of Autonomic Communications. We examine the requirements of Autonomic Communication with a focus on the demanding needs of ubiquitous computing environments, with an emphasis on the requirements shared with Autonomic Computing. We observe that ontologies provide a strong mechanism for addressing the heterogeneity in user task requirements, managed resources, services and context. We then present two complimentary approaches that exploit ontology-based knowledge in support of autonomic communications: service-oriented models for policy engineering and dynamic semantic queries using content-based networks. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major research challenges such approaches raise

A Collaborative System Software Solution for Modeling Business Flows Based on Automated Semantic Web Service Composition

Nowadays, business interoperability is one of the key factors for assuring competitive advantage for the participant business partners. In order to implement business cooperation, scalable, distributed and portable collaborative systems have to be implemented. This article presents some of the mostly used technologies in this field. Furthermore, it presents a software application architecture based on Business Process Modeling Notation standard and automated semantic web service coupling for modeling business flow in a collaborative manner. The main business processes will be represented in a single, hierarchic flow diagram. Each element of the diagram will represent calls to semantic web services. The business logic (the business rules and constraints) will be structured with the help of OWL (Ontology Web Language). Moreover, OWL will also be used to create the semantic web service specifications.automated service coupling, business ontology, semantic web, BPMN, semantic web