bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A practical approach to specifying and verifying mobile agent algorithms
Authors: Li Xuhui , Peng Zhiyong , Cao Jiannong
Published: June 2010

Mobile agent, as a new mobile computing technology, has been applied to various parallel and distributed computing problem solutions. Several mobile agent systems have been built to drive the agents following a platform dependant scheme, and some formal approaches have been proposed to describe mobile agents’ behaviors or properties for respective purposes. However, there remains a lack of a standard approach to describing a mobile agent algorithm and its semantics from the viewpoint of a practical program, which makes it difficult to specify an algorithm unambiguously and verify its correctness formally. This paper proposes a practical approach to overcome that difficulty by defining a script language and associated mechanisms to specify and verify mobile agent algorithms. The language, called SMAL, can describe mobile agent’s behaviors clearly due to its explicitly defined semantics. Based on the semantics, a transformation function for converting the specified algorithm to its equivalent specification in Mobile UNITY, a well‐known mobile computation formal approach for correctness verification, is presented. Formal verification of the algorithms can be accomplished based on the UNITY‐logic rules.
Mechanically supporting case analysis for verification of distributed systems
Authors: Seino Takahiro , Ogato Kazuhiro , Futatsugi Kokichi
Published: June 2010

The OTS/CafeOBJ method can be used to formally model, specify and verify distributed systems such as security protocols and railroad systems. A distributed system is modeled as an OTS, a kind of transition system, and the OTS is specified and verified with CafeOBJ, an algebraic specification language. Case analysis (or case splitting) is one of the most intellectual pieces of work in verification. Case analysis should be done entirely by hand in the OTS/CafeOBJ method, which is errorprone. It is indispensable to cover all cases and find necessary lemmas for some sub‐cases where desired results are not obtained in case analysis. We propose two methods of mechanically supporting case analysis, which concern these two issues. A case study that the proposed methods are effectively applied to a railroad signaling system is also reported.
Peer‐to‐peer solution to support group collaboration and information sharing
Authors: Shtykh Roman , Zhang Guozhen , Jin Qun
Published: June 2010

In this study, we propose and develop an opensource groupware system called NetIsle. NetIsle is a general purpose groupware system for uniform open groups that integrate a number of tools for online collaboration to ensure fast information exchange and sharing, increase the productivity of working groups, and reduce maintenance and administration costs. The main technologies used for the construction of the system are peer‐to‐peer (P2P) and push, which are best fitted to those principles and beliefs we build our system upon.
Schedulability analysis for fault‐tolerant group‐based preemptive scheduling
Authors: Wu Zhaohui , Yang Guoqing , Zheng Zengwei , Zhao Mingde
Published: June 2010

The group‐based preemptive scheduling provides a flexible mechanism to define the preemptive relations between tasks. However, this scheduling scheme together with a resource access synchronization protocol and the requirements of fault tolerance makes the predication of a real‐time system’s behaviors more difficult than traditional scheduling scheme. The major contribution of this work is an algorithm to calculate the worstcase
response time for tasks under the group‐based preemptive scheduling. This algorithm supports both the fault‐free and the primary‐alternative fault‐tolerance scheduling mechanism. Moreover, a method to calculate the minimum allowed time between two consecutive faults is also introduced. The algorithm has been implemented in a time analysis tool and integrated into a system development platform, which is compatible with the OSEK/VDX operating system standard, to verify the temporal property in the early system design step.
Ubiquitous Computing in Learning:
Toward a Conceptual Framework of Ubiquitous
Learning Environment
Authors: Li Luyi , Zheng Yanlin , Ogata Hiroaki , Yano Yoneo
Published: June 2010

The impact of Ubiquitous Computing on Learning is not confined within technical dimension. Besides its technical facilitation, this new computing paradigm also challenges human’s belief on learning, and compels us to rethink on the design of learning resources and environments. The paper
explores the concept of Ubiquitous Learning, and proposes a conceptual framework for a Ubiquitous Learning Environment (ULE) design and implementation. A ULE is established on the combination between Real World and Virtual Space, Personal Space and Shared Space. Learning in a ULE is conducted in the interactions among three essential communicative elements: Social Human, Object in real world, and Artifact in virtual space. A learning process is a social transfer process between tacit and explicit knowledge. Context‐Awareness is indispensable to all kinds of interactions in a ULE. In particular, this paper gives a discussion to context‐awareness supported Interoperability and Adaptability in a ULE, and suggests a five‐dimensional (Who, What, How, When, Where) representation approach for modeling context and providing context‐awareness information. In the practical dimension, this paper presents a design framework for a ULE implementation by integrating the applications of present
affordable learning devices, such as networked PCs (Personal Computer), PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), mobile phones, sensors, and RFIDs. A basic learning system architecture in a ULE and a prototype ubiquitous language learning system are also addressed in this paper.
Peer‐based automatic configuration of pervasive applications
Authors: Handte Marcu , Becker Christian , Rothermel Kurt
Published: June 2010

