Design and development of a flexible workflow supply chain system

This paper attempts to suggest a methodology for the design and development of a flexible workflow supply chain (FWSC) system for achieving flexibility to cope with unexpected changes. In particular, a multi-agent approach, which provides the capability to meet the requirement of a FWSC system, is proposed. Such a system is characterized by its capability to cope with the increasing complexity setting of organizations and markets, providing effective information exchange between business partners. The methodology for the design and development of a workflow agent is also covered in this paper. This paper is concerned with the suggestion of a multi-agent methodology, which is able to enhance the effectiveness in terms of the information flow in a supply chain, thereby providing more alternatives and ideas for those researchers who are interested in this field of study.published_or_final_versio

Performance comparison of parallel programming environments for implementing AIAC algorithms

International audienceAIAC algorithms (Asynchronous Iterations Asynchronous Communications) are a particular class of parallel iterative algorithms. Their asynchronous nature makes them more efficient than their synchronous counterparts in numerous cases as has already been shown in previous works. The first goal of this article is to compare several parallel programming environments in order to see if there is one of them which is best suited to efficiently implement AIAC algorithms. The main criterion for this comparison consists in the performances achieved in a global context of grid computing for two classical scientific problems. Nevertheless, we also take into account two secondary criteria which are the ease of programming and the ease of deployment. The second goal of this study is to extract from this comparison the important features that a parallel programming environment must have in order to be suited for the implementation of AIAC algorithms

Internet-Enabled Software Model for Nonlinear Structural Analysis and Simulations

This paper describes an Internet-enabled software model that could facilitate the development and utilization of nonlinear structural analysis programs. The software model allows users easy access to the analysis core program and the analysis results by using a web-browser or other application programs. In addition, new and legacy codes can be incorporated as distributed services and be integrated with the software framework from disparate sites. A distributed project management system, taking advantages of Internet and database technologies, is implemented to store and manage model information and simulation results. Nonlinear dynamic analysis and simulations of a bridge structure is performed to illustrate the facilities of the Internet-enabled software model

UniDA: Uniform Device Access Framework for Human Interaction Environments

Human interaction environments (HIE) must be understood as any place where people carry out their daily life, including their work, family life, leisure and social life, interacting with technology to enhance or facilitate the experience. The integration of technology in these environments has been achieved in a disorderly and incompatible way, with devices operating in isolated islands with artificial edges delimited by the manufacturers. In this paper we are presenting the UniDA framework, an integral solution for the development of systems that require the integration and interoperation of devices and technologies in HIEs. It provides developers and installers with a uniform conceptual framework capable of modelling an HIE, together with a set of libraries, tools and devices to build distributed instrumentation networks with support for transparent integration of other technologies. A series of use case examples and a comparison to many of the existing technologies in the field has been included in order to show the benefits of using UniDA

Look Before You Leap into ERP Implementation: An Object-Oriented Approach to Business Process Modeling

Procedural due diligence is critical for effective adoption and use of enterprise systems. Such procedural review needs to be holistic, capturing both the mechanistic aspects of process workflows as well as the human behavioral influences. Traditional methodologies offer little guidance on how to capture the human dimension of business processes. This article draws upon the Object Oriented (OO) concepts to propose and validate an approach that simultaneously models the content of the process flows and the human behavioral context. The two companies that served as test sites greatly benefited from using this process modeling approach. The analysis results gave these companies—that were on the verge of full-scale Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) implementation—reason to pause and reevaluate their current state of affairs

Embedded middleware for smart camera networks and sensor fusion

Abstract Smart cameras are an interesting research field that has evolved over the last decade. In this chapter we focus on the integration of multiple, potentially heterogeneous, smart cameras into a distributed system for computer vision and sensor fusion. An important aspect for every distributed system is the system-level software, also called middleware. Hence, we discuss the requirements on middleware for distributed smart cameras and the services such a middleware has to provide. In our opinion a middleware following the agent-oriented paradigm allows to build flexible and self-organizing applications that encourage a modular design

Uma infra-estrutura baseada em FT-Corba para o desenvolvimento de aplicações distribuídas confiáveis

