SERVICE-BASED INTERACTIVE WORKFLOWS FOR MOBILE ENVIRONMENTS

Since the use of mobile devices spreads increasingly, mobile systems also play a major role for distributed business processes. In such scenarios, extending workflow management support to mobile systems offers potential to seamlessly integrate field staff into business processes, even if executing devices are disconnected from the company\u27s server. However, the heterogeneity of current mobile systems still requires complex device-specific descriptions of user interfaces to integrate manual tasks. Therefore, this paper presents an abstract and modality-independent description model to support the development and execution of interactive mobile workflows and a corresponding prototype realization based on a service-oriented execution module

TutorUP

Tutor UP is a mobile-friendly web application to help connect University of Portland students with peer tutors. Our goal is to make academic aid more accessible for students who find themselves needing more assistance than on-campus resources and professors can provide.https://pilotscholars.up.edu/egr_project/1000/thumbnail.jp

Utilization of IT for Clinical Study Master-Protocol generation : Umsetzung eines Masterprotokolls für Klinische Studien in einer IT-Software

Voraussetzung für eine valide klinische Studie sind umfassende, lückenlose, schrift-lich niedergelegte Rahmenbedingungen. Bedingt durch die Vielzahl experimen-teller, ethischer und juristischer Anforderungen genügen viele Studienprotokolle den GCP (Good Clinical Practice) Mindestanforderungen nicht. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit konnten alle Erfordernisse zur Generierung eines Studienprotokolls entsprechend den Mindestanforderungen der GCP erstmals vollständig in Software übertragen werden. Die Software basiert auf dem SIOPE (European Society of Pediatric Oncology) Template. Es lässt sich sehr einfach an individuelle Benutzeranforderungen und verschiedene Gebiete klinischer For-schung anpassen. Die Software unterstützt sowohl Single- wie auch Multicenter-Studien und ist in der Lage, mehrsprachige Protokolle zu generieren. Durch eine fehlertolerante, grafische Benutzeroberfläche und umfangreiche Hilfe-Funktionen können auch unerfahrene Anwender perfekte Studienprotokolle erstellen. Das Programm ist Web-basiert, es ermöglicht simultanen Zugriff mehrerer Anwender und alle Daten stehen den autorisierten Benutzern sofort zur Verfügung. Das fertige Protokoll ist online verfügbar und kann als PDF ausgedruckt werden. Anwenderseitig ist lediglich ein Laptop/PC, ein handelsüblicher Web Browser und Internetzugang erforderlich. Ein besonderes Augenmerk wurde auf Datensicherheit, Zugriffskontrolle und Audit Trail gelegt, welche lückenlos gewährleistet sind. Die Software ist in ObTiMA (Ontology based Trial Management Application) integriert.Only a complete and very comprehensive protocol enables a valid clinical study. Due to the highly diverse experimental, ethical and legal requirements many proto-cols do not meet the GCP (Good Clinical Practice) standard. Through this work all requirements could completely be mapped in software for the first time. The program is based on the SIOPE (European Society of Pediatric Oncology) template and it is also easily extendible and adaptable to any other area of clinical research. The software supports single- and multicenter studies and generates multilingual protocols. Even inexperienced users can generate a perfect study protocol guided by a failure preventing graphical user interface and a highly elaborated help system. The program is web based and supports simultaneous use by multiple persons. All data entered are immediately available for all authorized users and the protocol can be printed out at any location. There is no installation or maintenance work on the part of user required, just a PC or laptop, internet access and a common web browser is necessary for protocol generation. Access and version control, personnel data protection and audit trail are seamlessly ensured. The software is integrated in ObTiMA (Ontology based Trial Management Application)

Component-based Adaptation Methods for Service-Oriented Peer-to-Peer Software Architectures

Service-oriented peer-to-peer architectures aim at supporting application scenarios of dispersed collaborating groups in which the participating users are capable of providing and consuming local resources in terms of peer services. From a conceptual perspective, service-oriented peer-to-peer architectures adopt relevant concepts of two well-established state-of-the-art software architectural styles, namely service-oriented architectures (also known as SOA) and peer-to-peer architectures (P2P). One major argumentation of this thesis is that the adoption of end-user adaptability (or tailorability) concepts is of major importance for the successful deployment of service-oriented peer-to-peer architectures that support user collaboration. Since tailorability concepts have so far not been analyzed for both peer-to-peer and service-oriented architectures, no relevant models exist that could serve as a tailorability model for service-oriented peer-to-peer architectures. In order to master the adaptation of peer services, as well as peer service compositions within service-oriented peer-to-peer architectures, this dissertation proposes the adoption of component-oriented development methods. These so-called component-based adaptation methods enable service providers to adapt their provided services during runtime. Here, a model for analyzing existing dependencies on subscribed ser-vice consumers ensures that a service provider is able to adapt his peer services without violating any dependencies. In doing so, an adaptation policy that can be pre-arranged within a peer group regulates the procedures of how to cope with existing dependencies in the scope of a group. The same methods also serve as a way to handle exceptional cases, in particular the failure of a dependent service provider peer and, hence, a service that is part of a local service composition. In this, the hosting runtime environment is responsible for detecting exceptions and for initiating the process of exception resolution. During the resolution phase, a user can be actively involved at selected decision points in order to resolve the occurred exception in unpredictable contexts. An exception could also be the reason for the violation of an integrity constraint that serves as a contract between various peers that interact within a given collaboration. The notion of integrity constraints and the model of handling the constraint violation aim at improving the reliability of target-oriented peer collaborations. This dissertation is composed of three major parts that each makes a significant contribution to the state of the art. First of all, a formal architectural style (SOP2PA) is introduced to define the fundamental elements that are necessary to build service-oriented peer-to-peer architectures, as well as their relationships, constraints, and operational semantics. This architectural style also formalizes the above-mentioned adaptation methods, the exception handling model that embraces these methods, the analysis model for managing consumer dependencies, as well as the integrity constraints model. Subsequently, on this formal basis, a concrete (specific) service-oriented peer-to-peer architecture (DEEVOLVE) is conceptualized that serves as the default implementation of that style. Here, the notions described above are materialized based on state-of-the-art software engineering methods and models. Finally, the third contribution of this work outlines an application scenario stemming from the area of construction informatics, in which the default implementation DEEVOLVE is deployed in order to support dispersed planning activities of structural engineers

EMELI 1.0: An Experimental Smart Modeling Framework For Automatic Coupling Of Self-Describing Models

EMELI (Experimental Modeling Environment for Linking and Interoperability) is a modeling framework written in Python that was designed to explore the possibility of smart modeling frameworks. As defined here, a smart modeling framework is one that makes it easy for users to couple reusable component models to create new, composite models through the use of a standardized model interface and standardized model metadata. Users make selections from a repository of component models that each provide a CSDMS Basic Model Interface (BMI) for self-description and model control. EMELI then (1) creates a framework object that serves as a container for the component models, (2) instantiates the selected component models as objects in the framework, (3) checks whether the chosen component models are compatible and together provide a complete composite model (i.e. whether every component model can get the variables it needs from one of the other models in the selected set) and then (4) runs the model, automatically passing required variables (or references) between the coupled components as necessary and automatically adjusting for differences between the component models, such as time-stepping scheme and units. EMELI demonstrates an attractive mechanism for coupling heterogeneous models after they have undergone a relatively small amount of additional preparation while also helping to prevent inappropriate couplings