Mapping service components to EJB business objects

The emerging trends for e-business engineering revolve around specialisation and cooperation. Successful companies focus on their core competencies and rely on a network of business partners for the support services required to compose a comprehensive offer for their customers. Modularity is crucial for a flexible e-business infrastructure, but related requirements seldom reflect on the design and operational models of business information systems. Software components are widely used for the implementation of e-business applications, with proven benefits in terms of system development and maintenance. We propose a service-oriented componentisation of e-business systems as a way to close the gap with the business models they support. Blurring the distinction between external services and internal capabilities, we propose a homogeneous model for the definition of e-business applications components and present a process-based technique for component modelling. We finally present an Enterprise Java Beans extension that implements the model

Performance Testing of Distributed Component Architectures

Performance characteristics, such as response time, throughput andscalability, are key quality attributes of distributed applications. Current practice,however, rarely applies systematic techniques to evaluate performance characteristics.We argue that evaluation of performance is particularly crucial in early developmentstages, when important architectural choices are made. At first glance, thiscontradicts the use of testing techniques, which are usually applied towards the endof a project. In this chapter, we assume that many distributed systems are builtwith middleware technologies, such as the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) or theCommon Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). These provide servicesand facilities whose implementations are available when architectures are defined.We also note that it is the middleware functionality, such as transaction and persistenceservices, remote communication primitives and threading policy primitives,that dominates distributed system performance. Drawing on these observations, thischapter presents a novel approach to performance testing of distributed applications.We propose to derive application-specific test cases from architecture designs so thatthe performance of a distributed application can be tested based on the middlewaresoftware at early stages of a development process. We report empirical results thatsupport the viability of the approach

Markup meets middleware

We describe a distributed system architecture that supports the integration of different front-office trading systems with middle and back-office systems, each of which have been procured from different vendors. The architecture uses a judicious combination of object-oriented middleware and markup languages. In this combination an object request broker implements reliable trade data transport. Markup languages, particularly XML, are used to address data integration problems. We show that the strengths of middleware and markup languages are complementary and discuss the benefits of deploying middleware and markup languages in a synergistic manner

Masks, mosques and lockdowns: Islamic organisations navigating the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

The article investigates COVID-19 related responses by Islamic associationsand local mosques based on fieldwork in the German state of Lower Saxony. The inquiryfocuses on the time prior to the first lockdown, during mosque closures, and around theopening phase, covering the months between February 2020 and November 2020. Draw-ing on organisational sociology, Islamic studies, and research on pandemics, the articlecontributes to the debate on the contested nature of Islamic representation and the institu-tionalisation of Islam in Germany by analysing internal and relational dynamics, differentand converging strategies, external challenges, and cooperation by Islamic authorities dur-ing the first COVID-19 wave. By taking into account Germany’s multilevel political systemincluding the national, state, and municipal level as well as transnational dimensions, theanalysis integrates external expectations on Islamic organisations and local mosques andinternal discussions within these institutions to relate their responses and navigation tothe contested representations of Islamic organisations in public discourse as well as to thecurrent debate on Islam in Germany

Negotiating Germany’s first Muslim–Christian kindergarten: Temporalities, multiplicities, and processes in interreligious dialogue

Drawing on fieldwork in the Northern German town of Gifhorn, the article analyses the negotiation process of Germany’s first Muslim–Christian kindergarten during its inception and consolidation phase between 2007 and 2020. Through the reconstruction of the kindergarten case, the study informs the literature on interreligious dialogue and governance of religious diversity from a local perspective. A temporal analysis is used for the study of dialogue to capture changing views and positions of different stakeholders during shifting opportunity structures, including the rise of far-right populism and deteriorating political relations between Germany and Turkey. Hence, the kindergarten, which mirrors Germanys’ national policy framework of institutionalizing Islam through treaties and dialogue cooperation, can be seen as a stage on which local negotiations and interreligious dynamics play out, uncovering complex intersections within the local, national, and international arena of politics.S’appuyant sur une enquête de terrain dans la ville de Gifhorn, dans le nord de l’Allemagne, l’article analyse le processus de négociation du premier jardin d’enfants islamo-chrétien d’Allemagne pendant sa phase de création et de consolidation entre 2007 et 2020. En reconstruisant le cas de ce jardin d’enfants, l’étude alimente la recherche relative au dialogue interreligieux et à la gouvernance de la diversité religieuse d’un point de vue local. Une analyse temporelle est utilisée pour l’étude du dialogue afin de saisir les changements de points de vue et de positions des différentes parties prenantes dans un contexte de structures d’opportunités changeantes, notamment dans le cadre de la montée du populisme d’extrême droite et de la détérioration des relations politiques entre l’Allemagne et la Turquie. Par conséquent, le jardin d’enfants, qui reflète le cadre politique national de l’Allemagne visant à institutionnaliser l’islam par le biais de traités et d’un dialogue de coopération, peut être considéré comme une scène sur laquelle se déroulent les négociations locales et les dynamiques interreligieuses, révélant des intersections complexes au sein de l’arène politique locale, nationale et internationale

Law School Libraries 2007

The primary mission of the law school library is to meet the information needs of the faculty and students of the institution it supports. In addition to their role in educating future lawyers, law schools are the major producers of scholarly literature in law and rely on academic law libraries to provide the resources and support needed for research and publication. Beyond support for the core functions of legal education and research, the specific missions of law school libraries vary depending on the size and missions of law schools of different types. Differences among law schools result in differences among their libraries in collection size and composition, staffing and services offered, and additional clienteles served

Do process-centred environments deserve process-centred tools?

Process-centred software development environments integrate a process engine, which enacts a process program, with tools that automate particular tasks or provide facilities for document production. Previous papers in this workshop series have focussed on process automation from a process programming point of view and have discussed language primitives and techniques for their enactment. They assumed implicitly that off-the-shelf tools were to be integrated into these environments. The degree of support that can be achieved, however, is limited by the integration facilities offered by these tools. We consider the problem from a different point of view and investigate the implications of fine-grain process support for tool construction

The REVERE project:Experiments with the application of probabilistic NLP to systems engineering

Despite natural language’s well-documented shortcomings as a medium for precise technical description, its use in software-intensive systems engineering remains inescapable. This poses many problems for engineers who must derive problem understanding and synthesise precise solution descriptions from free text. This is true both for the largely unstructured textual descriptions from which system requirements are derived, and for more formal documents, such as standards, which impose requirements on system development processes. This paper describes experiments that we have carried out in the REVERE1 project to investigate the use of probabilistic natural language processing techniques to provide systems engineering support