Modeling Agent Systems with Distributed Transformation Units

AbstractAgent systems have become more and more important in computer science. They allow to implement complex distributed systems composed of communicating autonomous entities. Transformation units constitute a structuring principle for graph transformation systems which split up large sets of rules, but still graphs are transformed as a whole. Recently, distributed transformation units have been introduced as an extension of transformation units to distributed graphs and distributed graph transformation. In this paper it is illustrated how different features of agent systems can be smoothly modeled in a uniform way by distributed graph transformation systems. For this purpose an agent system case study with simple agents communicating via blackboards and message passing is presented

A requirements engineering approach for the development of web applications

Uno de los problemas más importantes que se propuso solucionar cuando apareció la Ingeniería Web fue la carencia de técnicas para la especificación de requisitos de aplicaciones Web. Aunque se han presentado diversas propuestas que proporcionan soporte metodológico al desarrollo de aplicaciones Web, la mayoría de ellas se centran básicamente en definir modelos conceptuales que permiten representar de forma abstracta una aplicación Web; las actividades relacionadas con la especificación de requisitos son vagamente tratadas por estas propuestas. Además, las técnicas tradicionales para la especificación de requisitos no proporcionan un soporte adecuado para considerar características propias de las aplicaciones Web como la Navegación. En esta tesis, se presenta una aproximación de Ingeniería de Requisitos para especificar los requisitos de las aplicaciones Web. Esta aproximación incluye mecanismos basados en la metáfora de tarea para especificar no sólo los requisitos relacionados con aspectos estructurales y de comportamiento de una aplicación Web sino también los requisitos relacionados con aspectos navegacionales. Sin embargo, una especificación de requisitos es poco útil si no somos capaces de transformarla en los artefactos software adecuados. Este es un problema clásico que la comunidad de Ingeniería del Software ha tratado de resolver desde sus inicios: cómo pasar del espacio del problema (requisitos de usuario) al espacio de la solución (diseño e implementación) siguiendo una guía metodológica clara y precisa. En esta tesis, se presenta una estrategia que, basándose en transformaciones de grafos, y estando soportada por un conjunto de herramientas, nos permite realizar de forma automática transformaciones entre especificaciones de requisitos basadas en tareas y esquemas conceptuales Web. Además, esta estrategia se ha integrado con un método de Ingeniería Web con capacidades de generación automática de código. Esta integración nos permite proporcionar un mecanisValderas Aranda, PJ. (2008). A requirements engineering approach for the development of web applications [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/1997Palanci

A framework for analyzing changes in health care lexicons and nomenclatures

Ontologies play a crucial role in current web-based biomedical applications for capturing contextual knowledge in the domain of life sciences. Many of the so-called bio-ontologies and controlled vocabularies are known to be seriously defective from both terminological and ontological perspectives, and do not sufficiently comply with the standards to be considered formai ontologies. Therefore, they are continuously evolving in order to fix the problems and provide valid knowledge. Moreover, many problems in ontology evolution often originate from incomplete knowledge about the given domain. As our knowledge improves, the related definitions in the ontologies will be altered. This problem is inadequately addressed by available tools and algorithms, mostly due to the lack of suitable knowledge representation formalisms to deal with temporal abstract notations, and the overreliance on human factors. Also most of the current approaches have been focused on changes within the internal structure of ontologies, and interactions with other existing ontologies have been widely neglected. In this research, alter revealing and classifying some of the common alterations in a number of popular biomedical ontologies, we present a novel agent-based framework, RLR (Represent, Legitimate, and Reproduce), to semi-automatically manage the evolution of bio-ontologies, with emphasis on the FungalWeb Ontology, with minimal human intervention. RLR assists and guides ontology engineers through the change management process in general, and aids in tracking and representing the changes, particularly through the use of category theory. Category theory has been used as a mathematical vehicle for modeling changes in ontologies and representing agents' interactions, independent of any specific choice of ontology language or particular implementation. We have also employed rule-based hierarchical graph transformation techniques to propose a more specific semantics for analyzing ontological changes and transformations between different versions of an ontology, as well as tracking the effects of a change in different levels of abstractions. Thus, the RLR framework enables one to manage changes in ontologies, not as standalone artifacts in isolation, but in contact with other ontologies in an openly distributed semantic web environment. The emphasis upon the generality and abstractness makes RLR more feasible in the multi-disciplinary domain of biomedical Ontology change management