Systems Architecture Commons^™

War Fighting In Cyberspace: Evolving Force Presentation And Command And Control, M. Bodine Birdwell, Robert F. Mills

Faculty Publications

The Department of Defense (DOD) is endeavoring to define war fighting in the global cyberspace domain. Creation of US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), a subunified functional combatant command (FCC) under US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), is a huge step in integrating and coordinating the defense, protection, and operation of DOD networks; however, this step does not mean that USCYBERCOM will perform or manage all cyberspace functions. In fact the vast majority of cyberspace functions conducted by the services and combatant commands (COCOM), although vital for maintaining access to the domain in support of their operations, are not of an active war-fighting nature. …

Linux 101: Ci-Trainseminar, Edward Aractingi

IT Research

An overview of how the Linux operating system.

Adopting Virtualized 10gbe Ethernet Iscsi San For Mission Critical Applications, Edward Aractingi, Allen Taylor, David Griggs

IT Research

The presentation will provide insight into the decision to move from a fibre channel SAN solution, the resulting performance metrics and financial savings seen by Marshall University. Presented at The Ohio Higher Education Computing Council (OHECC) March 23, 2011.

Ibm Power Systems And Service Oriented Architecture At Bank Of America’S Foreign Items Systems Office, Keng Siau, D. Dewester

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This is a teaching case on a real life scenario in an organization involving IT solution evaluation and selection. This case involves the Bank of America’s Foreign Items Systems office in Toronto. The officers from the Bank of America’s Foreign Items Systems office in Toronto were discussing how to respond to a Request for Proposal (RFP) from a major U.S. bank to provide foreign currency services. The case discusses three options: Standard J2EE Web Application Global Foreign Currency, Modified J2EE Web Application with Single Sign On, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) via Web Services. The case can be used to complement …

Program Transformations For Information Personalization, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms necessary to automatically customize information content, structure, and presentation to the end user to reduce information overload. Unlike traditional approaches to personalization, the central theme of our approach is to model a website as a program and conduct website transformation for personalization by program transformation (e.g., partial evaluation, program slicing). The goal of this paper is study personalization through a program transformation lens and develop a formal model, based on program transformations, for personalized interaction with hierarchical hypermedia. The specific research issues addressed involve identifying and developing program representations and transformations suitable for classes of hierarchical …

Implementing The Intelligent Mail Barcode In The N-Tiered Service Library Of A Print Mail Enterprise, Christopher E. Bunch

Theses and Dissertations

Starting in autumn, 2009, the Intelligent Mail Barcode fully replaced the PostNet barcode for the United States Postal Service. This barcode enables a sender of a mailpiece to track the mailpiece through the entire mail stream, as well as track any remit mail returned to the sender. This thesis explains how the Intelligent Mail Barcode was implemented in the n- tiered Windows Communication Foundation service architecture of the Emdeon, Inc. print-mail engine. To help provide a full understanding of the environment, this document, also, explains the operation of the print mail engine at Emdeon.

Personalization By Website Transformation: Theory And Practice, Saverio Perugini

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present an analysis of a progressive series of out-of-turn transformations on a hierarchical website to personalize a user’s interaction with the site. We formalize the transformation in graph-theoretic terms and describe a toolkit we built that enumerates all of the traversals enabled by every possible complete series of these transformations in any site and computes a variety of metrics while simulating each traversal therein to qualify the relationship between a site’s structure and the cumulative effect of support for the transformation in a site. We employed this toolkit in two websites. The results indicate that the transformation enables users …

Wikipedia2onto: Building Concept Ontology Automatically, Experimenting With Web Image Retrieval, Huan Wang, Xing Jiang, Liang-Tien Chia, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given its effectiveness to better understand data, ontology has been used in various domains including artificial intelligence, biomedical informatics and library science. What we have tried to promote is the use of ontology to better understand media (in particular, images) on the World Wide Web. This paper describes our preliminary attempt to construct a large-scale multi-modality ontology, called AutoMMOnto, for web image classification. Particularly, to enable the automation of text ontology construction, we take advantage of both structural and content features of Wikipedia and formalize real world objects in terms of concepts and relationships. For visual part, we train classifiers …