Orientador : Elias Procópio Duarte JrDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ParanáResumo: O padrão CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) possibilita a construção de sistemas distribuídos abertos em um modelo orientado a objetos. A especificação para tolerância a falhas do CORBA (FT-CORBA - Fault Tolerant CORBA) tem por objetivo fornecer suporte para aplicações que necessitam de confiabilidade. Neste trabalho apresentamos a implementação de uma infraestrutura baseada em FT-CORBA que permite a construção de aplicações distribuídas confiáveis baseadas em grupos de servidores replicados. Duas abordagens para monitoração das réplicas foram implementadas. Na primeira abordagem, apenas o servidor primário de cada grupo é periodicamente monitorado. Somente em caso de falha da réplica primária a monitoração das demais réplicas é efetuada sendo então um novo servidor primário eleito para o grupo de objetos. Na segunda abordagem, o processo de monitoração é feito periodicamente para todos os objetos de todos os grupos. Uma réplica falha é desconsiderada no momento da eleição de um novo membro primário para um grupo de objetos. Resultados experimentais mostram que a escolha do método de monitoração deve ser feita após uma avaliação do impacto de cada estratégia considerando o número total de réplicas monitoradas, bem como a banda disponível na rede.Abstract: The CORBA Standard (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) allows the construction of open distributed applications based on the object oriented paradigm. The CORBA fault tolerance specification (FT-CORBA - Fault Tolerant CORBA) aims to support applications that need reliability. In this work we present the implementation of an infrastructure based on FT-CORBA that allows the construction of trustworthy distributed applications based on groups of replicated servers. Two monitoring approaches for the replicas were implemented. In the first approach only the primary server of each group is periodically monitored. Only in case of the primary replica being faulty, the other replicas are monitored, and then a new primary server is chosen for the group of objects. In the second approach the monitoring process is performed periodically for all objects of all groups. A faulty replica is dismissed when choosing a new primary member for a group of objects. Experimental results show that the choice of the monitoring method must be made after an evaluation of the impact of each strategy considering the total number of monitored replicas, as well as the network bandwidth

Converting CORBA Based Fault Management to SNMP

Vianhallinta pitää sisällään toimia, joilla havaitaan, eristetään ja korjataan tietoliikenneverkon epänormaaleja toimintoja. ITU-T:n tietoliikenteen hallintaverkkoarkkitehtuuri koostuu viidestä tasosta, joista kaksi alimmaista, elementinhallintataso sekä verkkoelementtitaso, keskittyvät verkkoelementtien hallintaan. Useita protokollia on hyödynnetty vianhallintaan näillä tasoilla. CORBA-pohjainen vianhallinta on ollut yleinen 3GPP:n ratkaisusarjaa hyödyntävissä verkkoelementeissä ja elementinhallintajärjestelmissä. Mutta tietoliikenneteollisuuden siirtyessä kohti all-IP-maailmaa, SNMP on jälleen uudelleen vahvistamassa asemaansa hallitsevana verkkoelementtien monitorointiprotokollana. Täten verkkonsa vianhallinnan yhdenmukaistamista tutkiva verkko-operaattori voisi harkita CORBA-pohjaisten verkkoelementtiensä konvertointia käyttämään SNMP:tä. Tämä työ tutkii tämänkaltaisen konversion edellytyksiä ja yksityiskohtia. Kirjallisuustutkimuksella otetaan selvää vianhallinnan eri puolista ja vertaillaan CORBA:a ja SNMP:tä konvertterin suunnittelua varten. Todiste konversiokonseptin toimivuudesta saadaan yksinkertaistetun implementaation avulla. Implementaatio osoittaa konvertterin olevan melko helposti rakennettavissa, ja että konvertteri voi toimia joko CORBA:n tai SNMP:n toimintaperiaatteella. Konvertteri mahdollistaa vianhallinnan yhdenmukaistamisen lisäämättä huomattavaa viivettä, rasitusta kaistaleveyskäytölle tai kuluttamatta runsaasti muistiresursseja. Tämän työn tulokset antavat aihetta esitettyjen konseptien laajemmalle tutkimukselle, sekä konvertterin laajentamiselle kattamaan konfiguraation hallinnan. Tähän tosin SNMP ei ehkä ole suositelluin protokolla.Fault management involves tasks to enable the detection, isolation and correction of abnormal operation of the telecommunication network. Telecommunications management network architecture of ITU-T consists of five layers, of which the bottom two, the element management layer and the network element layer, are focused on the management of network elements. For fault management tasks at these layers, several protocols have been utilised. CORBA based fault management has been common in network elements and element management systems utilising solution sets of 3GPP. But as the telecommunications industry moves towards an all-IP world, SNMP has yet again become the predominant protocol for monitoring network elements. A network operator looking into unifying the fault management of its network could consider converting the CORBA based network element to using SNMP. This thesis studies the requirements and details of this kind of conversion. With a literary study, aspects of fault management and comparison of CORBA and SNMP are scoped for designing a CORBA-SNMP converter. A proof of concept for the conversion is obtained with a simplified implementation. The implementation shows that a converter is quite easy to construct, and the converter can perform with operating principle of either CORBA or SNMP. The converter is also able to provide fault management unification without adding considerable delay, strain on bandwidth usage or consuming memory resources. The results of this thesis give grounds for studying the proposed concepts further and also broaden the converter to cover configuration management. Though for configuration management SNMP may not be the preferred protocol