Process Support for Cooperative Work on the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is becoming a dominating factor in information technology. Consequently, computer supported cooperative work on the Web has recently drawn a lot of attention. “Process Support for Cooperative Work” (PSCW) is a Web based system supporting both structured and unstructured forms of cooperation. It is a combination of the “Basic Support for Cooperative Work” (BSCW) shared workspace system and the Merlin Process Support Environment. The current PSCW prototype offers a loose connection, in effect extending BSCW with a gateway to Merlin. With this prototype we have successfully addressed the technical issues involved; further integration of functionality should not pose any real problems. We focus on the technical side of the PSCW system, which gives a good insight into the issues that have to be addressed generally in the construction of Web based groupware

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Serious gaming in flood risk management

Serious gaming is increasingly used to explore important real-world problems and a growing number of serious games are addressing flood-related issues. However, there has been limited synthesis of these attempts and their contributions to the ongoing shift toward a more holistic and governance-based flood resilience perspective in flood risk management (FRM). This international review collates and analyses these attempts in order to develop a knowledge base of serious gaming in the field of FRM. It contains 37 games that were developed with different rationales that include engaging players in the topic of FRM, supporting practice by exploring future options through collaboration, improving communication of FRM, as educational tools, and to collect research data. The gameplay countries and player characteristics, game characteristics, relevance to FRM, game rationales, and collection of data are explored in this paper. Identified serious games provided an unconventional and entertaining approach to engage stakeholders on flood-related issues. The review analyzed the serious games in light of the shift toward flood resilience and identified limitations in the documentation of serious games and their potential in understanding the longer-term impacts of gameplay on players. Furthermore, the vast majority of reviewed games were played in a single country and missed out on understanding the cultural production and perspectives of FRM that could support cross-cultural learning and inspiration for future FRM strategies. Overall, the review identified an important role for serious games in the shift toward governance and the adoption of more holistic flood resilience perspectives. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Human Water > Methods Science of Water > Water Extremes

