Ragnarok

This report describes the current state of my research in software development environments. I argue in favour of strong support for project management, comprehension and navigation, and collaboration primarily based on experiences from developing large-scale industrial-strength applications.An underlying model of such an environment, named ``Ragnarok´´, is outlined. A design and first prototype of important parts of Ragnarok is described as well as some results from initial experiments

Derivative Process Model of Development Power in Industry: Empirical Research and Forecast for Chinese Software Industry and US Economy

Based on [1], this paper analyzes the transferability and the diffusibility of industrial development power, puts forward the index of management strength, and sets up the derivative process model for industrial development power on the Partial Distribution ([2]-[3]). By the derivative process model, a kind of time series model, we can describe the process of industrial development effectively, and can forecast the future direction of industry or economy on using with [6]. Finally, by making use of the actual data of Chinese software industry and data of USA GDP (chained) price index, we give the examples of empirical analysis, and forecast the future of Chinese software industry and USA economic development. The conclusions in this paper are believed to be valuable and significant to guide the establishment of the industrial policy and to control the industrial development.development power (DP), partial distribution, derivative process, industry and macroeconomy, empirical research, forecast analysis

Derivative Process Model of Development Power in Industry: Empirical Research and Forecast for Chinese Software Industry and US Economy

Based on concept and theory of Development Power [1], this paper analyzes the transferability and the diffusibility of industrial development power, points out that the chaos is the extreme of DP releasing and order is the highest degree of DP accumulating, puts forward A-C strength, the index of adjusting and controlling strength, and sets up the derivative process model for industrial development power on the Partial Distribution [2]-[4]. By the derivative process model, a kind of time series model, we can describe the process of industrial development effectively, and can forecast the future direction of industry or economy on using with [7]. Finally, by making use of the actual data of Chinese software industry and data of USA GDP (chained) price index, we give the examples of empirical analysis, and forecast the future of Chinese software industry and USA economic development. The conclusions in this paper are believed to be valuable and significant to guide the establishment of the industrial policy and to control the industrial development.development power (DP), partial distribution, derivative process, industry and macroeconomy, empirical research, forecast analysis

Developing a National Design Scoreboard

Recognising the growing importance of design, this paper reports on the development of an approach to measuring design at a national level. A series of measures is proposed, that are based around a simplified model of design as a system at a national level. This model was developed though insights from literature and a workshop with government, industry and design sector representatives. Detailed data on design in the UK is presented to highlight the difficulties in collecting reliable and robust data. Evidence is compared with four countries (Spain, Canada, Korea and Sweden). This comparison highlights the inherent difficulties in comparing performance and a revised set of measures is proposed. Finally, an approach to capturing design spend at a firm level is proposed, based on insights from literature and case studies. Keywords: National Design System, Design Performance</p

Implementation of explosion safety regulations in design of a mobile robot for coal mines

The article focuses on specific challenges of the design of a reconnaissance mobile robotic system aimed for inspection in underground coal mine areas after a catastrophic event. Systems that are designated for these conditions must meet specific standards and regulations. In this paper is discussed primarily the main conception of meeting explosion safety regulations of European Union 2014/34/EU (also called ATEX-from French "Appareils destines a etre utilises en ATmospheres Explosives") for Group I (equipment intended for use in underground mines) and Category M1 (equipment designed for operation in the presence of an explosive atmosphere). An example of a practical solution is described on main subsystems of the mobile robot TeleRescuera teleoperated robot with autonomy functions, a sensory subsystem with multiple cameras, three-dimensional (3D) mapping and sensors for measurement of gas concentration, airflow, relative humidity, and temperatures. Explosion safety is ensured according to the Technical Report CLC/TR 60079-33 "s" by two main independent protections-mechanical protection (flameproof enclosure) and electrical protection (automatic methane detector that disconnects power when methane breaches the enclosure and gets inside the robot body).Web of Science811art. no. 230

An open source collaboration infrastructure for Calibre

The study of Free and Open Source (Libre) software and the benefits provided by its processes and products to collaborative software development has been somewhat ad hoc. Each project wishing to use tools and techniques drawn from Libre software conducts its own research, thus duplicating effort, consequently there is a lack of established community practice on which new projects can draw. Long-standing intuitive theories of Libre development lack empirical validation. The long-term goal is to provide a resource to guide the evolution of Libre-software projects, from inception to maturity. The CALIBRE project is a co-ordination action aiming to address these issues through its research, its wider educational goals, and with an open invitation to the community to contribute. To succeed, the CALIBRE project needs an effective technological infrastructure which must support internal and external collaboration, communication and contribution to the project. The requirements of CALIBRE are similar to those of a Libre software project; this suggests that adopting a SourceForge-style environment which will be incrementally enhanced with further specialised tools as the requirements become better understood will be a sensible strategy

Clusters Of Innovative Firms: Absorptive Capacity In Larger Networks?

Firms are often compared in terms of their resources or capabilities (resource based view of the firm (Barney, 1991, 1997) dynamic capabilities (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000) and their performance on knowledge transfer (Argote & Ingram, 2000), absorptive capacity and relative absorptive capacity. Innovative firms are often located with other firms in clusters, with relationships and networks that have developed over time or in response to particular drivers and conditions. This paper investigates assumptions related to innovative firms and their environments and brings together research relevant to individual firms, notions of absorptive capacity and findings about clusters of firms. Firm relationships in cluster configurations are discussed and a research agenda proposed

Grid service orchestration using the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

Modern scientific applications often need to be distributed across grids. Increasingly applications rely on services, such as job submission, data transfer or data portal services. We refer to such services as grid services. While the invocation of grid services could be hard coded in theory, scientific users want to orchestrate service invocations more flexibly. In enterprise applications, the orchestration of web services is achieved using emerging orchestration standards, most notably the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). We describe our experience in orchestrating scientific workflows using BPEL. We have gained this experience during an extensive case study that orchestrates grid services for the automation of a polymorph prediction application

Provenance-based trust for grid computing: Position Paper

Current evolutions of Internet technology such as Web Services, ebXML, peer-to-peer and Grid computing all point to the development of large-scale open networks of diverse computing systems interacting with one another to perform tasks. Grid systems (and Web Services) are exemplary in this respect and are perhaps some of the first large-scale open computing systems to see widespread use - making them an important testing ground for problems in trust management which are likely to arise. From this perspective, today's grid architectures suffer from limitations, such as lack of a mechanism to trace results and lack of infrastructure to build up trust networks. These are important concerns in open grids, in which "community resources" are owned and managed by multiple stakeholders, and are dynamically organised in virtual organisations. Provenance enables users to trace how a particular result has been arrived at by identifying the individual services and the aggregation of services that produced such a particular output. Against this background, we present a research agenda to design, conceive and implement an industrial-strength open provenance architecture for grid systems. We motivate its use with three complex grid applications, namely aerospace engineering, organ transplant management and bioinformatics. Industrial-strength provenance support includes a scalable and secure architecture, an open proposal for standardising the protocols and data structures, a set of tools for configuring and using the provenance architecture, an open source reference implementation, and a deployment and validation in industrial context. The provision of such facilities will enrich grid capabilities by including new functionalities required for solving complex problems such as provenance data to provide complete audit trails of process execution and third-party analysis and auditing. As a result, we anticipate that a larger uptake of grid technology is likely to occur, since unprecedented possibilities will be offered to users and will give them a competitive edge