Pervasive computing envisions seamless support for user tasks through cooperating devices that are present in an environment. Fluctuating availability of devices, induced by mobility and failures, requires mechanisms and algorithms that allow applications to adapt to their ever‐changing execution
environments without user intervention. To ease the development of adaptive applications, Becker et al. (3) have proposed the peer‐based component system PCOM. This system provides fundamental mechanisms to support the automated composition of applications at runtime. In this article, we discuss the requirements on algorithms that enable automatic configuration of pervasive applications. Furthermore, we show how finding a configuration can be interpreted as Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem. Based on this, we present an algorithm that is capable of finding an application configuration in the presence of strictly limited resources. To show the feasibility of this algorithm, we present an evaluation based on simulations and real‐world measurements and we compare the results with a simple greedy approximation.
Deploying pervasive secure knowledge management infrastructures
Authors: Malatras Apostolos , Pavlou George , Belsis Petros , Gritzalis Stefanos , Skourlas Christos , Chalaris Ioannis
Published: June 2010

Pervasive environments are mostly based on the ad hoc networking paradigm and are characterized by ubiquity in both users and devices and artifacts. In these inherently unstable conditions and bearing in mind the resource’s limitations that are attributed to participating devices, the deployment of Knowledge Management techniques is considered complicated due to the particular requirements. Security considerations are also very important since the distribution of knowledge information to multiple locations over a network, poses inherent problems and calls for advanced methods in order to mitigate node misbehaviour and in order to enforce authorized and authenticated access to this information. This paper addresses the issue of secure and distributed knowledge management applications in pervasive environments. We present a prototype implementation after having discussed detailed design principles as far as the communications and the application itself is regarded. Robustness and lightweight implementation are the cornerstones of the proposed solution. The approach we have undertaken makes use of overlay networks to achieve efficiency and performance optimization, exploiting ontologies. The work presented in this paper extends our initial work to tackle this problem, as this was described in (28).
An analytical study of cache invalidation algorithms in mobile environments
Authors: Yuen Lai Kwong , Tari Zahir , Bertok Peter
Published: June 2010

Caching is commonly used to improve the performance of mobile computers. Due to the limitations of wireless networks (e.g. low bandwidth, intermittent connectivity), ensuring the consistency of cached data becomes a difficult issue. Existing research have shown that broadcast‐based cache invalidation techniques can effectively maintain cache consistency for mobile applications. However, most existing performance analysis of cache invalidation algorithms were carried out through simulation. Therefore, an analytical study is important to provide a deeper understanding of broadcast‐based invalidation techniques. In this paper, we present detailed analytical models of the major existing cache invalidation schemes. The models provide a basis to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the different schemes and facilitate further investigation into cache invalidation for mobile environments. Extensive simulation has also been performed, and verifies the accuracy of the models developed.
Sub‐grid based key vector assignment: A key pre‐distribution scheme for distributed sensor networks
Authors: Kalindi R. , Kannan R. , Iyengar S.S. , Durresi A.
Published: June 2010

Security in sensor networks is more important than traditional networks as they are deployed in hostile environments and are more prone to capture. Trusted third party authentication schemes, public‐key systems are not suitable owing to their high resource requirements. Key pre‐distribution was introduced in (3) to solve this problem. Our scheme achieves identical connectivity compared to the random key pre distribution (4)
using a less number of preloaded keys in each sensor node. The design of our scheme is motivated by the observation that at present most key pre‐distribution schemes employ random mechanisms which use a large number of keys and are unsuitable for sensor networks. In this paper we extend the deterministic key pre‐distribution scheme proposed by us in our earlier work (1), which is based on assigning keys to sensors by placing them on a grid. This approach has been further modified to use multiple mappings of keys to nodes. In each mapping every node gets distinct set of
keys which it shares with different nodes. The key assignment is done such that, there will be keys in common between nodes in different sub‐grids. After randomly being deployed, the nodes discover common keys, authenticate and communicate securely. The analysis and simulation results show that this scheme is able to achieve better security compared to the random schemes.
A reverse channel call admission control scheme based on total received power for CDMA systems supporting integrated voice/data services
Authors: Li Wei , Chen Hang , Agrawal Dharma P.
Published: June 2010