Developing BP-driven web application through the use of MDE techniques

Model driven engineering (MDE) is a suitable approach for performing the construction of software systems (in particular in the Web application domain). There are different types of Web applications depending on their purpose (i.e., document-centric, interactive, transactional, workflow/business process-based, collaborative, etc). This work focusses on business process-based Web applications in order to be able to understand business processes in a broad sense, from the lightweight business processes already addressed by existing proposals to long-running asynchronous processes. This work presents a MDE method for the construction of systems of this type. The method has been designed in two steps following the MDE principles. In the first step, the system is represented by means of models in a technology-independent manner. These models capture the different aspects of Web-based systems (these aspects refer to behaviour, structure, navigation, and presentation issues). In the second step, the model transformations (both model-to- model and model-to-text) are applied in order to obtain the final system in terms of a specific technology. In addition, a set ofEclipse-based tools has been developed to provide automation in the application of the proposed method in order to validate the proposal.Torres Bosch, MV.; Giner Blasco, P.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2012). Developing BP-driven web application through the use of MDE techniques. Software and Systems Modeling. 11(4):609-631. doi:10.1007/s10270-010-0177-5S609631114Andrews, T., Curbera, F., Dholakia, H., Goland, Y., Klein, J., Leymann, F., Liu, K., Roller, D., Smith, D., Thatte, S., Trickovic, I., Weerawarana, S.: Business process execution language for Web services version 1.1 (May 2003)Barna, P., Frasincar, F., Houben, G.J.: A workow-driven design of Web information systems. In: Wolber, D., Calder, N., Brooks, C., Ginige, A. (eds.) ICWE, ACM, pp. 321–328Bakshi, K., Karger, D.R.: Semantic Web applications. In: Proceedings of the ISWC 2005 Workshop on End User Semantic Web Interaction (November 2005)Brambilla M., Ceri S., Fraternali P., Manolescu I.: Process modeling in Web applications. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. 15(4), 360–409 (2006)Brambilla, M., Preciado, J.C., Trigueros, M.L., Sánchez-Figueroa F.: Business process-based conceptual design of rich internet applications. In: ICWE, pp. 155–161 (2008)Brambilla, M., Butti, S., Fraternali, P.: Webratio bpm: a tool for designing and deploying business processes on the Web. In: ICWE, pp. 415–429 (2010)Business process modeling notation (BPMN). OMG final adopted specification. dtc/06-02-01 (February 2006)Ceri, S., Fraternali, P., Bongio, A.: Web modeling language (Webml): a modeling language for designing Web sites. In: Proceedings of the 9th international World Wide Web conference on Computer networks : the international journal of computer and telecommunications networking, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 137–157. North-Holland Publishing Co., The Netherlands (2000)Davis J.: Open Source SOA. Manning Publications Co, Greenwich (2009)Distante, D.: Reengineering legacy applications and Web transactions: an extended version of the UWA transaction design model. Ph.D. thesis, University of Lecce, Italy (2004)Distante D., Rossi G., Canfora G., Tilley S.R.: A comprehensive design model for integrating business processes in Web applications. Int. J. Web Eng. Technol. 3(1), 43–72 (2007)Duhl, J.: Rich internet applications. Technical report, IDC (November 2003)Fons, J.: OOWS: A model driven method for the development of web applications. Ph.D. thesis, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (2008)Fons, J., Pelechano, V., Pastor, O., Valderas, P., Torres, V.: Applying the OOWS model-driven approach for developing web applications. The internet movie database case study. In: Web Engineering: Modelling and Implementing Web Applications. Human–Computer Interaction Series, pp. 65–108. Springer, London (2008)Fowler, M.: Inversion of control containers and the dependency injection pattern. http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html (January 2004)Gershenfeld N., Krikorian R., Cohen D.: The internet of things. Sci Am 291(4), 76–81 (2004)Giner P., Cetina C., Fons J., Pelechano V.: Developing mobile business processes for the internet of things. IEEE Pervasive Comput. 9, 18–26 (2010)Gómez J., Cachero C., Pastor O.: Extending a conceptual modelling approach to Web application design. In: Wangler, B., Bergman, L. (eds) CAiSE. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1789, pp. 79–93. Springer, London (2000)Goth G.: The task-based interface: not your father’s desktop. IEEE Software 26(6), 88–91 (2009)Holmes, T., Tran, H., Zdun, U., Dustdar, S.: Modeling human aspects of business processes—a view-based, model-driven approach. In: ECMDA-FA, pp. 246–261 (2008)Kappel, G., Pröll, B., Reich, S., Retschitzegger, W. (eds): Web Engineering—The Discipline of Systematic Development of Web Applications. Wiley, England (2006)Koch, N.: Software Engineering for Adaptive Hypermedia Systems: Reference Model, Modeling Techniques and Development Process. Ph.D. thesis, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany (2001)Koch N., Kraus A., Cachero C., Meliá S.: Integration of business processes in Web application models. J. Web Eng. 3(1), 22–49 (2004)Limbourg, Q., Vanderdonckt, J.: Usixml: a user interface description language supporting multiple levels of independence. In: ICWE Workshops, pp. 325–338 (2004)Linaje M., Preciado J.C., Sánchez-Figueroa F.: Engineering rich internet application user interfaces over legacy Web models. IEEE Internet Comput. 11(6), 53–59 (2007)Link, S., Hoyer, P., Schuster, T., Abeck, S.: Model-driven development of human tasks for workflows. In: ICSEA ‘08: Proceedings of the 2008 third international conference on software engineering advances, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 329–335. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2008)Marcos, E., Cáceres, P., Castro, V. D.: An approach for navigation model construction from the use cases model. In: CAiSE Forum. Held in conjunction with the 16th Conference On Advanced Information Systems Engineering (June 2004)Pietschmann, S., Voigt, M., Meissner, K.: Adaptive rich user interfaces for human interaction in business processes. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering (WISE 2009), WISE, pp. 351–364. 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In: MoDELS, pp. 226–240 (2007)Tedre M.: What should be automated?. Interactions 15(5), 47–49 (2008)Torres, V., Giner, P., Bonet, B., Pelechano, V.: Adapting BPMN to Public Administration. In: Proceedings BPMN 2010 Springer’s Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP). Postdam, Germany (to appear)Troyer, O.D., Casteleyn, S.: Modeling complex processes for Web applications using wsdm. In: Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Web-Oriented Software Technologies (held in conjunction with ICWE2003), IWWOST2003 (2003

