XSACd—Cross-domain resource sharing & access control for smart environments

Computing devices permeate working and living environments, affecting all aspects of modern everyday lives; a trend which is expected to intensify in the coming years. In the residential setting, the enhanced features and services provided by said computing devices constitute what is typically referred to as a “smart home”. However, the direct interaction smart devices often have with the physical world, along with the processing, storage and communication of data pertaining to users’ lives, i.e. private sensitive in nature, bring security concerns into the limelight. The resource-constraints of the platforms being integrated into a smart home environment, and their heterogeneity in hardware, network and overlaying technologies, only exacerbate the above issues. This paper presents XSACd, a cross-domain resource sharing & access control framework for smart environments, combining the well-studied fine-grained access control provided by the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) with the benefits of Service Oriented Architectures, through the use of the Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS). Based on standardized technologies, it enables seamless interactions and fine-grained policy-based management of heterogeneous smart devices, including support for communication between distributed networks, via the associated MQ Telemetry Transport protocol (MQTT)–based proxies. The framework is implemented in full, and its performance is evaluated on a test bed featuring relatively resource-constrained smart platforms and embedded devices, verifying the feasibility of the proposed approac

Semantics-based locking:from isolation to cooperation

'Advanced database applications', such as CAD/CAM, CASE, large AI applications or imageand voice processing, place demands on transaction management which differ substantially from those of traditional database applications. In particular, there is a need to support 'enriched' data models (which include, for example, complex objects or version and configuration management), 'synergistic' cooperative work, and application- or user-supported consistency. This paper deals with a subset of these problems. It develops a methodology for implementing semantics-based concurrency control on the basis of ordinary locking. More specifically, it will be shown how conventional locking can step by step be improved and refined to finally reach our initial goal, namely a comprehensive support of synergistic cooperative work by the exploitation of application-specific semantics. In addition to the 'conventional' binding of locks to transactions we consider the binding of locks to objects (object related) and subjects (subject related locks). Object related locks can define persistent and adaptable access restrictions on objects. This permits, among others, the modeling of different types of version models (time versions, version graphs) as well as library (standard) objects. Subject related locks are bound to subjects (user, application, etc.) and can be used among others to supervise or direct the transfer of objects between transactions.<br/

A Rule-Based Language for Integrating Business Processes and Business Rules

International audienceBusiness process modeling has become a popular method for improving organizational efficiency and quality. Automatic validation of process models is one of the most valuable features of modeling tools, in face of the increasing complexity of enterprise business processes and the richness of modeling languages. This paper proposes a formal language, Event-Condition-Action-Event (ECAE), for integrating Colored Petri Nets (CPN)-based business process with a set of business rules. We automate the integration process for validating the business process model. The ECAE language has several important features: its reasoning capabilities, its ability to express complex actions and events, and its declarative semantics. By enabling simulation of business process behavior, the reasoning capabilities facilitate the early detection of flaws The widespread use of business process modeling has helped enterprises to design, control and analyze many operational processes. Unfortunately, syntactic and semantic inconsistencies often appear in business process models, especially as the complexity of the models increases. Flaw detection and automation are essential for ensuring cost-effective and correct process models. The challenge for system designers is to build a flexible intelligent system, which accepts and verifies the change on business process and business rules automatically. The business process must be integrated with a set of business rules, and a correspondence between the process and the rules must be created. This must be flexible since the business process and the business rules may be modified during runtime. The verification should be a rule-based system, which can reason and deduce new knowledge or a new decision based on a set of rules and facts. This paper proposes a formal language ECAE for business process modeling, which takes advantage of both the graphical representation of colored Petri nets and the easy to represent ECA rule. It designs a business process model through CPN and translate

