Apache Calcite: A Foundational Framework for Optimized Query Processing Over Heterogeneous Data Sources

Apache Calcite is a foundational software framework that provides query processing, optimization, and query language support to many popular open-source data processing systems such as Apache Hive, Apache Storm, Apache Flink, Druid, and MapD. Calcite's architecture consists of a modular and extensible query optimizer with hundreds of built-in optimization rules, a query processor capable of processing a variety of query languages, an adapter architecture designed for extensibility, and support for heterogeneous data models and stores (relational, semi-structured, streaming, and geospatial). This flexible, embeddable, and extensible architecture is what makes Calcite an attractive choice for adoption in big-data frameworks. It is an active project that continues to introduce support for the new types of data sources, query languages, and approaches to query processing and optimization.Comment: SIGMOD'1

The ERATO Systems Biology Workbench: An Integrated Environment for Multiscale and Multitheoretic Simulations in Systems Biology

Over the years, a variety of biochemical network modeling packages have been developed and used by researchers in biology. No single package currently answers all the needs of the biology community; nor is one likely to do so in the near future, because the range of tools needed is vast and new techniques are emerging too rapidly. It seems unavoidable that, for the foreseeable future, systems biology researchers are likely to continue using multiple packages to carry out their work. In this chapter, we describe the ERATO Systems Biology Workbench (SBW) and the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), two related efforts directed at the problems of software package interoperability. The goal of the SBW project is to create an integrated, easy-to-use software environment that enables sharing of models and resources between simulation and analysis tools for systems biology. SBW uses a modular, plug-in architecture that permits easy introduction of new components. SBML is a proposed standard XML-based language for representing models communicated between software packages; it is used as the format of models communicated between components in SBW

A framework for representing, building and reusing novel atate-of-the-art three-dimensional object detection models in point clouds targeting self-driving applications

The rapid development of deep learning has brought novel methodologies for 3D object detection using LiDAR sensing technology. These improvements in precision and inference speed performances lead to notable high performance and real-time inference, which is especially important for self-driving purposes. However, the developments carried by these approaches overwhelm the research process in this area since new methods, technologies and software versions lead to different project necessities, specifications and requirements. Moreover, the improvements brought by the new methods may be due to improvements in newer versions of deep learning frameworks and not just the novelty and innovation of the model architecture. Thus, it has become crucial to create a framework with the same software versions, specifications and requirements that accommodate all these methodologies and allow for the easy introduction of new methods and models. A framework is proposed that abstracts the implementation, reusing and building of novel methods and models. The main idea is to facilitate the representation of state-of-the-art (SoA) approaches and simultaneously encourage the implementation of new approaches by reusing, improving and innovating modules in the proposed framework, which has the same software specifications to allow for a fair comparison. This makes it possible to determine if the key innovation approach outperforms the current SoA by comparing models in a framework with the same software specifications and requirements.This work has been supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020 and the project “Integrated and Innovative Solutions for the well-being of people in complex urban centers” within the Project Scope NORTE-01-0145-FEDER 000086. The work of Pedro Oliveira was supported by the doctoral Grant PRT/BD/154311/2022 financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and with funds from European Union, under MIT Portugal Program. The work of Paulo Novais and Dalila Durães is supported by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project 2022.06822.PTDC

Recovering Sequence Diagrams from Object-oriented Code

Software modernization is a current research area in the software industry intended to transform an existing software system to a new one satisfying new demands. The initiative Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM) helps software developers in tackling reverse engineering, software evolution and, software modernization in general. To support modernization problems, the ADM Task Force has defined a set of metamodels such as KDM (Knowledge Discovery Metamodel), being the Eclipse-MDT MoDisco project the official support for software modernization. We propose the application of ADM principles to provide relevant model-based views on legacy systems. We describe a framework to reverse engineering models from object-oriented code. In this context, we show how to recover UML sequence diagrams from Java code. We validate our approach by using ADM standards and MoDisco platform. Our research can be considered a contribution to the MoDisco community; MoDisco does not support reverse engineering of sequence diagrams and, on the other hand, the MoDisco KDM Discover was used and enriched to obtain the required information for recovering interaction diagrams

London SynEx Demonstrator Site: Impact Assessment Report

The key ingredients of the SynEx-UCL software components are: 1. A comprehensive and federated electronic healthcare record that can be used to reference or to store all of the necessary healthcare information acquired from a diverse range of clinical databases and patient-held devices. 2. A directory service component to provide a core persons demographic database to search for and authenticate staff users of the system and to anchor patient identification and connection to their federated healthcare record. 3. A clinical record schema management tool (Object Dictionary Client) that enables clinicians or engineers to define and export the data sets mapping to individual feeder systems. 4. An expansible set of clinical management algorithms that provide prompts to the patient or clinician to assist in the management of patient care. CHIME has built up over a decade of experience within Europe on the requirements and information models that are needed to underpin comprehensive multiprofessional electronic healthcare records. The resulting architecture models have influenced new European standards in this area, and CHIME has designed and built prototype EHCR components based on these models. The demonstrator systems described here utilise a directory service and object-oriented engineering approach, and support the secure, mobile and distributed access to federated healthcare records via web-based services. The design and implementation of these software components has been founded on a thorough analysis of the clinical, technical and ethico-legal requirements for comprehensive EHCR systems, published through previous project deliverables and in future planned papers. The clinical demonstrator site described in this report has provided the solid basis from which to establish "proof of concept" verification of the design approach, and a valuable opportunity to install, test and evaluate the results of the component engineering undertaken during the EC funded project. Inevitably, a number of practical implementation and deployment obstacles have been overcome through this journey, each of those having contributed to the time taken to deliver the components but also to the richness of the end products. UCL is fortunate that the Whittington Hospital, and the department of cardiovascular medicine in particular, is committed to a long-term vision built around this work. That vision, outlined within this report, is shared by the Camden and Islington Health Authority and by many other purchaser and provider organisations in the area, and by a number of industrial parties. They are collectively determined to support the Demonstrator Site as an ongoing project well beyond the life of the EC SynEx Project. This report, although a final report as far as the EC project is concerned, is really a description of the first phase in establishing a centre of healthcare excellence. New EC Fifth Framework project funding has already been approved to enable new and innovative technology solutions to be added to the work already established in north London