E-rulemaking: Information Technology and the Regulatory Process: New Directions in Digital Government Research

Electronic rulemaking, or e-rulemaking, offers the potential to overcome some of the informational challenges associated with developing regulations. E-rulemaking refers to the use of digital technologies in the development and implementation of regulations. The use of these technologies may help streamline and improve regulatory management, such as by helping agency staff retrieve and analyze vast quantities of information from diverse sources. By taking better advantage of advances in digital technologies, agencies might also be able to increase the public\u27s access to and involvement in rulemaking. Part I of this article details the rulemaking process, outlining the procedures agencies must currently follow in developing new regulations and highlighting some of the problems generally associated with rulemaking. Part II considers ways that information technology may be able to improve the rulemaking process, as well as discusses some of the chief goals, choices, and challenges associated with e-rulemaking. Part III presents a cross-disciplinary agenda for research intended to contribute to e-rulemaking\u27s long-term potential for improving government regulation and enhancing the management and legitimacy of the rulemaking process

Performance and security tradeoffs of provable website traffic fingerprinting defenses over Tor

The Internet has become an integral part of modern life. At the same time, as we spend increasingly more time online, our digital trails, including the identities of the websites we visit, can reveal sensitive personal information. As a result, researchers have devised schemes that seek to enable users to obfuscate the network traffic fingerprints of the websites they visit; however, being ad hoc attempts, these schemes have all been later found to be ineffective against more sophisticated attacks. Thus, researchers have recently proposed a family of provable defenses called BuFLO, or Buffered Fixed-Length Obfuscator, that provides strong privacy guarantees at the expense of high overhead. Orthogonal to these defenses, the popular Tor anonymity network provides some protection against these attacks but is nonetheless susceptible. In this dissertation, we propose a simple design that uses BuFLO to protect web browsing traffic over Tor: tunnel the BuFLO channel through Tor. In order to evaluate the design, for both live experiments as well as large-scale simulations, we need precise models of the traffic profiles generated by a browser's visiting websites. This in turn requires us to obtain a fine-grained model of the web page loading process, two key components of which are the browser and the web page. After diving into the immensely complex web page loading process, we instrument the browser in order to extract bits of information as it loads a web page; this enables us to obtain the models for 50 top Alexa-ranked global websites. Following that, we build a traffic generator framework to generate network traffic according to the models. Next, we design and implement from scratch CS-Tamaraw, a congestion-sensitive version of Tamaraw, the most secure member of the BuFLO family. With all the pieces in hand, we perform live experiments to confirm that CS-Tamaraw provides the predicted gains in privacy as in the original study. However, when CS-Tamaraw is tunneled through Tor as we propose, its defense degrades significantly. We then conduct experiments to determine whether CS-Tamaraw is at fault. Both CS-Tamaraw and a simple, barebone, application-layer defense work largely as expected without Tor but are similarly afflicted when tunneled through Tor. Further investigations suggest that the unexpected results are due to artifacts in network conditions and not due to flaws in the design or implementation of CS-Tamaraw. We end after discussing the large-scale simulation studies with various levels of adoption of CS-Tamaraw

Software release and deployment at Exact: a case study report

For vendors of product software it is becoming more and more difficult to manage and control the software configurations of all their users at the customer\'s site. It is labour intensive and error-prone to (semi)automatically register detailed lists of the software artefacts in use by each customer. To alleviate this problem the Deliver project proposes an Intelligent Software Knowledge Base that contains all facts about all artefacts together with their relevant attributes, relations and constraints. In this way, high-quality software configurations can be calculated automatically from a small set of key parameters. It also becomes possible to pose what-if questions about necessary or future upgrades of a customer\'s configuration. This document describes a case study performed at Exact Software into the processes of release and deployment. The results of the case study are presented, existing of process descriptions of the development, release and deployment processes at Exact Software, a comparison to the Intelligent Software Knowledge Base, and an analysis of the result

Organic Chemistry in Virtual Reality: Bridging Gaps between Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Representations