Intentional Learning Agent Architecture, Budhitama Subagdja, Liz Sonenberg, Iyad Rahwan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Dealing with changing situations is a major issue in building agent systems. When the time is limited, knowledge is unreliable, and resources are scarce, the issue becomes more challenging. The BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) agent architecture provides a model for building agents that addresses that issue. The model can be used to build intentional agents that are able to reason based on explicit mental attitudes, while behaving reactively in changing circumstances. However, despite the reactive and deliberative features, a classical BDI agent is not capable of learning. Plans as recipes that guide the activities of the agent are assumed to be static. …

Node Isolation Model And Age-Based Neighbor Selection In Unstructured P2p Networks, Zhongmei Yao, Derek Leonard, Dmitri Loguinov

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Previous analytical studies of unstructured P2P resilience have assumed exponential user lifetimes and only considered age-independent neighbor replacement. In this paper, we overcome these limitations by introducing a general node-isolation model for heavy-tailed user lifetimes and arbitrary neighbor-selection algorithms. Using this model, we analyze two age-biased neighbor-selection strategies and show that they significantly improve the residual lifetimes of chosen users, which dramatically reduces the probability of user isolation and graph partitioning compared with uniform selection of neighbors. In fact, the second strategy based on random walks on age-proportional graphs demonstrates that, for lifetimes with infinite variance, the system monotonically increases …

User Interface Design, Moritz Stefaner, Sebastien Ferre, Saverio Perugini, Jonathan Koren, Yi Zhang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

As detailed in Chap. 1, system implementations for dynamic taxonomies and faceted search allow a wide range of query possibilities on the data. Only when these are made accessible by appropriate user interfaces, the resulting applications can support a variety of search, browsing and analysis tasks. User interface design in this area is confronted with specific challenges. This chapter presents an overview of both established and novel principles and solutions.

Exploring Out-Of-Turn Interactions With Websites, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones, Mary E. Pinney, Mary Beth Rosson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Hierarchies are ubiquitous on the web for structuring online catalogs and indexing multidimensional attributed data sets. They are a natural metaphor for information seeking if their levelwise structure mirrors the user's conception of the underlying domain. In other cases, they can be frustrating, especially if multiple drill‐downs are necessary to arrive at information of interest. To support a broad range of users, site designers often expose multiple faceted classifications or provide within‐page pruning mechanisms. We present a new technique, called out-of-turn interaction, that increases the richness of user interaction at hierarchical sites, without enumerating all possible completion paths in the …

Symbolic Links In The Open Directory Project, Saverio Perugini

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present a study to develop an improved understanding of symbolic links in web directories. A symbolic link is a hyperlink that makes a directed connection from a web page along one path through a directory to a page along another path. While symbolic links are ubiquitous in web directories such as Yahoo!, they are under-studied, and as a result, their uses are poorly understood. A cursory analysis of symbolic links reveals multiple uses: to provide navigational shortcuts deeper into a directory, backlinks to more general categories, and multiclassification. We investigated these uses in the Open Directory Project (ODP), the …

A Study Of Out-Of-Turn Interaction In Menu-Based, Ivr, Voicemail Systems, Saverio Perugini, Taylor J. Anderson, William F. Moroney

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present the first user study of out-of-turn interaction in menu-based, interactive voice-response systems. Out-ofturn interaction is a technique which empowers the user (unable to respond to the current prompt) to take the conversational initiative by supplying information that is currently unsolicited, but expected later in the dialog. The technique permits the user to circumvent any flows of navigation hardwired into the design and navigate the menus in a manner which reflects their model of the task. We conducted a laboratory experiment to measure the effect of the use of outof- turn interaction on user performance and preference in a …

Modeling Heterogeneous User Churn And Local Resilience Of Unstructured P2p Networks, Zhongmei Yao, Derek Leonard, Dmitri Loguinov, Xiaoming Wang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Previous analytical results on the resilience of unstructured P2P systems have not explicitly modeled heterogeneity of user churn (i.e., difference in online behavior) or the impact of in-degree on system resilience. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a generic model of heterogeneous user churn, derive the distribution of the various metrics observed in prior experimental studies (e.g., lifetime distribution of joining users, joint distribution of session time of alive peers, and residual lifetime of a randomly selected user), derive several closed-form results on the transient behavior of in-degree, and eventually obtain the joint in/out degree isolation probability as a simple …

Three Architectures For Trusted Data Dissemination In Edge Computing, Shen-Tat Goh, Hwee Hwa Pang, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Edge computing pushes application logic and the underlying data to the edge of the network, with the aim of improving availability and scalability. As the edge servers are not necessarily secure, there must be provisions for users to validate the results—that values in the result tuples are not tampered with, that no qualifying data are left out, that no spurious tuples are introduced, and that a query result is not actually the output from a different query. This paper aims to address the challenges of ensuring data integrity in edge computing. We study three schemes that enable users to check …

A Hybrid Architecture Combining Reactive Plan Execution And Reactive Learning, Samin Karim, Liz Sonenberg, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Developing software agents has been complicated by the problem of how knowledge should be represented and used. Many researchers have identified that agents need not require the use of complex representations, but in many cases suffice to use “the world” as their representation. However, the problem of introspection, both by the agents themselves and by (human) domain experts, requires a knowledge representation with a higher level of abstraction that is more ‘understandable’. Learning and adaptation in agents has traditionally required knowledge to be represented at an arbitrary, low-level of abstraction. We seek to create an agent that has the capability …

Interacting With Web Hierarchies, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Web site interfaces are a particularly good fit for hierarchies in the broadest sense of that idea, i.e. a classification with multiple attributes, not necessarily a tree structure. Several adaptive interface designs are emerging that support flexible navigation orders, exposing and exploring dependencies, and procedural information-seeking tasks. This paper provides a context and vocabulary for thinking about hierarchical Web sites and their design. The paper identifies three features that interface to information hierarchies. These are flexible navigation orders, the ability to expose and explore dependencies, and support for procedural tasks. A few examples of these features are also provided

Using Cognitive Mapping Techniques To Supplement Uml And Up In Information Requirements Determination, Keng Siau, Tan Xin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information requirements determination is a critical task in system development projects. Many human issues may hinder the efforts to accurately capture and clearly understand users' information requirements. In this paper, we review the cognitive underpinnings of some human issues, which are discussed in existing literature and relevant to information requirements determination. We then propose the use of cognitive mapping techniques in the process of information requirements determination. Three widely used cognitive mapping techniques - causal mapping, semantic mapping, and concept mapping – are briefly introduced in this article. A case is used to illustrate how to use these cognitive mapping …

Keynote: Emerging Era Of Cooperative Empowerment: Grid, Peer-To-Peer, And Community Computing, Dr. Javed I. Khan

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

In this paper we discuss an emerging trend in high performance computing-the social or community computing. The emergence of screensaver computing, grid computing, peer-to-peer systems, and their demonstrated ability to garner computing power as potent as the supercomputers seems to be auspicious. In this paper we discuss the new phenomenon of community computing-including their potential applications in solving a new set of grand challenge problems. We also discuss the previously uncharted technological challenges architects of these new paradigms are addressing.

Automatically Discovering The Number Of Clusters In Web Page Datasets, Zhongmei Yao

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Clustering is well-suited for Web mining by automatically organizing Web pages into categories, each of which contains Web pages having similar contents. However, one problem in clustering is the lack of general methods to automatically determine the number of categories or clusters. For the Web domain in particular, currently there is no such method suitable for Web page clustering. In an attempt to address this problem, we discover a constant factor that characterizes the Web domain, based on which we propose a new method for automatically determining the number of clusters in Web page data sets. We discover that the …

Jess – A Java Security Scanner For Eclipse, Russell Spitler

Honors Theses

Secure software is the responsibility of every developer. In order to help a developer with this responsibility there are many automated source code security auditors. These tools perform a variety of functions, from finding calls to insecure functions to poorly generated random numbers. These programs have existed for years and perform the security audit with varying degrees of success.

