Efficient Execution of Web Navigation Sequences

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35063-4_25.[Abstract]: Web automation applications are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration and automated testing of web applications. Most current systems build the automatic web navigation component by using the APIs of conventional browsers. While this approach has its advantages, it suffers performance problems for intensive web automation tasks which require real time responses and/or a high degree of parallelism. In this paper, we outline a set of techniques to build a web navigation component able to efficiently execute web navigation sequences. These techniques detect what elements and scripts of the pages accessed during the navigation sequence are needed for the correct execution of the sequence (and, therefore, must be loaded and executed), and what parts of the pages can be discarded. The tests executed with real web sources show that the optimized navigation sequences run significantly faster and consume significantly less resources.This research was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science ans Innovation under project TIN2010-09988-E, and the European Commission under project FP7-SEC-2007-01 Proposal Nº 218223

Efficient execution of web navigation sequences

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28795-4_15.[Abstract]: Web automation applications are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration and automated testing of web applications. Most current systems build the automatic web navigation component by using the APIs of conventional browsers. While this approach has its advantages, it suffers performance problems for intensive web automation tasks which require real time responses and/or a high degree of parallelism. In this paper, we outline a set of techniques to build a web navigation component able to efficiently execute web navigation sequences. These techniques detect what elements and scripts of the pages accessed during the navigation sequence are needed for the correct execution of the sequence (and, therefore, must be loaded and executed), and what parts of the pages can be discarded. The tests executed with real web sources show that the optimized navigation sequences run significantly faster and consume significantly less resources.This research was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under projects TIN2009-14203 and TIN2010-09988-E, and the European Commission under project FP7-SEC-2007-01 Proposal N° 218223

Automatic Optimization of Web Navigation Sequences

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28795-4_15.[Abstract]: Web automation applications are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration, automated testing of web applications or technology and business watch. In this work-in-progress paper we outline a set of techniques which constitute the basis to build a web navigation component able to analyze a web navigation sequence and automatically optimize it, detecting which parts of the loaded pages are needed, and which ones can be discarded in the following executions of the sequence. Our techniques build on the Document Object Model and the first tests executed with real web sources have found them to be very effective.This research was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under project TIN2010-09988-E, and the European Commission under project FP7-SEC-2007-01 Proposal Nº 218223

Optimization Techniques to Speed Up the Page Loading in Custom Web Browsers

IEEE 12th International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2015), 23-25 October 2015. Beijing, China.[Absctract]: Web automation applications are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration, web mashups, automated testing of web applications, Internet metasearch or technology and business watch. One crucial part in intensive web automation applications, that require real time responses, is for them to execute the navigation sequences in the shortest possible time. The approach of building the automatic web navigation component by using the APIs of conventional browsers, followed by most of the current systems, is not appropriate in that scenario, because it presents performance problems. Other approach consist in creating custom browsers specially designed for web automation, which can develop some improvements based in the peculiarities of the web automation tasks. In this work, we present a new set of techniques and algorithms that allow the parallel evaluation of the scripting code when a custom browser loads a web page. We also outline the components that should be included in the custom browser architecture to implement these techniques. The tests executed with real web sources, to evaluate the validity of our proposal, show that a custom web browser loads the web pages faster when the scripts are executed in parallel using the designed techniques

Parallel JavaScript Execution in Web Navigation Sequences

© 2015 IEEE. This version of the paper has been accepted for publication. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. The final published paper is available online at: https://doi.org/0.1109/WI-IAT.2015.165.[Abstract]: Web automation applications are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration and automated testing of web applications. Most current systems build the automatic web navigation component by using the APIs of conventional browsers. This approach suffers performance problems for intensive web automation tasks which require real time responses. Other systems use the approach of creating custom browsers specially designed for web automation. Those browsers can develop some improvements based in the peculiarities of the web automation tasks. In this paper, we present a novel optimization technique that allows the parallel execution of the JavaScript while the navigation component loads the web page. This technique is based in the analysis of the interactions between the scripts during the first loading of the web page, generating some useful information that will be saved and used in the next executions. The tests executed with real web sources show that the scripts contained in the HTML documents can be evaluated concurrently and the navigation component loads the web pages faster when the scripts are executed in parallel

A Custom Browser Architecture to Execute Web Navigation Sequences

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26187-4_11.[Abstract]: Web automation applications are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration and automated testing of web applications. Most current systems build the automatic web navigation component by using the APIs of conventional browsers. This approach suffers performance problems for intensive web automation tasks which require real time responses and/or a high degree of parallelism. Other systems use the approach of creating custom browsers to avoid some of the tasks of conventional browsers, but they work like them, when building the internal representation of the web pages. In this paper, we present a complete architecture for a custom browser able to efficiently execute web navigation sequences. The proposed architecture supports some novel automatic optimization techniques that can be applied when loading and building the internal representation of the pages. The tests performed using real web sources show that the reference implementation of the proposed architecture runs significantly faster than other navigation components