In code‐division multiple‐access (CDMA) systems, the number of mobile users that each cell can support is limited
by the total received power or interference received at each base station (BS) and can vary with time. The total received power can be used as an indicator of traffic load in call admission control. In this paper, we propose a call admission control (CAC) scheme based on the total received power for CDMA systems supporting integrated voice/data services. Based on the current measure of the received power, we develop an algorithm to
estimate the updated total received power due to a new incoming call. We analyze the optimal admission threshold for both power limited cells and interference limited cells. We model the system by a multi‐dimensional Markov chain and compute the system performance in terms of new call blocking probability, forced termination probability of voice calls, average transmission delay of data calls and outage probability. We compare our results with
an existing degradation scheme.
Reactive clustering in MANETs
Authors: Cramer Curt , Stanze Oliver , Weniger Kilian , Zitterbart Martina
Published: June 2010

Many clustering protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been proposed in the literature. With only one exception so far (1), all these protocols are proactive, thus wasting bandwidth when their function is not currently needed. To reduce the signalling traffic load, reactive clustering may be employed.We have developed a clustering protocol named “On‐Demand Group Mobility‐Based Clustering” (ODGMBC) (2), (3) which is reactive. Its goal is to build clusters as a basis for address autoconfiguration and hierarchical routing. In contrast to the protocol described in ref. (1), the design process especially addresses the notions of group mobility and of multi‐hop clusters in a MANET. As a result, ODGMBC maps varying physical node groups onto logical clusters. In this paper, ODGMBC is described. It was implemented for the ad hoc network simulator GloMoSim (4) and evaluated using several performance indicators. Simulation results are promising
and show that ODGMBC leads to stable clusters. This stability is advantageous for autoconfiguration and routing mechansims to be employed in conjunction with the clustering algorithm.
Prediction based location aided routing for mobile ad hoc networks
Authors: Chellappa Doss R. , Jennings A. , Shenoy N.
Published: June 2010

Routing in ad hoc networks faces significant challenges due to node mobility and dynamic network topology. In this work we propose the use of mobility prediction to reduce the search space required for route discovery. A method of mobility prediction making use of a sectorized cluster structure is described with the proposal of the Prediction based Location Aided Routing (P‐LAR) protocol. Simulation study and analytical results of P‐LAR find it to offer considerable saving in the amount of routing traffic generated during the route discovery phase.
A fault‐tolerant distributed formation protocol for Bluetooth scatternets
Authors: Persson K. , Manivannan D.
Published: June 2010

A Bluetooth scatternet is a network topology that is formed by inter‐connecting piconets. A piconet is a starshaped ad‐hoc networking unit that can accommodate eight Bluetooth devices, a master and up to seven slaves. By designating certain piconet nodes as bridges, or gateways, we can interconnect piconets by forcing the bridge nodes to interleave their participation in multiple piconets. Bridge nodes form an auxiliary relay connection between adjacent piconet masters and are fundamental for establishing scatternets. In this paper we present a new fault‐tolerant approach to scatternet formation that is selfhealing and operates in a multi‐hop environment. Our Bluetooth Distributed Scatternet Formation Protocol (BTDSP) establishes a flat scatternet topology, allows incremental node arrival, and automatically heals scatternet partitions by re‐incorporating disconnected nodes. By maintaining neighbor associations in soft state, existing links can also be re‐established quickly upon
disconnection due to intermittent wireless connectivity. By only using slave/slave bridges, the algorithm is resilient to both node failure and wireless interference. It also prevents time‐slot waste due to master/slave bridges being away from their piconets.
Distributed service platform for adaptive mobile services
Authors: Pakkala Daniel , Latvakoski Juhani
Published: June 2010

A novel distributed middleware service platform, called MidGate platform, is presented in this paper. The central contribution is description of the developed MidGate platform and its architecture focusing especially on the adaptation, context‐awareness, and personalization of mobile and pervasive services. The research problem addressed is how to facilitate the development of interoperable applications and services into heterogeneous and distributed service gateway based environments. A requirement analysis of future mobile and pervasive services and key technologies has been carried out to establish a solid base and requirements for the development of the MidGate platform. The key mechanisms supporting adaptation, context‐awareness, and
personalization of applications and services are presented. The novel middleware architecture solution of the MidGate platform utilizing these key mechanisms is also described. The MidGate architecture utilizes the emerging Generic Service Elements (GSE) approach, where generic and collectively utilizable services are provided to applications as middleware services that are part of a service platform. The main contribution of this research is
the definition of a set of GSEs, the related MidGate platform architecture and its evaluation. The evaluation of the MidGate platform has been carried out in series of laboratory prototypes. The evaluation indicates that the MidGate platform solution is well applicable in various service gateway‐based distributed systems and extends well into resource‐constrained mobile environments.
Location‐aware middle agents in pervasive computing
Authors: Sashima Akio , Izumi Noriaki , Kurumatani Koichi
Published: June 2010

