Applying SDBC in the Cultural-Heritage Sector

An actual cultural-heritage-related problem is how to effectively manage the global distribution of digitized cultural and scientific information, taking into account that such a global distribution is only doable through the Internet. Hence, adequately designing software applications realizing brokerage functionality in the global space, particularly concerning digitized cultural/scientific information, is to be considered as an essential cultural-heritage-related task. However, due to its great complexity, the usage of the existing popular modelling instrumentarium seems insufficiently useful; this is mainly because the realization of a satisfactory cultural-heritage brokering requires a deep understanding and consideration of the original business reality. Inspired by this challenge, we have aimed at exploring relevant strengths of the SDBC approach which is currently being developed. SDBC’s being capable of properly aligning business process modelling and software specification, allowing for re-use and being consistent with the latest software design standards, are among the facts in support of the claim that SDBC could bring value concerning the design of cultural-heritage-related brokerage applications. Hence, in this paper we motivate and illustrate the usefulness of SDBC for the cultural-heritage sector

Deploying elastic routing capability in an SDN/NFV-enabled environment

SDN and NFV are two paradigms that introduce unseen flexibility in telecom networks. Where previously telecom services were provided by dedicated hardware and associated (vendor-specific) protocols, SDN enables to control telecom networks through specialized software running on controllers. NFV enables highly optimized packet-processing network functions to run on generic/multi-purpose hardware such as x86 servers. Although the possibilities of SDN and NFV are well-known, concrete control and orchestration architectures are still under design and few prototype validations are available. In this demo we demonstrate the dynamic up-and downscaling of an elastic router supporting NFV-based network management, for example needed in a VPN service. The framework which enables this elasticity is the UNIFY ESCAPE environment, which is a PoC following an ETSI NFV MANO-conform architecture. This demo is one of the first to demonstrate a fully closed control loop for scaling NFs in an SDN/NFV control and orchestration architecture

Prototyping Virtual Data Technologies in ATLAS Data Challenge 1 Production

For efficiency of the large production tasks distributed worldwide, it is essential to provide shared production management tools comprised of integratable and interoperable services. To enhance the ATLAS DC1 production toolkit, we introduced and tested a Virtual Data services component. For each major data transformation step identified in the ATLAS data processing pipeline (event generation, detector simulation, background pile-up and digitization, etc) the Virtual Data Cookbook (VDC) catalogue encapsulates the specific data transformation knowledge and the validated parameters settings that must be provided before the data transformation invocation. To provide for local-remote transparency during DC1 production, the VDC database server delivered in a controlled way both the validated production parameters and the templated production recipes for thousands of the event generation and detector simulation jobs around the world, simplifying the production management solutions.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 5 pages, 3 figures, pdf. PSN TUCP01

SOA-Driven Business-Software Alignment

The alignment of business processes and their supporting application software is a major concern during the initial software design phases. This paper proposes a design approach addressing this problem of business-software alignment. The approach takes an initial business model as a basis in deriving refined models that target a service-oriented software implementation. The approach explicitly identifies a software modeling level at which software modules are represented as services in a technology-platformindependent way. This model-driven service-oriented approach has the following properties: (i) there is a forced alignment (consistency) between business processes and supporting applications; (ii) changes in the business environment can be traced to the application and vice versa, via model relationships; (iii) the software modules modeled as services have a high degree of autonomy; (iv) migration to new technology platforms can be supported through the platform independent software model

Data Services in Academic Libraries – What Strange Beast Is This?

Data services, though a longstanding specialization, is a fast-growing and in-demand niche in the academic librarian job market. That said, it is still somewhat of a mystery to many outside of a small circle in academic librarianship. This essay attempts to remedy this mystification. The author gives an overview of data services librarianship, using examples from her San José State University INFO 220-12 class, “Data Services in Libraries,” to illustrate the core aspects and activities of this specialization in academic libraries. In so doing, she elucidates how this specialization is at once a natural extension of established roles for academic librarians and also an opportunity for librarians to expand their roles for increased relevancy in the higher education research enterprise

Personal Volunteer Computing

We propose personal volunteer computing, a novel paradigm to encourage technical solutions that leverage personal devices, such as smartphones and laptops, for personal applications that require significant computations, such as animation rendering and image processing. The paradigm requires no investment in additional hardware, relying instead on devices that are already owned by users and their community, and favours simple tools that can be implemented part-time by a single developer. We show that samples of personal devices of today are competitive with a top-of-the-line laptop from two years ago. We also propose new directions to extend the paradigm