Largely missing in the world of programming is such a security auditor for the Java programming language. Currently, Fortify Software produces the only Java source code security auditor; this is a commercially available package.

This void is what inspired JeSS, Java …

A Generative Programming Approach To Interactive Information Retrieval: Insights And Experiences, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We describe the application of generative programming to a problem in interactive information retrieval. The particular interactive information retrieval problem we study is the support for "out-of-turn interaction" with a website – how a user can communicate input to a website when the site is not soliciting such information on the current page, but will do so on a subsequent page. Our solution approach makes generous use of program transformations (partial evaluation, currying, and slicing) to delay the site’s current solicitation for input until after the user’s out-of-turn input is processed. We illustrate how studying out-of-turn interaction through a generative …

A Toolkit For Xml-Based And Process-Oriented Application Integration, Volker Münch

Theses

Systems integration is hard work; different architectures with different interfaces and an innumerable amount of Legacy applications with non-standard interfaces exist. However the needs to meet changing business requirements and to implement faster and optimised procedures within an enterprise and in cooperation with other external enterprises mean that there is a continuing demand for such integration strategies and products. Integration was often an activity separate from system development and could not be accomplished without re-involving system designers and developers. Such a process is therefore inefficient and costly. This thesis proposes a process-oriented integration strategy that combines the tasks of integration …

Staging Transformations For Multimodal Web Interaction Management, Michael Narayan, Christopher Williams, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. In addition to improving access and delivery capabilities, such interfaces enable flexible and personalized dialogs with websites, much like a conversation between humans. In this paper, we present a software framework for multimodal web interaction management that supports mixed-initiative dialogs between users and websites. A mixed-initiative dialog is one where the user and the website take turns changing the flow of interaction. The framework supports the functional specification and realization of such dialogs using staging transformations – …

Program Transformations For Information Personalization, Saverio Perugini

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation. The central thesis of this dissertation is that modeling interaction explicitly in a representation, and studying how partial information can be harnessed in it by program transformations to direct the flow of the interaction, can provide insight into, reveal opportunities for, and define a model for personalized interaction. To evaluate this thesis, a formal modeling methodology is developed for personalizing interactions with information systems, especially hierarchical hypermedia, based on program transformations. The …

Development Of A Systems Engineering Model For Chemical Separation Process, Lijian Sun

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is concerned with the efforts to develop a general-purpose systems engineering model software TRPSEMPro1 that can be used to improve productivity in the design process. Different features of TRPSEMPro will be presented in this thesis. First, Systems Engineering technology is presented, followed by the exposition of different numerical optimization technologies and DOE (Design of Experiments) study technologies. Second, the detailed software process, Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOA&D) for the TRPSEMPro is presented. All the design data models are expressed by using Unified Modeling Language (UML).

AMUSESimulator is another software package which has been designed and implemented in order …

The Challenges Of Case Design Integration In The Telecommunication Application Domain, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The magnitude of the problems facing the telecommunication software industry is presently at a point at which software engineers should become deeply involved. This paper presents a research project on advanced telecommunication technology carried out in Europe, called BOOST (Broadband Object-Oriented Service Technology). The project involved cooperative work among telecommunication companies, research centres and universities from several countries. The challenges to integrate CASE tools to support software development within the telecommunication application domain are discussed. A software process model that encourages component reusability, named the X model, is described as part of a software life cycle model for the telecommunication …

The Staging Transformation Approach To Mixing Initiative, Robert Capra, Michael Narayan, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Mixed-initiative interaction is an important facet of many conversational interfaces, flexible planning architectures, intelligent tutoring systems, and interactive information retrieval systems. Software systems for mixed-initiative interaction must enable us to both operationalize the mixing of initiative (i.e., support the creation of practical dialogs) and to reason in real-time about how a flexible mode of interaction can be supported (e.g., from a meta-dialog standpoint). In this paper, we present the staging transformation approach to mixing initiative, where a dialog script captures the structure of the dialog and dialog control processes are realized through generous use of program transformation techniques (e.g., partial …

Personalizing Interactions With Information Systems, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialog-based applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles …