Formal Object Interaction Language: Modeling and Verification of Sequential and Concurrent Object-Oriented Software

As software systems become larger and more complex, developers require the ability to model abstract concepts while ensuring consistency across the entire project. The internet has changed the nature of software by increasing the desire for software deployment across multiple distributed platforms. Finally, increased dependence on technology requires assurance that designed software will perform its intended function. This thesis introduces the Formal Object Interaction Language (FOIL). FOIL is a new object-oriented modeling language specifically designed to address the cumulative shortcomings of existing modeling techniques. FOIL graphically displays software structure, sequential and concurrent behavior, process, and interaction in a simple unified notation, and has an algebraic representation based on a derivative of the π-calculus. The thesis documents the technique in which FOIL software models can be mathematically verified to anticipate deadlocks, ensure consistency, and determine object state reachability. Scalability is offered through the concept of behavioral inheritance; and, FOIL’s inherent support for modeling concurrent behavior and all known workflow patterns is demonstrated. The concepts of process achievability, process complete achievability, and process determinism are introduced with an algorithm for simulating the execution of a FOIL object model using a FOIL process model. Finally, a technique for using a FOIL process model as a constraint on FOIL object system execution is offered as a method to ensure that object-oriented systems modeled in FOIL will complete their processes based activities. FOIL’s capabilities are compared and contrasted with an extensive array of current software modeling techniques. FOIL is ideally suited for data-aware, behavior based systems such as interactive or process management software

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation

Annotation-based storage and retrieval of models and simulation descriptions in computational biology

This work aimed at enhancing reuse of computational biology models by identifying and formalizing relevant meta-information. One type of meta-information investigated in this thesis is experiment-related meta-information attached to a model, which is necessary to accurately recreate simulations. The main results are: a detailed concept for model annotation, a proposed format for the encoding of simulation experiment setups, a storage solution for standardized model representations and the development of a retrieval concept.Die vorliegende Arbeit widmete sich der besseren Wiederverwendung biologischer Simulationsmodelle. Ziele waren die Identifikation und Formalisierung relevanter Modell-Meta-Informationen, sowie die Entwicklung geeigneter Modellspeicherungs- und Modellretrieval-Konzepte. Wichtigste Ergebnisse der Arbeit sind ein detailliertes Modellannotationskonzept, ein Formatvorschlag für standardisierte Kodierung von Simulationsexperimenten in XML, eine Speicherlösung für Modellrepräsentationen sowie ein Retrieval-Konzept

Advances in Grid Computing

This book approaches the grid computing with a perspective on the latest achievements in the field, providing an insight into the current research trends and advances, and presenting a large range of innovative research papers. The topics covered in this book include resource and data management, grid architectures and development, and grid-enabled applications. New ideas employing heuristic methods from swarm intelligence or genetic algorithm and quantum encryption are considered in order to explain two main aspects of grid computing: resource management and data management. The book addresses also some aspects of grid computing that regard architecture and development, and includes a diverse range of applications for grid computing, including possible human grid computing system, simulation of the fusion reaction, ubiquitous healthcare service provisioning and complex water systems

Process Models for Learning Patterns in FLOSS Repositories

Evidence suggests that Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) environments provide unlimited learning opportunities. Community members engage in a number of activities both during their interaction with their peers and while making use of these environments’ repositories. To date, numerous studies document the existence of learning processes in FLOSS through surveys or by means of questionnaires filled by FLOSS projects participants. At the same time, there is a surge in developing tools and techniques for extracting and analyzing data from different FLOSS data sources that has birthed a new field called Mining Software Repositories (MSR). In spite of these growing tools and techniques for mining FLOSS repositories, there is limited or no existing approaches to providing empirical evidence of learning processes directly from these repositories. Therefore, in this work we sought to trigger such an initiative by proposing an approach based on Process Mining. With this technique, we aim to trace learning behaviors from FLOSS participants’ trails of activities as recorded in FLOSS repositories. We identify the participants as Novices and Experts. A Novice is defined as any FLOSS member that benefits from a learning experience through acquiring new skills while the Expert is the provider of these skills. The significance of our work is mainly twofold. First and foremost, we extend the MSR field by showing the potential of mining FLOSS repositories by applying Process Mining techniques. Lastly, our work provides critical evidence that boosts the understanding of learning behavior in FLOSS communities by analyzing the relevant repositories. In order to accomplish this, we have proposed and implemented a methodology that follows a seven-step approach including developing an appropriate terminology or ontology for learning processes in FLOSS, contextualizing learning processes through a-priori models, generating Event Logs, generating corresponding process models, interpreting and evaluating the value of process discovery, performing conformance analysis and verifying a number of formulated hypotheses with regard to tracing learning patterns in FLOSS communities. The implementation of this approach has resulted in the development of the Ontology of Learning in FLOSS (OntoLiFLOSS) environments that defines the terms needed to describe learning processes in FLOSS as well as providing a visual representation of these processes through Petri net-like Workflow nets. Moreover, another novelty pertains to the mining of FLOSS repositories by defining and describing the preliminaries required for preprocessing FLOSS data before applying Process Mining techniques for analysis. Through a step-by-step process, we effectively detail how the Event Logs are constructed through generating key phrases and making use of Semantic Search. Taking a FLOSS environment called Openstack as our data source, we apply our proposed techniques to identify learning activities based on key phrases catalogs and classification rules expressed through pseudo code as well as the appropriate Process Mining tool. We thus produced Event Logs that are based on the semantic content of messages in Openstack’s Mailing archives, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) messages, Reviews, Bug reports and Source code to retrieve the corresponding activities. Considering these repositories in light of the three learning process phases (Initiation, Progression and maturation), we produced an Event Log for each participant (Novice or Expert) in every phase on the corresponding dataset. Hence, we produced 14 Event Logs that helped build 14 corresponding process maps which are visual representation of the flow occurrence of learning activities in FLOSS for each participant. These process maps provide critical indications that speak volumes in terms of the presence of learning processes in the analyzed repositories. The results show that learning activities do occur at a significant rate during messages exchange on both Mailing archives and IRC messages. The slight differences between the two datasets can be highlighted in two ways. First, the involvement of Experts is more on iv IRC than it is on Mailing archives with 7.22% and 0.36% of Expert involvement respectively on IRC forums and Mailing lists. This can be justified by the differences in the length of messages sent on these two datasets. The average length of sent messages is 3261 characters for an email compared to 60 characters for a chat message. The evidence produced from this mining experiment solidifies the finding in terms of the existence of learning processes in FLOSS as well as the scale at which they occur. While the Initiation phase shows the Novice as the most involved in the start of the learning process, during Progression phase the involvement of the Expert can be seen to be significantly increasing. In order to trace the advanced skills in the Maturation phase, we look at repositories that store data about developing, creating code, examining and reviewing the code, identifying and fixing possible bugs. Therefore, we consider three repositories including Source Code, Bug reports and Reviews. The results obtained in this phase largely justify the choice of these three datasets to track learning behavior at this stage. Both the Bug reports and the Source code demonstrate the commitment of the Novice to seek answers and interact as much as possible in strengthening the acquired skills. With a participation of 49.22% for the Novice against 46.72% for the Expert and 46.19 % against 42.04% respectively on Bug reports and Source code, the Novice still engages significantly in learning. On the last dataset, Reviews, we notice an increase in the Expert’s role. The Expert performs activities to the tune of 40.36 % of total number of activities against 22.17 % for the Novice. The last steps of our methodology steer the comparison of the defined a-priori models with final models that describe how learning processes occur according to the actual behavior from Event Logs. Our attempts to producing process models start with depicting process maps to track the actual behaviour as it occurs in Openstack repositories, before concluding with final Petri net models representative of learning processes in FLOSS as a result of conformance analysis. For every dataset in the corresponding learning phase, we produce 3 process maps respectively depicting the overall learning behaviour for all FLOSS community members (Novice or Expert together), then the Novice and Expert. In total, we produced 21 process maps, empirically describing process models on real data, 14 process models in the form of Petri nets for every participant on each dataset. We make use of the Artificial Immune System (AIS) algorithms to merge the 14 Event Logs that uniquely capture the behaviour of every participant on different datasets in the three phases. We then reanalyze the resulting logs in order to produce 6 global models that inclusively provide a comprehensive depiction of participants’ learning behavior in FLOSS communities. This description hints that Workflow nets introduced as our a-priori models give rather a more simplistic representation of learning processes in FLOSS. Nevertheless, our experiments with Event Logs starting from process discovery to conformance checking from Openstack repositories demonstrate that the real learning behaviors are more complete and most importantly largely submerge these simplistic a-priori models. Finally, our methodology has proved to be effective in both providing a novel alternative for mining FLOSS repositories and providing empirical evidence that describes how knowledge is exchanged in FLOSS environments. Moreover, our results enrich the MSR field by providing a reproducible step-by-step problem solving approach that can be customized to answer subsequent research questions in FLOSS repositories using Process Mining

Communities at a Crossroads. Material semiotics for online sociability in the fade of cyberculture

How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialization of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture\u2019s utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today. Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the \u2018golden age\u2019 of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica\u2019s Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries. Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises

Tracing back Communities. An Analysis of Ars Electronica's Digital Communities archive from an ANT perspective

Since long before the popularization of the Web, community-making has been a significant driving force for the development of the Internet. As a consequence, in mid 1990s online communities became a key object of study at the intersection of social sciences, organizational studies and computer sciences. Today, about fifteen years after these early studies, the concept \u2018online community\u2019 seems to be at stake. As a matter of fact, while communitarian ties enabled by digital media are more and more invocated, in late 2000s the Internet is revealing itself as a much more bureaucratic and profit-oriented domain than ever, to the point that it is not clear whether there exist online ties that are specific enough to be called \u2018communitarian\u2019. In order to analyse such an opaque and unstable object of study as current techno-social assemblages, innovative methods specifically developed to study fuzzy objects have to be devised and some epistemological questions have to be addressed. This research starts indeed from the impasse that the digital communitarian culture is experiencing at the end of the 2000s and borrows some epistemological insights from the Actor-Network Theory. By analyzing the entry forms submitted to the world\u2019s leading competition for digital communities, Prix Ars Electronica, this research thus calls into question some \u2018black-boxed\u2019 concepts like \u2018cyberculture\u2019, \u2018digital revolution\u2019, \u2018empowerment\u2019 and \u2018online community\u2019 itself. On one hand, the results bring into question both leading sociological positions and hype-generated commonplaces. On the other hand, the results offer evidence to those arguments according to which current ICT developments represent the beginning of a new phase of technological enclosure