A design theory for e-service environments: The interoperability challenge

The delivery of e-services across organizational boundaries poses a number of issues in terms of design of inter-organizational systems that support service delivery effectively. In this context interoperability emerges as a mandatory requirement for the design of Information Technology (IT) platforms supporting collaborative e-service environments. In this paper we address this issue by presenting a design theory for IT platforms supporting e-services based on both a deep understanding of the interoperability concept and a design research approach. Through the analysis of a cooperation framework developed in the context of an EU funded project, we instantiate the theory by providing the concrete example of a solution addressing this design problem. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg.The delivery of e-services across organizational boundaries poses a number of issues in terms of design of inter-organizational systems that support service delivery effectively. In this context interoperability emerges as a mandatory requirement for the design of Information Technology (IT) platforms supporting collaborative e-service environments. In this paper we address this issue by presenting a design theory for IT platforms supporting e-services based on both a deep understanding of the interoperability concept and a design research approach. Through the analysis of a cooperation framework developed in the context of an EU funded project, we instantiate the theory by providing the concrete example of a solution addressing this design problem. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg.Monograph's chapter

G-Grid: A Class of Scalable and Self-Organizing Data Structures for Multi-dimensional Querying and Content Routing in P2P Networks

none2nonenoneG. Moro; A.M. OukselG. Moro; A.M. Oukse

Context-Driven Data Filtering: A Methodology

The goal of this paper is the introduction of a methodology for designing context-driven data selection, that is the possibility to tailor the available, usually too rich, data to be held on portable mobile devices, according to context. First of all, we will introduce the concept of context and its model, a data structure that expresses knowledge on the user, the environment and the possible scenarios. We will then focus on the proposed methodology for selecting, by means of such information, the relevant data to be made available on a user device. An application of the proposed methodology is the possibility to select data of interest for portable devices, where computation, memory, power and connectivity resources are limited, and thus, tailororing the available, usually too rich, data according to context is a mandatory task

Towards a fully generic theory of data

Modern software systems place a large emphasis on hetero-geneous communication. For disparate applications to communicate effectively, a generic theory of data is required that works at the inter-application level. The key feature of such a theory is full generality, where the data model of an application is not restricted to any particular modeling formalism. Existing solutions do not have this property: while any data can be encoded in terms of XML or using the Semantic Web, such representations provide only basic generality, whereby to reason about an arbitrary application's data model it must be re-expressed using the formalism in question. In this paper we present a theory of data which is fully generic and utilizes an extensible design to allow the underlying formalisms to be incorporated into a specification only when necessary. We then show how this theory can be used to investigate two common data equivalence problems - canonicalization and transformation - independently of the datatypes involved. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

Context Modelling and Context-Aware Querying(Can Datalog Be of Help?)

Many interpretations of the notion of context have emerged in various fields and context-aware systems are pervading everyday life, becoming an expanding research field. Context has often a significant impact on the way humans (or machines) act, and on how they interpret things; furthermore, a change in context causes a transformation in the experience that is going to be lived. Accordingly, while the computer science community has initially perceived the context simply as a matter of user time and location, in the last few years this notion has been considered not simply as a state, but as part of a process in which users are involved; thus, sophisticated and general context models and systems have been proposed to support context-aware applications. In this paper we propose a foundational framework for the life-cycle of context-aware system, in which the system design and management activities consider context as an orthogonal, first-class citizen. In doing so, we present a Datalog-based formulation for the definition of context-aware databases

Context Modelling and Context−Aware Querying

Many interpretations of the notion of context have emerged in various fields and context-aware systems are pervading everyday life, becoming an expanding research field. Context has often a significant impact on the way humans (or machines) act, and on how they interpret things; furthermore, a change in context causes a transformation in the experience that is going to be lived. Accordingly, while the computer science community has initially perceived the context simply as a matter of user time and location, in the last few years this notion has been considered not simply as a state, but as part of a process in which users are involved; thus, sophisticated and general context models and systems have been proposed to support context-aware applications. In this paper we propose a foundational framework for the life-cycle of context-aware system, in which the system design and management activities consider context as an orthogonal, first-class citizen. In doing so, we present a Datalog-based formulation for the definition of context-aware databases

Improved recovery management and routing in W-grid, a distributed infrastructure for effective and efficient multidimensional data management over wireless ad-hoc sensor networks

In this paper we focus on data management aspects of W-Grid, a decentralized infrastructure that self-organizes wireless devices in an ad-hoc manner where each node has one or more virtual coordinates through which both message routing and data management can be combined and performed in a cross-layer fashion. Differently from existing solutions, W-Grid does not require complex devices that need global information or external help from systems, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), which works only outdoor with a precision and an efficacy both limited by weather conditions and obstacles. Therefore our solution can be applied to a wider number of scenarios, including mesh networks and wireless community networks. In particular, in this paper we introduce two extensions to W-Grid: (i) recovery capabilities to network or node failures without using broadcasting operations and (ii) improved routing based on a local learning with a new method of evaluating logical distances among nodes through implicit cost-free overhearing at sensors