Semantic model-driven development of service-centric software architectures

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural paradigm that has received much attention. The prevalent focus on platforms such as Web services, however, needs to be complemented by appropriate software engineering methods. We propose the model-driven development of service-centric software systems. We present in particular an investigation into the role of enriched semantic modelling for a modeldriven development framework for service-centric software systems. Ontologies as the foundations of semantic modelling and its enhancement through architectural pattern modelling are at the core of the proposed approach. We introduce foundations and discuss the benefits and also the challenges in this context

Survey and Analysis of Production Distributed Computing Infrastructures

This report has two objectives. First, we describe a set of the production distributed infrastructures currently available, so that the reader has a basic understanding of them. This includes explaining why each infrastructure was created and made available and how it has succeeded and failed. The set is not complete, but we believe it is representative. Second, we describe the infrastructures in terms of their use, which is a combination of how they were designed to be used and how users have found ways to use them. Applications are often designed and created with specific infrastructures in mind, with both an appreciation of the existing capabilities provided by those infrastructures and an anticipation of their future capabilities. Here, the infrastructures we discuss were often designed and created with specific applications in mind, or at least specific types of applications. The reader should understand how the interplay between the infrastructure providers and the users leads to such usages, which we call usage modalities. These usage modalities are really abstractions that exist between the infrastructures and the applications; they influence the infrastructures by representing the applications, and they influence the ap- plications by representing the infrastructures

Reports Of Conferences, Institutes, And Seminars

This quarter\u27s column offers coverage of multiple sessions from the 2016 Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) Conference, held April 3–6, 2016, in Austin, Texas. Topics in serials acquisitions dominate the column, including reports on altmetrics, cost per use, demand-driven acquisitions, and scholarly communications and the use of subscriptions agents; ERMS, access, and knowledgebases are also featured

Design Your Career - Design Your Life

This research investigates the current plague of unemployment and underemployment that nearly half of qualified individuals in the field of Visual Communications are met with after graduation. Students who major in this field dedicate a tremendous amount of time, money, and energy toward developing a broad skillset that resolves critical matters of communication through visual solutions. Research has demonstrated that despite conditions that are subject to ongoing change of economy, industry, and marketplace there are contributing factors that must be addressed to overcome un/underemployment regardless of circumstances. These include an underdeveloped network of professional contacts, deficiency in recognizing or responding to changing conditions, and a limited ability to customize one’s career around their unique specialization. The purpose of this study is to provide students who major in Visual Communications the information and tools needed to incorporate their ability to adapt and problem solve from their skillset into their search for work. To explore this issue, information was gathered through secondary research that involved data from federal databases, case studies, literature review, and secondary research in general. Return on investment for one’s education is measured in consideration of three primary themes: job satisfaction, income, and quality of life, which may provide hopeful opportunity for professionals in Visual Communications to overcome un/underemployment through career customization

Toward Semantics-aware Representation of Digital Business Processes

An extended enterprise (EE) can be described by a set of models each representing a specific aspect of the EE. Aspects can for example be the process flow or the value description. However, different models are done by different people, which may use different terminology, which prevents relating the models. Therefore, we propose a framework consisting of process flow and value aspects and in addition a static domain model with structural and relational components. Further, we outline the usage of the static domain model to enable relating the different aspects

Session Types with Runtime Adaptation: Overview and Examples

In recent work, we have developed a session types discipline for a calculus that features the usual constructs for session establishment and communication, but also two novel constructs that enable communicating processes to be stopped, duplicated, or discarded at runtime. The aim is to understand whether known techniques for the static analysis of structured communications scale up to the challenging context of context-aware, adaptable distributed systems, in which disciplined interaction and runtime adaptation are intertwined concerns. In this short note, we summarize the main features of our session-typed framework with runtime adaptation, and recall its basic correctness properties. We illustrate our framework by means of examples. In particular, we present a session representation of supervision trees, a mechanism for enforcing fault-tolerant applications in the Erlang language.Comment: In Proceedings PLACES 2013, arXiv:1312.221

Report of the user requirements and web based access for eResearch workshops

The User Requirements and Web Based Access for eResearch Workshop, organized jointly by NeSC and NCeSS, was held on 19 May 2006. The aim was to identify lessons learned from e-Science projects that would contribute to our capacity to make Grid infrastructures and tools usable and accessible for diverse user communities. Its focus was on providing an opportunity for a pragmatic discussion between e-Science end users and tool builders in order to understand usability challenges, technological options, community-specific content and needs, and methodologies for design and development. We invited members of six UK e-Science projects and one US project, trying as far as possible to pair a user and developer from each project in order to discuss their contrasting perspectives and experiences. Three breakout group sessions covered the topics of user-developer relations, commodification, and functionality. There was also extensive post-meeting discussion, summarized here. Additional information on the workshop, including the agenda, participant list, and talk slides, can be found online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/685/ Reference: NeSC report UKeS-2006-07 available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2006-07.pd

News Improved: NPR's Transition from Public Radio to Public Media

In 2007, National Public Radio adopted a multiyear plan to increase the organization's digital footprint and begin transforming itself from a public radio company to a public media company. Achieving that transformation required staff members to improve their digital skills and to understand the relevancy of NPR's digital news strategy and structure to their own work. In addition, it required a culture shift in the organization to break down barriers and encourage collaboration between radio and digital staff.NPR initiated the most comprehensive training in its history. Six hundred staff members, including reporters, producers and editors, were taught to write for the Web, create digital products including videos and photographs, and use the latest audio production tools. During the course of that massive effort, funded by a $1.5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, NPR and Knight learned important lessons about conducting effective digital media skills training.These lessons are also relevant to other news organizations as they move from a single platform -- whether audio, print or video -- to a multimedia platform delivered via the Internet. In November 2010, the Knight Foundation retained TCC Group to evaluate the training with an eye toward identifying best practices for both NPR and other journalism enterprises. While the training's goal was to improve NPR's digital content and audience engagement, TCC's evaluation design focused on assessing direct outcomes -- including improvement in individual digital skills, integration of digital media throughout the organization and changes in attitudes toward digital storytelling -- and examining what factors matter most in achieving these outcomes. TCC administered a 360-degree evaluation survey to NPR staff members and conducted in-depth interviews with 18 people.Overall, the evaluation found that the Knight-funded NPR training resulted in a positive shift in individual and organizational attitudes toward digital news. Best practices to improve both individual and organizational outcomes included providing hands-on relevant training, applying it immediately and offering support after the trainin