Agent-based management of clinical guidelines

Les guies de pràctica clínica (GPC) contenen un conjunt d'accions i dades que ajuden a un metge a prendre decisions sobre el diagnòstic, tractament o qualsevol altre procediment a un pacient i sobre una determinada malaltia. És conegut que l'adopció d'aquestes guies en la vida diària pot millorar l'assistència mèdica als pacients, pel fet que s'estandarditzen les pràctiques. Sistemes computeritzats que utilitzen GPC poden constituir part de sistemes d'ajut a la presa de decisions més complexos amb la finalitat de proporcionar el coneixement adequat a la persona adequada, en un format correcte i en el moment precís. L'automatització de l'execució de les GPC és el primer pas per la seva implantació en els centres mèdics.Per aconseguir aquesta implantació final, hi ha diferents passos que cal solucionar com per exemple, l'adquisició i representació de les GPC, la seva verificació formal, i finalment la seva execució. Aquesta Tesi està dirigida en l'execució de GPC i proposa la implementació d'un sistema multi-agent. En aquest sistema els diferents actors dels centres mèdics coordinen les seves activitats seguint un pla global determinat per una GPC. Un dels principals problemes de qualsevol sistema que treballa en l'àmbit mèdic és el tractament del coneixement. En aquest cas s'han hagut de tractar termes mèdics i organitzatius, que s'ha resolt amb la implementació de diferents ontologies. La separació de la representació del coneixement del seu ús és intencionada i permet que el sistema d'execució de GPC sigui fàcilment adaptable a les circumstàncies concretes dels centres, on varien el personal i els recursos disponibles.En paral·lel a l'execució de GPC, el sistema proposat manega preferències del pacient per tal d'implementar serveis adaptats al pacient. En aquesta àrea concretament, a) s'han definit un conjunt de criteris, b) aquesta informació forma part del perfil de l'usuari i serveix per ordenar les propostes que el sistema li proposa, i c) un algoritme no supervisat d'aprenentatge permet adaptar les preferències del pacient segons triï.Finalment, algunes idees d'aquesta Tesi actualment s'estan aplicant en dos projectes de recerca. Per una banda, l'execució distribuïda de GPC, i per altra banda, la representació del coneixement mèdic i organitzatiu utilitzant ontologies.Clinical guidelines (CGs) contain a set of directions or principles to assist the health care practitioner with patient care decisions about appropriate diagnostic, therapeutic, or other clinical procedures for specific clinical circumstances. It is widely accepted that the adoption of guideline-execution engines in daily practice would improve the patient care, by standardising the care procedures. Guideline-based systems can constitute part of a knowledge-based decision support system in order to deliver the right knowledge to the right people in the right form at the right time. The automation of the guideline execution process is a basic step towards its widespread use in medical centres.To achieve this general goal, different topics should be tackled, such as the acquisition of clinical guidelines, its formal verification, and finally its execution. This dissertation focuses on the execution of CGs and proposes the implementation of an agent-based platform in which the actors involved in health care coordinate their activities to perform the complex task of guideline enactment. The management of medical and organizational knowledge, and the formal representation of the CGs, are two knowledge-related topics addressed in this dissertation and tackled through the design of several application ontologies. The separation of the knowledge from its use is fully intentioned, and allows the CG execution engine to be easily customisable to different medical centres with varying personnel and resources.In parallel with the execution of CGs, the system handles citizen's preferences and uses them to implement patient-centred services. With respect this issue, the following tasks have been developed: a) definition of the user's criteria, b) use of the patient's profile to rank the alternatives presented to him, c) implementation of an unsupervised learning method to adapt dynamically and automatically the user's profile.Finally, several ideas of this dissertation are being directly applied in two ongoing funded research projects, including the agent-based execution of CGs and the ontological management of medical and organizational knowledge

Modelling adaptive web applications in OOWS

Las Aplicaciones Web Adaptativas son sistemas Web que plantean una solución a esta problemática, mediante la adaptación automática del acceso a ítems de información, servicios e hiperlinks, en base a las características de los usuarios. El desarrollo de estos sistemas exige adoptar una aproximación ingenieril que facilite la especificación de las funcionalidades adaptativas a proveer, junto con las características de los usuarios en las cuales se basan dichas funcionalidades. La presente tesis introduce una aproximación al desarrollo de Aplicaciones Web Adaptativas desde una perspectiva dirigida por modelos. Esta aproximación integra prácticas tradicionales de desarrollo de Aplicaciones Web con conceptos de-nidos y probados por la comunidad de Hipermedia Adaptativa. Tomando como base el proceso de desarrollo de aplicaciones Web OOWS (Object Oriented Web Solutions), se defíne un conjunto de primitivas conceptuales que permiten expresar técnicas adaptativas a un alto nivel de abstracción. La definición de estas primitivas es respaldada por una propuesta de Modelado de Usuarios. Además, un conjunto de estrategias de modelado permite incorporar Métodos Adaptativos a los esquemas navegacionales de OOWS, en base a dichas primitivas.Rojas Durán, GE. (2008). Modelling adaptive web applications in OOWS [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/2000Palanci

Workflow- und Prozeßsynchronisation mit Interaktionsausdrücken und -graphen

Im Rahmen der Arbeit werden Interaktionsausdrücke und -graphen als deskriptiver Formalismus zur kompakten, übersichtlichen und modularen Spezifikation sowie zur effizienten Implementierung von Synchronisationsbedingungen unterschiedlichster Art konzipiert, theoretisch untersucht, praktisch implementiert und prototypisch zur Synchronisation von Workflows angewandt