1,721,162 research outputs found
Towards a Reference Model and a Web-based Framework for eParticipation Services Design
No full texteParticipation involves the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for facilitating the
two-way communication between governments and citizens. Designing eParticipation activities is a complex
task. Challenges include the need for interdisciplinary expertise and knowledge (e.g., in political, sociology,
usability and technology domains) and the lack of widely accepted models and technological standards. This
paper paves the way for the definition of a basic reference model for eParticipation, providing guidelines for
the design, implementation and management of eParticipation web applications. This model was put into
practice for the design of an eParticipation Framework helping users in designing, customizing and deploying
web-based services for a given eParticipation process. The authors also report on the experimental use of the
Framework in a group of Tuscany municipalities for carrying out participatory budget activitie
A Dynamic Composition and Stubless Invocation Approach for Information-Providing Services
Full text linkThe automated specification and execution of composite services are important capabilities of service-oriented systems. In practice, service invocation is performed by client components (stubs) that are generated from service descriptions at design time. Several researchers have proposed mechanisms for late binding. They all require an object representation (e.g., Java classes) of the XML data types specified in service descriptions to be generated and meaningfully integrated in the client code at design time. However, the potential of dynamic composition can only be fully exploited if supported in the invocation phase by the capability of dynamically binding to services with previously unknown interfaces. In this work, we address this limitation by proposing a way of specifying and executing composite services, without resorting to previously compiled classes that represent XML data types. Semantic and structural properties encoded in service descriptions are exploited to implement a mechanism, based on the Graphplan algorithm, for the run-time specification of composite service plans. Composite services are then executed through the stubless invocation of constituent services. Stubless invocation is achieved by exploiting structural properties of service descriptions for the run-time generation of messages
Designing a Metadata Model for Unstructured Document Management in Organizations
No full textAt present Document Management represents a critical problem for organizations, where a growing amount of information is produced in unstructured format. Metadata sets for Document Management addressing organizational needs are lacking, as most research efforts for Metadata specifications are focused on digital libraries and web communities requirements, rather than organizational ones. In this paper we propose a Metadata Model for Unstructured Document Management, called DMSML Document Management and Sharing Markup Language, which aims at modeling intrinsic properties of documents (e.g. title, author and keywords) as well as the relationships with the organizational context. Furthermore, while most metadata specifications don't rely on a well-developed data modeling methodology, our proposal is based on a three-layered data modeling approach, distinguishing a conceptual, logical and physical layer. This approach encourages understanding and easy adoption of metadata specifications among end users. At present we are developing a DMSML Framework prototype for validation purposes
A Context-aware eTourism Application Enabling Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange among Tourists
No full textEffects of the September 28 2003 blackout in Italy in patients on home parenteral nutrition (HPN).
No full textImproving taxi-out operations at city airports to reduce CO2 emissions
No full textCity airports cause many environmental concerns on population living in their neighbourhood and several actions are often imposed to airport operators and other involved stakeholders in order to reduce impacts and improve the life quality of neighbouring inhabitants. While some solutions have been widely studied – e.g., green surface accessibility – some others, such as taxi-out procedures, have received less attention. However, taxi-out procedures, which are part of the Landing and Take-Off (LTO) cycle, generate a remarkable amount of the whole airport environmental impact, especially carbon emissions. The goal of this paper is to propose an element-by-element approach that could help stakeholders to adopt targeted solutions. Particularly, the airport activity contributing to the airport carbon impact is split into elementary segments in order to compute the environmental effects produced by each elementary source of pollution. The advantage of this approach is the identification of targeted actions on specific segments, which generates more positive effects for the several involved stakeholders. While the study focuses on taxi-out procedures, the proposed approach is general and can be applied widely to simulate other airport activities that contribute to the airport carbon impacts
A QoS-aware Service Composition Approach based on Semantic Annotations and Integer Programming
No full textPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel quality of service (QoS)-aware service composition approach, called SEQOIA, capable of defining at run-time a service composition plan meeting both functional and non-functional constraints and optimizing the overall quality of service.
Design/methodology/approach – SEQOIA is a semantic-driven QoS-aware dynamic composition approach leveraging on an integer linear programming technique (ILP). It exploits the expressiveness of an ontology-based service profile model handling structural and semantic properties of service descriptions. It represents the service composition problem as a set of functional and non-functional constraints and an objective function.
Findings – The authors developed a proof of concept implementing SEQOIA, as well as an alternative composition solution based on state-of-the-art AI planning and ILP techniques. Results of testing activities show that SEQOIA performs better than the alternative solution over a limited set of candidate services. This behaviour was expected, as SEQOIA guarantees to find the service composition providing the optimal QoS value, while the alternative approach does not provide this guarantee, as it handles separately the specification of the functional service composition flow and the QoS-based service selection step.
Originality/value – SEQOIA leverages on semantic annotations in order to make service composition feasible by coping with syntactic and structural differences typically existing across different, even similar, service implementations. To ease the adoption of SEQOIA in real enterprise scenarios, the authors chose to leverage on an XML-based message model of services interfaces (including but not strictly requiring the use of WSDL)
Message-Based Service Brokering and Dynamic Composition in the SAI Middleware
No full textService-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a wide and
complex research area. Despite the huge effort in both industrial and academics initiatives, several challenges need to be addressed in order to effectively realize the SOC vision. One of the most relevant issues is the need of effective, flexible,
reliable, low cost solutions for dynamic service brokering and composition. This paper presents results of an ongoing work on the design and development of a service- and messageoriented
middleware for atomic and composite service
brokering, named SAI middleware. The SAI middleware offers
a set of features for service brokering and dynamic
composition, while also guaranteeing loose coupling between service providers and consumers and relaxing the prerequisites
for service providers to publish their capabilities in an interoperability domain. SAI dynamic composition is based on an Artificial Intelligence planning approach and on the
adoption of an ontology-based functional profile encoding
information for enabling automatic information extraction and combination in the service composition chain. Our main
contribution consists in addressing these issues in a holistic way, as required to effectively support the SOA vision in real application scenarios, while not optimizing single aspects yet
A Lightweight and Extensible Complex Event Processing System for Sense and Respond Applications
No full textComplex Event Processing (CEP) is considered as a promising technology for enabling the evolution of service-oriented enterprise systems towards operational aware systems. CEP effectively supports the implementation of “sense and respond” behaviours, as it enables to extract meaningful events from raw data streams originated by sensing infrastructures, for enterprise processes and applications consumption. This paper proposes a novel CEP engine conceived with ease of use, extensibility, portability, and scalability requirements in mind. More specifically, we propose a Lightweight Stage-based Event Processor (LiSEP) based on a layered architectural design. Thanks to the adoption of Staged Event-Driven Architecture principles, core event processing logic is decoupled from low-level thread management issues. This results in an easy-to-understand and extensible implementation while testing results show performance scalability. We report on the carrying out of a case study on dangerous goods monitoring in maritime transport. The objective of the case study is to develop a Proof of Concept application leveraging on LiSEP capabilities in sensor and RFID events processing for monitoring and alerting purposes
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