Software modernization and cloudification using the ARTIST migration methodology and framework

International audienceCloud computing has leveraged new software development and provisioning approaches by changing the way computing, storage and networking resources are purchased and consumed. The variety of cloud offerings on both technical and business level has considerably advanced the development process and established new business models and value chains for applications and services. However, the modernization and cloudification of legacy software so as to be offered as a service still encounters many challenges. In this work, we present a complete methodology and a methodology instantiation framework for the effective migration of legacy software to modern cloud environments

Intuitively Specifying Object Dynamics in Virtual Environments using VR-WISE

Designing and building Virtual Environments is not an easy task, especially when it comes to specifying object behavior where either knowledge about animation techniques or programming skills are required. With our approach, VR-WISE, we try to facilitate the design of VEs and make this more accessible to novice users. In this paper, we present how behavior is specified in VR-WISE, as well as the prototype developed for the approach. Categories and Subject Descriptor

Adding Semantic Annotations, Navigation paths and Tour Guides to Existing Virtual Environments

Abstract. Nowadays, more Virtual Environments (VEs) are becoming available on the Web. This means that VEs are becoming accessible to a larger and more diverse audience. It also means that it is more likely that the use of these VEs (i.e. how to interact with the virtual environment and the meanings of the associated virtual objects) may be different for different groups of persons. In order for a VE to be a success on the Web, end-users should easily get familiar with the VE and understand the meanings of its virtual objects. Otherwise, the end-user may be tempted to quit the VE. Therefore, annotations and the creation of navigation paths for virtual tour guides become important to ease the use of VEs. Most of the time, this is done by VR-experts and the annotations are very poor and often only text based. This paper describes an approach and associated tool that allows a layman to add or update annotations to existing VEs. In addition, annotations are not limited to text but may also be multimedia elements, i.e. images, videos, sounds. Furthermore, the approach (and the tool) also allows easy creation of navigation paths and tour guides, which can be used to adapt a VE to the needs of a user. The paper illustrates the results by means of a real case, which is a reconstruction of a coalmine site for a museum

van Scenario’s voor Virtuele Omgevingen Proefschrift ingediend met het oog op het behalen van de graad van Licentiaat in de Toegepaste Informatica

With the increase in power and graphical capacities of modern day computers, 3D virtual reality applications are becoming available to the general public, giving rise to an increased need for fast design and implementation of virtual environments. Hence, VR-DeMo was conceived, a methodology for the conceptual modeling of virtual environments. In its current state, VR-DeMo provides support for modeling the static scene of a virtual world, the objects populating it, the behaviors performed by these objects, and user interaction with the world. This thesis discusses VR-SDL, an extension to the existing VR-DeMo methodology, for modeling interactive scenarios for a virtual world. Scenarios are a missing link in the current VR-DeMo approach: rather than modeling the virtual environment itself, they model the purpose of the virtual environment, and (parts of) the application for which it is used. In VR-SDL, actors participating in the scenario are modeled separately from the actual scenario, using a technique called actor graphs – a special type of finite stat

Using Ontologies to build Virtual Worlds for the Web

Today, the development of a VR application is still a long and difficult task. You need to be skilled in Virtual Reality (VR) technology to be able to develop a Virtual World. There are several technologies like VRML, Java 3D and X3D available to create 3D for the World Wide Web. To be able to develop a Virtual World for the Web, one needs to know how to use these technologies from a programmer’s perspective or how to use authoring tools supporting one of these technologies. To ease the use of VR, there is a need to have modeling tools that allow the designer to model his Virtual World much more in terms of the domain expert point of view. In this paper, a new approach called “VR-Wise ” for designing and developing Virtual Worlds, is introduced. This approach uses the domain expertise to shorten and facilitate the generation of a virtual world. To do this, our approach uses ontologies. As ontologies are describing a domain or part of a domain, the information contained in the ontologies can be used to express the Virtual World in terms of the terminology of the domain for which the Virtual World has to be generated. Therefore, the use of ontologies in our approach can be seen as a way of grasping already available knowledge. This allows a non-VR-skilled person to model his Virtual World in terms of his domain expertise. The proposed approach is in particular interesting for VR on the Web since the Virtual Worlds on the Web are usually limited to desktop VR and do not need the same level of realism and complexity as immersive or augmented VR. Furthermore, with the realization of the Semantic Web, more and more domain ontologies will become available. The proposed approach can open up the development of VR for the Internet to a much broader community

V.: Developping semantic VR-shops for e-Commerce

Increased bandwidth, cheaper and faster hardware, dedicated technology and the success of ecommerce make VR-shops feasible. VR-shops are similar to the e-shops currently available on the Web, with this difference that the products are visualized as 3D objects in a virtual world. Although VR-shops do not require sophisticated VR technology, they should be very flexible: it should be easy to add, remove and rearrange products; and to add, change or remove functionality. Therefore, an appropriate approach that can be used by a non-VR expert and that provides a short development time and easy maintenance is necessary. Also usability is very important because this is crucial for the success of VR-shops. In this paper, we present an approach to develop VR-shops that meets these requirements. It allows specifying a VR-shop using high-level conceptual specifications and in terms of domain terminology; semantics are captured by ontologies; existing product information can be incorporated; and the actual code is generated