Thermal simulation using BIM a case study: Tunisian traditional dwelling

Traditional architecture is adapted to the cultural and climatic environment. It was able to respond to the conditions of minimal comfort of its inhabitants. This architecture contains centuries of knowledge to encourage researchers to make out its secret and evaluate its energy efficiency. In Tunisian context, pioneering work analysis concerning traditional houses, have shown that comfort conditions were acceptable during the hot season and mediocre during the cold season. Other studies have shown that this kind of architecture was able to respond to winter and summer climate requirements, but especially in the summer period, in coherence with the lifestyle of residents. Several study models concerning the thermal behavior of buildings are found in the literature. These models use software for simulating stationary regime or transient. Each program has its own interface and its own modeling engine, calculation and analysis, as TRNSYS (Transient System Simulation Tool) and EnergyPlus. For the simulation, we opted for sustainable software that allows architects and engineers to collaborate and interoperate more efficiently based on workflow and project requirements. The use solution is the BIM (Building Information Modeling) of Autodesk Revit that allows coordination throughout the design project. Our paper examines the effectiveness of promising new technology BIM in the thermal simulation of traditional Tunisian architecture bioclimatic. Research has showed the importance of BIM technology in the workflow and is efficiency to determine the energy performance of buildings with passive design and to evaluate their energy consumption. Revit gives interesting results for the standard contemporary home. As far as it knows, there are no studies on the traditional bioclimatic house or vernacular character using BIM technology for simulate this type of habitat. In this paper, we propose to use Revit to study the thermal behavior of the Tunisian traditional home.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Controlling Concurrent Change - A Multiview Approach Toward Updatable Vehicle Automation Systems

The development of SAE Level 3+ vehicles [{SAE}, 2014] poses new challenges not only for the functional development, but also for design and development processes. Such systems consist of a growing number of interconnected functional, as well as hardware and software components, making safety design increasingly difficult. In order to cope with emergent behavior at the vehicle level, thorough systems engineering becomes a key requirement, which enables traceability between different design viewpoints. Ensuring traceability is a key factor towards an efficient validation and verification of such systems. Formal models can in turn assist in keeping track of how the different viewpoints relate to each other and how the interplay of components affects the overall system behavior. Based on experience from the project Controlling Concurrent Change, this paper presents an approach towards model-based integration and verification of a cause effect chain for a component-based vehicle automation system. It reasons on a cross-layer model of the resulting system, which covers necessary aspects of a design in individual architectural views, e.g. safety and timing. In the synthesis stage of integration, our approach is capable of inserting enforcement mechanisms into the design to ensure adherence to the model. We present a use case description for an environment perception system, starting with a functional architecture, which is the basis for componentization of the cause effect chain. By tying the vehicle architecture to the cross-layer integration model, we are able to map the reasoning done during verification to vehicle behavior

User engineering: A new look at system engineering

User Engineering is a new System Engineering perspective responsible for defining and maintaining the user view of the system. Its elements are a process to guide the project and customer, a multidisciplinary team including hard and soft sciences, rapid prototyping tools to build user interfaces quickly and modify them frequently at low cost, and a prototyping center for involving users and designers in an iterative way. The main consideration is reducing the risk that the end user will not or cannot effectively use the system. The process begins with user analysis to produce cognitive and work style models, and task analysis to produce user work functions and scenarios. These become major drivers of the human computer interface design which is presented and reviewed as an interactive prototype by users. Feedback is rapid and productive, and user effectiveness can be measured and observed before the system is built and fielded. Requirements are derived via the prototype and baselined early to serve as an input to the architecture and software design

ICE-TheOREM - End to End Semantically Aware eResearch Infrastructure for Theses

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PresentationsDate: 2009-05-19 10:00 AM – 11:30 AMICE-TheOREM was a project which made several important contributions to the repository domain, promoting deposit by integrating the repository with authoring workflows and enhancing open access, by adding new infrastructure to allow fine-grained embargo management within an institution without impacting on existing open access repository infrastructure. In the area of scholarly communications workflows, the project produced a complete end-to-end demonstration of eScholarship for word processor users, with tools for authoring, managing and disseminating semantically-rich thesis documents fully integrated with supporting data. This work is focused on theses, as it is well understood that early career researchers are the most likely to lead the charge in new innovations in scholarly publishing and dissemination models. The authoring tools are built on the ICE content management system, which allows authors to work within a word processing system (as most authors do) with easy-to-use toolbars to structure and format their documents. The ICE system manages both small data files and links to larger data sets. The result is research publication which are available not just as paper-ready PDF files but as fully interactive semantically aware web documents which can be disseminated via repository software such as ePrints, DSpace and Fedora as complete supported web-native One the technological side, ICE-TheOREM implemented the Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) protocol to integrate between a content management system, a thesis management system and multiple repository software packages and looked at ways to describe aggregate objects which include both data and documents, which can be generalized to domains other than chemistry. ICE-TheOREM has demonstrated how focusing on the use of the web architecture (including ORE) enables repository functions to be distributed between systems for complex, data-rich compound objects.UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC