Analysis and Evaluation of Service-Oriented Architectures for Digital Libraries

The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that underlies the Web Services paradigm of computing is widely regarded as the future of distributed computing. The applicability of such an architecture for digital library systems is still uncertain, as evidenced by the fact that virtually none of the large open source projects (e.g., Greenstone, EPrints, DSpace) have adopted it for internal component structuring. In contrast, the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) has received much support in the DL community for its Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, one that in principle falls within the scope of SOA. As a natural extension, the Open Digital Library project carried the principles of the OAI forward into a set of experimental derived and related protocols to create a testbed for component-based digital library experiments. This paper discusses a series of experiments with these components to confirm that SOA and a service-oriented component architecture is indeed applicable to digital library systems, by evaluating issues of simplicity and understandability, reusability, extensibility and performance

Facilitating Flexible Link Layer Protocols for Future Wireless Communication Systems

This dissertation addresses the problem of designing link layer protocols which are flexible enough to accommodate the demands offuture wireless communication systems (FWCS).We show that entire link layer protocols with diverse requirements and responsibilities can be composed out of reconfigurable and reusable components.We demonstrate this by designing and implementinga novel concept termed Flexible Link Layer (FLL) architecture.Through extensive simulations and practical experiments, we evaluate a prototype of the suggested architecture in both fixed-spectrumand dynamic spectrum access (DSA) networks. FWCS are expected to overcome diverse challenges including the continual growthin traffic volume and number of connected devices.Furthermore, they are envisioned to support a widerange of new application requirements and operating conditions.Technology trends, including smart homes, communicating machines, and vehicularnetworks, will not only grow on a scale that once was unimaginable, they will also become the predominant communication paradigm, eventually surpassing today's human-produced network traffic. In order for this to become reality, today's systems have to evolve in many ways.They have to exploit allocated resources in a more efficient and energy-conscious manner.In addition to that, new methods for spectrum access and resource sharingneed to be deployed.Having the diversification of applications and network conditions in mind, flexibility at all layers of a communication system is of paramount importance in order to meet the desired goals. However, traditional communication systems are often designed with specific and distinct applications in mind. Therefore, system designers can tailor communication systems according to fixedrequirements and operating conditions, often resulting in highly optimized but inflexible systems.Among the core problems of such design is the mix of data transfer and management aspects.Such a combination of concerns clearly hinders the reuse and extension of existing protocols. To overcome this problem, the key idea explored in this dissertation is a component-based design to facilitate the development of more flexible and versatile link layer protocols.Specifically, the FLL architecture, suggested in this dissertation, employs a generic, reconfigurable data transfer protocol around which one or more complementary protocols, called link layer applications, are responsible for management-related aspects of the layer. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, we have designed andimplemented a prototype of the FLL architecture on the basis ofa reconfigurable software defined radio (SDR) testbed.Employing the SDR prototype as well as computer simulations, thisdissertation describes various experiments used to examine a range of link layerprotocols for both fixed-spectrum and DSA networks. This dissertation firstly outlines the challenges faced by FWCSand describes DSA as a possible technology component for their construction.It then specifies the requirements for future DSA systemsthat provide the basis for our further considerations.We then review the background on link layer protocols, surveyrelated work on the construction of flexible protocol frameworks,and compare a range of actual link layer protocols and algorithms.Based on the results of this analysis, we design, implement, and evaluatethe FLL architecture and a selection of actual link layer protocols. We believe the findings of this dissertation add substantively to the existing literature on link layer protocol design and are valuable for theoreticians and experimentalists alike

A digital library content metadata generator for e-print

A Digital Library is normally consisting of or made upon a collection of digital objects plus the information and services for storing, accessing and retrieving them. Digital Libraries by nature is a very complex information system. Despite efforts being made to streamline its creation and content population into an out of the box experience, there is still room for automation. For the creation of Digital Library or Online Repositories as it also known, the availability of free open source software such as EPrints developed at University of Southampton, United Kingdom is has simplified the creation process. While the Digital Library software packages such as EPrints have made it easier to create and run Digital Libraries, optimization and customization still needs to be done in order to achieve an optimally usable solution. One the most time consuming tasks involved in setting up a Digital Library is populating these repositories. This can be a very manual task that consumes a large amount of time without automation. One the most time consuming tasks involved in setting up a the content or collections of Digital Library is the data entry that provides detailed information on the available resources which is usually made up of metadata elements that provide information on the content stored. The Digital Library Content Metadata Generator (COMGEN) developed as a part of this project is designed to reduce the workload, time consumption and error prone manual data entry that are being done the traditional way in populating Digital Libraries. COMGEN is built to demonstrate the feasibility of automatic content generation by extracting existing metadata from the source file and transforming it into a usable format for use with the EPrints Import Tool to automatically add new content and populate the Digital Library/Repository. (Abstract by author

Customising Interfaces to Service-Oriented Digital Library Systems

Digital library systems that once were mostly monolithic in construction are slowly making the transition to component-based models. However, it is not clear how best to design or construct the user interfaces to such systems - one alternative would be to create associated interface elements while another would be to create a separable interface layer. This paper discusses an attempt to do the latter by using current browser-based tools - recently named Ajax - in order to visually design the layouts, work°ows and service connections of a user experience layer. Expert evaluators provided feedback during this process and the eventual level of functionality and usability of the proof-of-concept system demonstrate the inherent possibilities and relevance of the emerging Ajax technologies for not only the rendering or execution but also the design of browser-based Web applicatons, and digital library systems in particular

Lifecycle-Support in Architectures for Ontology-Based Information Systems

Ontology-based applications play an increasingly important role in the public and corporate Semantic Web. While today there exist a range of tools and technologies to support specific ontology engineering and management activities, architectural design guidelines for building ontology-based applications are missing. In this paper, we present an architecture for ontology-based applications—covering the complete ontology-lifecycle—that is intended to support software engineers in designing and developing ontology based-applications. We illustrate the use of the architecture in a concrete case study using the NeOn toolkit as one implementation of the architecture

Adoption of microservices in industrial information systems: a systematic literature review

The internet, digitalization and globalization have transformed customer expectations and the way business is done. Product life cycles have shortened, products need to be customizable, and the production needs to be scalable. These changes reflect also to the industrial operations. Quick technological advancements have increased the role of software in industrial facilities. The software in use has to enable untraditional flexibility, interoperability and scalability. Microservices based architecture has been seen as the state of the art way for developing flexible, interoperable and scalable software. Microservices have been applied to cloud native applications for consumers with enormous success. The goal of this thesis is to analyze how to adopt microservices to indstrial information systems. General information and characteristics of microservices are provided as background information and a systematic literature review is conducted to answer the research problem. Material for the systematic literature review was found from multiple digital libraries and 17 scientific papers matched the set inclusion cirteria. The material was then analyzed with an extensively documentated method. The thesis brought together the available publications on the topic. Guidelines for adopting microservices to industrial information systems were derived based on the analysis. Real time applications need special attention when using microservices architecture, the developers need to use proper tools for the tasks, and the developers and users need to be properly introduced to service-oriented systems. Based on this thesis microservices seems like a suitable approach for developing flexible industrial information systems, which satisfy the new business requirements

Organizational determinants in the procurement and transplantation pathway: a review

Maria Triassi,1 Elena Giancotti,2 Antonio Nardone,1 Giulia Mancini,3 Fabiana Rubba1 1Public, Preventive and Social Medicine School, University Federico II of Naples, Naples, Italy; 2Procurement and Transplantation Coordination, Naples, Italy; 3Sociology Unit, G D'annunzio University, Chieti-Pescara, Italy Introduction: The growing disparity between organ availability for transplantation and the number of patients in need has challenged the donation and transplantation community to develop innovative processes, ideas, and techniques to bridge this gap. Advances in the sharing of best practices in the donation community have contributed greatly to this aim over the past 5 years. Studies published during the past five years (2010–2014) were analyzed to gain insight on the evolving organizational areas and tools that the procurement and transplantation pathways have been focused on. The hypothesis assessed is that networking and efficacious handling of this complex path may be ameliorated by an adaptive organizational toolbox. Methods: A thorough search has been conducted using various databases, ie, Cochrane library, PubMed, EMBASE, Federico II University Open Archive. The evidence was considered following the Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group checklist. Prevalent organizational attitudes and areas were assessed, and various scenarios were analyzed. Initially, all titles and abstracts were screened. In the next phase, the full text of all abstracts considered potentially relevant by at least one of the reviewers was evaluated. Inconsistencies in decision-making within this second phase were solved based on consensus between both reviewers. In this phase, for every study we defined whether the organization was considered relevant and what the scenario was. The information was extracted from each study based on bibliographic details (author, journal, year of publication, and language). As many as 1,071 studies were analyzed, and 81 were selected as potentially relevant. Results: We found three prevalent areas of interest focused on organizational elements: global organizational strategies scenario, clinical hospital organization, and citizenship and social scenario. Conclusion: We reached the conclusion that organization has a central role in different scenarios of procurement and transplantation in a continuum from government to hospital (the core of the system) and finally among citizens. A standardized hospital pathway definitely remains the essential step in order to ameliorate either procurement or transplantation. Keywords: transplant procurement, management, organizational tool, networ