Managing contextual information in semantically-driven temporal information systems

Context-aware (CA) systems have demonstrated the provision of a robust solution for personalized information delivery in the current content-rich and dynamic information age we live in. They allow software agents to autonomously interact with users by modeling the user’s environment (e.g. profile, location, relevant public information etc.) as dynamically-evolving and interoperable contexts. There is a flurry of research activities in a wide spectrum at context-aware research areas such as managing the user’s profile, context acquisition from external environments, context storage, context representation and interpretation, context service delivery and matching of context attributes to users‘ queries etc. We propose SDCAS, a Semantic-Driven Context Aware System that facilitates public services recommendation to users at temporal location. This paper focuses on information management and service recommendation using semantic technologies, taking into account the challenges of relationship complexity in temporal and contextual information

Data in Business Process Models. A Preliminary Empirical Study

Traditional activity-centric process modeling languages treat data as simple black boxes acting as input or output for activities. Many alternate and emerging process modeling paradigms, such as case handling and artifact-centric process modeling, give data a more central role. This is achieved by introducing lifecycles and states for data objects, which is beneficial when modeling data-or knowledge-intensive processes. We assume that traditional activity-centric process modeling languages lack the capabilities to adequately capture the complexity of such processes. To verify this assumption we conducted an online interview among BPM experts. The results not only allow us to identify various profiles of persons modeling business processes, but also the problems that exist in contemporary modeling languages w.r.t. The modeling of business data. Overall, this preliminary empirical study confirms the necessity of data-awareness in process modeling notations in general

Engineering Enterprise Software Systems with Interactive UML Models and Aspect-Oriented Middleware

Large scale enterprise software systems are inherently complex and hard to maintain. To deal with this complexity, current mainstream software engineering practices aim at raising the level of abstraction to visual models described in OMG’s UML modeling language. Current UML tools, however, produce static design diagrams for documentation which quickly become out-of-sync with the software, and thus obsolete. To address this issue, current model-driven software development approaches aim at software automation using generators that translate models into code. However, these solutions don’t have a good answer for dealing with legacy source code and the evolution of existing enterprise software systems. This research investigates an alternative solution by making the process of modeling more interactive with a simulator and integrating simulation with the live software system. Such an approach supports model-driven development at a higher-level of abstraction with models without sacrificing the need to drop into a lower-level with code. Additionally, simulation also supports better evolution since the impact of a change to a particular area of existing software can be better understood using simulated “what-if” scenarios. This project proposes such a solution by developing a web-based UML simulator for modeling use cases and sequence diagrams and integrating the simulator with existing applications using aspect-oriented middleware technology

An MDA approach for developing Secure OLAP applications: metamodels and transformations

Decision makers query enterprise information stored in Data Warehouses (DW) by using tools (such as On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools) which employ specific views or cubes from the corporate DW or Data Marts, based on multidimensional modelling. Since the information managed is critical, security constraints have to be correctly established in order to avoid unauthorized access. In previous work we defined a Model-Driven based approach for developing a secure DW repository by following a relational approach. Nevertheless, it is also important to define security constraints in the metadata layer that connects the DW repository with the OLAP tools; that is, over the same multidimensional structures that end users manage. This paper incorporates a proposal for developing secure OLAP applications within our previous approach: it improves a UML profile for conceptual modelling; it defines a logical metamodel for OLAP applications; and it defines and implements transformations from conceptual to logical models, as well as from logical models to secure implementation in a specific OLAP tool (SQL Server Analysis Services).This research is part of the following projects: SIGMA-CC (TIN2012-36904), GEODAS-BC (TIN2012-37493-C01) and GEODAS-BI (TIN2012-37493-C03) funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional FEDER. SERENIDAD (PEII11-037-7035) and MOTERO (PEII11- 0399-9449) funded by the Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Cultura de la Junta de Comunidades de Castilla La Mancha, and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional FEDER

Performance analysis of persistence technologies for cloud repositories of models

The growing adoption of Model Driven Development (MDD) in companies during last decade arises some model interchange problems. Companies need support to interchange models and reuse parts of them for developing new projects. Traditional tools for model edition and model interchange have different performance issues related to the models storage. There are mainly two styles to organize the persistence of models into repositories: a complex and large model or a large amount of small models. This last approach is common in companies that generate software from models. In this paper, we analyse performance properties of different persistence technologies to store small/medium-scale models, the analysis results should be considered in the design of model repositories in the cloud. With this aim, we have designed and developed a generic architecture to evaluate each persistence technology under similar situations

Applying the UML and the Unified Process to the Design of Data Warehouses

The design, development and deployment of a data warehouse (DW) is a complex, time consuming and prone to fail task. This is mainly due to the different aspects taking part in a DW architecture such as data sources, processes responsible for Extracting, Transforming and Loading (ETL) data into the DW, the modeling of the DW itself, specifying data marts from the data warehouse or designing end user tools. In the last years, different models, methods and techniques have been proposed to provide partial solutions to cover the different aspects of a data warehouse. Nevertheless, none of these proposals addresses the whole development process of a data warehouse in an integrated and coherent manner providing the same notation for the modeling of the different parts of a DW. In this paper, we propose a data warehouse development method, based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Unified Process (UP), which addresses the design and development of both the data warehouse back-stage and front-end. We use the extension mechanisms (stereotypes, tagged values and constraints) provided by the UML and we properly extend it in order to accurately model the different parts of a data warehouse (such as the modeling of the data sources, ETL processes or the modeling of the DW itself) by using the same notation. To the best of our knowledge, our proposal provides a seamless method for developing data warehouses. Finally, we apply our approach to a case study to show its benefit.This work has been partially supported by the METASIGN project (TIN2004-OO779) from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, by the DADASMECA project (GV05/220) from the Valencia Government, and by the DADS (PBC-05-QI 2-2) project from the Regional Science arid Technology Ministry of CastiIla-La Mancha (Spain)