A WS-Agreement Extension for Specifying Temporal Properties in SLAS

Service level agreements (SLA) in service oriented architectures allow to regulate the service trading from providers to consumers. So SLAs must describe the agreement properties in a precise manner. WS-Agreement proposes a standard for describing SLAs to specify “which” service will offer and “how” it is offered. However there is another important question about services which is “when”. Temporality affects orthogonally to all aspects of a SLA (i.e. the entire SLA, functional or non-functional properties) and it is necessary to express more precisely the SLAs. WSAgreement identifies the necessity of specifying temporality on agreement terms but it does not describe how temporality must be expressed and, to the best of our knowledge, there is no extension of WS-Agreement that deals with that problem. Therefore we propose to extend the standard with a temporal XML schema to describe several validity periods that could be disjoint, non-disjoint, and/or periodical

Building an Integrated Enhanced Virtual Research Environment Metadata Catalogue

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to boost multidisciplinary research by the building of an integrated catalogue or research assets metadata. Such an integrated catalogue should enable researchers to solve problems or analyse phenomena that require a view across several scientific domains. Design/methodology/approach There are two main approaches for integrating metadata catalogues provided by different e-science research infrastructures (e-RIs): centralised and distributed. The authors decided to implement a central metadata catalogue that describes, provides access to and records actions on the assets of a number of e-RIs participating in the system. The authors chose the CERIF data model for description of assets available via the integrated catalogue. Analysis of popular metadata formats used in e-RIs has been conducted, and mappings between popular formats and the CERIF data model have been defined using an XML-based tool for description and automatic execution of mappings. Findings An integrated catalogue of research assets metadata has been created. Metadata from e-RIs supporting Dublin Core, ISO 19139, DCAT-AP, EPOS-DCAT-AP, OIL-E and CKAN formats can be integrated into the catalogue. Metadata are stored in CERIF RDF in the integrated catalogue. A web portal for searching this catalogue has been implemented. Research limitations/implications Only five formats are supported at this moment. However, description of mappings between other source formats and the target CERIF format can be defined in the future using the 3M tool, an XML-based tool for describing X3ML mappings that can then be automatically executed on XML metadata records. The approach and best practices described in this paper can thus be applied in future mappings between other metadata formats. Practical implications The integrated catalogue is a part of the eVRE prototype, which is a result of the VRE4EIC H2020 project. Social implications The integrated catalogue should boost the performance of multi-disciplinary research; thus it has the potential to enhance the practice of data science and so contribute to an increasingly knowledge-based society. Originality/value A novel approach for creation of the integrated catalogue has been defined and implemented. The approach includes definition of mappings between various formats. Defined mappings are effective and shareable.Published929-9514IT. Banche datiJCR Journa

Modellierung, Bewertung und Evolution von XML-Dokumentkollektionen

In dieser Arbeit werden Methoden zum Entwurf und zur Evolution von XML-Schemata vorgestellt. XML-Anwendungen sind zu komplex, um direkt mit einer Schemasprache entworfen zu werden, Entwurfsverfahren für XML sind deshalb notwendig. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird dazu ein konzeptionelles Modell und eine Entwurfsmethodik entwickelt, aus dem konzeptionellen Modell können XML-Schemata erzeugt werden, das Reverse-Engineering ist ebenfalls möglich. Das Modell realisiert eine modulbasierte Herangehensweise beim Entwurf, dadurch kann eine komplexe Anwendung unterteilt werden, die Wiederverwendung vorhandener Komponenten wird ebenfalls unterstützt. XML-Dokumentkollektionen müssen wie alle Arten von Software gewartet werden, ein Update der Daten und Inhalte reicht dabei nicht aus, auch Schemaänderungen müssen möglich sein. In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, wie XML-Schemata weiterentwickelt werden können und welche Anpassungen erfolgen müssen, damit die Gültigkeit der dem Schema zugeordneten XML-Dokumente gewährleistet bleibt. Es ist möglich, die Schemaevolution durch Entwurfsschritte auf dem konzeptionellen Modell zu beschreiben, wie das erfolgt und welche Teil\-aufgaben dabei realisiert werden, wird in der Arbeit vorgestellt. Ein Vergleich über verschiedene Evolutionsverfahren wird in dieser Arbeit ebenfalls gegeben. Große Anteile der Arbeit wurden in einem Werkzeug CoDEX (Conceptual Design and Evolution of XML schemas) implementiert, dadurch wird eine durchgängige Unterstützung von Design und Redesign von XML-Anwendungen erreicht