IUPC: Identification and Unification of Process Constraints

Business Process Compliance (BPC) has gained significant momentum in research and practice during the last years. Although many approaches address BPC, they mostly assume the existence of some kind of unified base of process constraints and focus on their verification over the business processes. However, it remains unclear how such an inte- grated process constraint base can be built up, even though this con- stitutes the essential prerequisite for all further compliance checks. In addition, the heterogeneity of process constraints has been neglected so far. Without identification and separation of process constraints from domain rules as well as unification of process constraints, the success- ful IT support of BPC will not be possible. In this technical report we introduce a unified representation framework that enables the identifica- tion of process constraints from domain rules and their later unification within a process constraint base. Separating process constraints from domain rules can lead to significant reduction of compliance checking effort. Unification enables consistency checks and optimizations as well as maintenance and evolution of the constraint base on the other side.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, technical repor

A Model for Configuration Management of Open Software Systems

The article proposes a model for the configuration management of open systems. The model aims at validation of configurations against given specifications. An extension of decision graphs is proposed to express specifications. The proposed model can be used by software developers to validate their own configurations across different versions of the components, or to validate configurations that include components by third parties. The model can also be used by end-users to validate compatibility among different configurations of the same application. The proposed model is first discussed in some application scenarios and then formally defined. Moreover, a type discipline is given to formally define validation of a configuration against a system specificationComment: 13 page

Quantum Field Theory

I discuss the general principles underlying quantum field theory, and attempt to identify its most profound consequences. The deepest of these consequences result from the infinite number of degrees of freedom invoked to implement locality. I mention a few of its most striking successes, both achieved and prospective. Possible limitations of quantum field theory are viewed in the light of its history.Comment: LaTeX, 12 pages, 3 figures. Will appear in Centenary issue of Rev. of Mod. Phys., March 1999. Incorporated minor corrections suggested by edito

The noncommutative standard model, post- and predictions

I try to assess the weak and strong points of the standard model of electro-magnetic, weak and strong forces, how it can be derived from general relativity by generalizing Riemannian to noncommutative geometry and what post- and predictions this unification of all four forces entails in particle physics.Comment: contribution to Moriond '10 electro-wea

String Theory - Nomological Unification and the Epicycles of the Quantum Field Theory Paradigm

String Theory is the result of the conjunction of three conceptually independent elements: (i) the metaphysical idea of a nomological unity of the forces, (ii) the model-theoretical paradigm of Quantum Field Theory, and (iii) the conflict resulting from classical gravity in a quantum world. String Theory is sometimes assumed to solve this conflict: by means of an application of the model-theoretical apparatus of (perturbative) Quantum Field Theory. But, String Theory does not really solve the conflict. Rather it exemplifies the inadequacy of this model-theoretical apparatus in the context of Quantum Gravity: After several decades of development it still exists only in an essentially perturbative formulation (with minor non-perturbative extensions and vague ideas with regard to a possible non-perturbative formulation). And, due to its quantum field theoretical heritage, it is conceptually incompatible with central implications of General Relativity, especially those resulting from the general relativistic relation between gravity and spacetime. All known formulations of String Theory are background-dependent. On the other hand, it was not even possible to reproduce the Standard Model. Instead, String Theory led to a multitude of internal problems - and to the plethora of low-energy scenarios with different nomologies and symmetries, known as the String Landscape. All attempts to find a dynamically motivated selection principle remained without success, leaving String Theory without any predictive power. The nomological unification of the fundamental forces is only achieved in a purely formal way within the model-theoretical paradigm of Quantum Field Theory - by means of physically unmotivated epicycles like higher dimensionality, Calabi-Yau spaces, branes, etc.Comment: 23 page

Approximate text generation from non-hierarchical representations in a declarative framework

This thesis is on Natural Language Generation. It describes a linguistic realisation system that translates the semantic information encoded in a conceptual graph into an English language sentence. The use of a non-hierarchically structured semantic representation (conceptual graphs) and an approximate matching between semantic structures allows us to investigate a more general version of the sentence generation problem where one is not pre-committed to a choice of the syntactically prominent elements in the initial semantics. We show clearly how the semantic structure is declaratively related to linguistically motivated syntactic representation — we use D-Tree Grammars which stem from work on Tree-Adjoining Grammars. The declarative specification of the mapping between semantics and syntax allows for different processing strategies to be exploited. A number of generation strategies have been considered: a pure topdown strategy and a chart-based generation technique which allows partially successful computations to be reused in other branches of the search space. Having a generator with increased paraphrasing power as a consequence of using non-hierarchical input and approximate matching raises the issue whether certain 'better' paraphrases can be generated before others. We investigate preference-based processing in the context of generation