The traditional two-dimensional representations in organic chemistry education highlighted the lack of depth and interactivity, impeding student learning, engagement, and comprehension. By emphasizing on the limitations of conventional educational materials, the research advocated for integrating Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, which enhance organic chemistry visualization. The main objective was to bridge the gap between two and three-dimensional perspectives, offering a more dynamic and interactive learning experience. The thesis aimed to assess traditional teaching methods in organic chemistry—lectures, textbooks, and laboratory exercises. It also aimed to identify their challenges in conveying complex molecular structures and reactions effectively. Additionally, it explored the integration of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) with these conventional methods. The goal had been to develop a cohesive educational framework that combined the strengths of both traditional and modern technological approaches. This blended learning model was meant to improve student engagement and understanding by incorporating dynamic visualizations into lectures as well as interactive content into textbooks. Building on this premise, the research focused on the following questions: 1. What challenges do traditional teaching methods face in teaching organic chemistry concepts adequately? 2. What advantages do VR and AR offer in organic chemistry education compared to traditional methods? 3. What impact do VR and AR technologies have on student engagement in organic chemistry compared to traditional teaching methods? 4. How can VR and AR be tailored to meet pedagogical and andragogical needs in organic chemistry education? 5. Why are VR and AR more effective than traditional methods in enhancing learning in organic chemistry? 6. What are the best strategies for integrating VR and AR into the organic chemistry curricula to enhance learning alongside traditional methods? 7. How can AR and VR in organic chemistry education be aligned with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development to improve learning outcomes? 8. How can AR and VR be personalized in organic chemistry education to support individual learning and Piaget\u27s theory of self-learning? 9. What are the benefits and challenges of applying the \u27Ship Early, Ship Often\u27 approach to developing AR and VR tools in organic chemistry education? Upon the completion of this research, a literature review was conducted additionally as well as visual and content analyses. Based upon the research conducted, a visual solution was created to guide curriculum developers, textbook publishers, researchers, and educators in integrating VR and AR technologies into traditional organic chemistry curricula. The deliverable theory of the visual was a high-fidelity wireframe prototype created for VR and AR in Organic Chemistry, designed to enhance student engagement and understanding by combining immersive technology with traditional teaching methods. The project also featured a responsive website to inform stakeholders about the benefits of this integration, supported by print media like brochures, posters, and billboards for broader outreach and awareness. The high-fidelity wireframe prototype with the responsive website and supporting print media, were crucial elements in reshaping organic chemistry education, bridging the gap between traditional pedagogy and andragogy as well as futuristic learning paradigms

Differential Fuzzing the WebAssembly

WebAssembly, colloquially known as Wasm, is a specification for an intermediate representation that is suitable for the web environment, particularly in the client-side. It provides a machine abstraction and hardware-agnostic instruction sets, where a high-level programming language can target the compilation to the Wasm instead of specific hardware architecture. The JavaScript engine implements the Wasm specification and recompiles the Wasm instruction to the target machine instruction where the program is executed. Technically, Wasm is similar to a popular virtual machine bytecode, such as Java Virtual Machine (JVM) or Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). There are two major implementations of Wasm, correlated with the two most popular web browsers in the market. These two are the V8 engine by Chromium project and the SpiderMonkey engine by Mozilla. Wasm does not mandate a specific implementation over its specification. Therefore, both engines may employ different mechanisms to apply the specification. These different implementations may open a research question: are both engines implementing the Wasm specification equally? In this thesis, we are going to explore the internal implementation of the JavaScript engine in regards to the Wasm specification. We experimented using a differential fuzzing technique, in which we test two JavaScript engines with a randomly generated Wasm program and compares its behavior. We executed the experiment to identify any anomalous behavior, which then we analyzed and identified the root cause of the different behavior. This thesis covers the WebAssembly specification extensively. It discusses several foundational knowledge about the specification that is currently lacking in references. This thesis also presents the instrumentation made to the JavaScript engine to perform the experiment, which can be a foundation to perform a similar experiment. Finally, this thesis analyzes the identified anomaly found in the experiment through reverse engineering techniques, such as static and dynamic analysis, combined with white-box analysis to the JavaScript engine source code. In this experiment, we discovered a different behavior of the JavaScript engine that is observable from the perspective of the Wasm program. We created a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the different behavior that can be executed in the recent web browser up to the writing of this thesis. This experiment also evaluated the implementation of both JavaScript engine on the Wasm specification to conclude that both engines implement the specification faithfully