A Workflow-Based Approach for Creating Complex Web Wrappers

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85481-4_30.[Abstract]: In order to let software programs access and use the information and services provided by web sources, wrapper programs must be built to provide a “machine-readable” view over them. Although research literature on web wrappers is vast, the problem of how to specify the internal logic of complex wrappers in a graphical and simple way remains mainly ignored. In this paper, we propose a new language for addressing this task. Our approach leverages on the existing work on intelligent web data extraction and automatic web navigation as building blocks, and uses a workflow-based approach to specify the wrapper control logic. The features included in the language have been decided from the results of a study of a wide range of real web automation applications from different business areas. In this paper, we also present the most salient results of the study.This research was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under project TSI2005-07730. Alberto Pan’s work was partially supported by the “Ramón y Cajal” programme of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Scienc

COVID-19 in hospitalized HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients: A matched study

Objectives: We compared the characteristics and clinical outcomes of hospitalized individuals with COVID-19 with [people with HIV (PWH)] and without (non-PWH) HIV co-infection in Spain during the first wave of the pandemic. Methods: This was a retrospective matched cohort study. People with HIV were identified by reviewing clinical records and laboratory registries of 10 922 patients in active-follow-up within the Spanish HIV Research Network (CoRIS) up to 30 June 2020. Each hospitalized PWH was matched with five non-PWH of the same age and sex randomly selected from COVID-19@Spain, a multicentre cohort of 4035 patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19. The main outcome was all-cause in-hospital mortality. Results: Forty-five PWH with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 were identified in CoRIS, 21 of whom were hospitalized. A total of 105 age/sex-matched controls were selected from the COVID-19@Spain cohort. The median age in both groups was 53 (Q1-Q3, 46-56) years, and 90.5% were men. In PWH, 19.1% were injecting drug users, 95.2% were on antiretroviral therapy, 94.4% had HIV-RNA < 50 copies/mL, and the median (Q1-Q3) CD4 count was 595 (349-798) cells/μL. No statistically significant differences were found between PWH and non-PWH in number of comorbidities, presenting signs and symptoms, laboratory parameters, radiology findings and severity scores on admission. Corticosteroids were administered to 33.3% and 27.4% of PWH and non-PWH, respectively (P = 0.580). Deaths during admission were documented in two (9.5%) PWH and 12 (11.4%) non-PWH (P = 0.800). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that well-controlled HIV infection does not modify the clinical presentation or worsen clinical outcomes of COVID-19 hospitalization.This work was supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCII) (grant no. COV20/00108) and the Spanish AIDS Research Network (RD16/0025), which is included in the Spanish I+D+I Plan and is co- funded by ISCIII- Subdirección General de Evaluación and European Funding for Regional Development (FEDER)S

Hypermedia : taller de configuración arquitectónica

El Grupo "Hypermedia. Taller de configuración arquitectónica" lo formamos un colectivo de profesores (doctores y asociados), doctorandos y becarios agrupados en la enseñanza del dibujo y el dibujar como herramienta para la elaboración profesional de proyectos de arquitectura en los primeros (1º y 2º año) semestres de la carrera de Arquitecto Superior. Algunos de nosotros empezamos hace más de 35 años alrededor de los ordenadores, estudiando y simulando procesos de generación de propuestas arquitectónicas. Trabajábamos en el Centro de Cálculo de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (desde el año 1968, en un seminario denominado: "Análisis y generación de formas arquitectónicas"). Después, desde el 1974, en la Cátedra de Análisis de Formas Arquitectónicas, hemos participado y contribuido a la definición del Área de conocimiento denominada "Expresión Gráfica Arquitectónica" y hemos constituido la asociación de Departamentos del Área de todas las Escuelas de Arquitectura del Estado Español, que, en paralelo, ha creado una Revista especializada (EGA lleva editados 10 números anuales) y sostiene la convocatoria bianual de un Congreso Internacional sobre los temas propios de nuestra especialización. Hoy el Grupo, amplio por razón de la situación estratégica del dibujar (inespecífico, geométrico y arquitectónico) como medio indispensable en el trabajo de proyectar arquitectura, se organiza en varios subgrupos que se reparten puntualmente las preocupaciones y temáticas globales (colectivas) que sistemáticamente aparecen, produciendo gran cantidad de trabajos que, en forma de encargos subvencionados, tesis doctorales, monografías, ponencias y artículos aparecen año tras año en diversos medios de difusión (u edición). Nuestros trabajos no son todos estratégicos, pero son todos (sean o no aplicaciones) centrales en la formación arquitectónica, concernidos con la fundamentación teórica, social, científica y técnica de lo medio ambiental (lo arquitectónico entendido como lo envolvente adecuado al albergue de actividades humanas socializadas)

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016