In the vision of pervasive computing, numerous heterogeneous devices, various information services, and users performing daily activities are physically co‐located in a environment. How can we coordinate the services and devices to assist a particular user in receiving a particular service so as to maximize the user’s satisfaction? To solve this human‐centered coordination issue, we propose an agent‐based service coordination framework for pervasive computing. It is called location‐aware middle agent framework. The middle agent takes account of the user location in cognitive way (based on location‐ontology), and determines best‐matched services for the user. Based on this coordination framework, we have developed a multi‐agent architecture for pervasive computing, called CONSORTS (Coordination System of Real‐world Transaction Services). In this paper, we first outline some requirements of the human‐centered service coordination in pervasive computing. Secondly, we describe location‐aware middle agent framework to fill the requirements. Lastly, we outline CONSORTS, an prototype of location‐aware middle agent framework, and two applications of CONSORTS, location‐aware information assistance services in a museum and wireless‐LAN based location systems on FIPA agent Networks.
User‐sensitive and quality‐driven discovery of context information for the successful delivery of context‐aware services
Authors: Chantzara Maria , Anagnostou Miltiades
Published: June 2010

The successful provision of context‐awareness in pervasive environments requires the support of autonomic management facilities that provide ways to efficiently acquire and use contextual information. This paper claims that in order to offer viable context‐aware services, the issue of context imperfection and aging as well as the alignment of the context information that is used by a service with the customized service objectives should
be taken into account. It presents an approach for managing the selection of context sources considering the freshness and actuality of the available information, and dynamically adapting to any source change and failure. Accordingly, there is no need to know beforehand the context sources to obtain the required information, but a quality‐aware discovery of the sources is envisioned. Finally, the proposed approach allows services to be ported easily to an environment with a different set of context sources.
COMPACT: Middleware for context representation and management in pervasive computing
Authors: Strimpakou Maria , Roussaki Ioanna , Pils Carsten , Anagnostou Miltiades
Published: June 2010

Context awareness is one of the key aspects of pervasive computing systems. In such systems, a plethora of dynamic context information needs to be constantly retrieved, soundly interpreted, rapidly processed, maintained in various repositories, and securely disseminated. Thus, a flexible, scalable and interoperable context representation scheme needs to be established and solid context management mechanisms need to be adopted, which will perform well in large‐scale distributed pervasive systems. This paper elaborates on the COMPACT context middleware that has been designed to cope with the issues above and saturate pervasive computing environments with context awareness functionality.
An adaptive model for reconfigurable autonomous services using profiling
Authors: Truchat Sébastien , Fuchs Gerhard , Dressler Falko , Meyer Steffen
Published: June 2010

The importance of mobile services in our everyday life is growing while at the same time new interoperability issues arise due to hardware and software heterogeneity. Therefore, new architectural paradigms and models are needed to enhance software engineering methodologies with regard to platform independence and interoperability. This paper describes an UML pattern based approach for developing reconfigurable autonomous mobile services. Through the analysis of an mcommerce project, the relevance of our proposed architecture will be explained. Our focus lays on a generic reconfiguration mechanism based on profile matching from software modules. This profiling part will be further described and discussed. Finally, the applicability of our approach is investigated within a project about reconfigurable indoor navigation computers and a project about robot assisted sensor networks.
Zone Repartitioning: A Load‐Balancing Mechanism for Data‐Centric Storage Systems
Authors: Chiang Mu‐Huan , Byrd Gregory T.
Published: June 2010

Data‐centric storage is an efficient scheme to store and retrieve event data in sensor networks, but with the multi‐hop routing nature of sensor networks, the communication cost of the home nodes and their neighboring nodes tends to be much higher than the other nodes. These hot‐spots can adversely impact system lifetime by draining off their limited energy rapidly. In this paper, we present Zone‐Repartitioning, a load‐balancing mechanism that reduces the energy consumption of the hot‐spots by distributing their communication load while event frequency is high. The trade‐off between event storage cost and query cost makes Zone Repartitioning a competitive approach in different kinds of applications. We compare the performance of Zone Repartitioning against GHT and show that Zone Repartitioning provides better adaptability in various sensor network scenarios.
Autonomous Clustering and Message Passing Protocol for Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Chen Jenhui , Joe Chou Chien‐Chun
Published: June 2010

Wireless sensor networks consist of a large number of nodes with limited battery power and sensing components, which can be used for sensing specified events and gather wanted or interesting information via wireless links. It will enable the reliable monitoring of a variety of environments for both civil and military applications. There is a need of energy‐efficient message collection and power management methods to prolong the lifetime of the sensor network. Many methods, such as clustering algorithm, are investigated for power saving reason, however, they only consider reducing the amount of message deliveries by clustering but not the load balance of the clusters to extend the maximum lifetime of the network. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a fully distributed, randomized, and adaptable clustering mechanism named autonomous clustering and message passing (ACMP) protocol for improving energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks. Sensor nodes, according to ACMP, can cluster themselves autonomously by their remaining energy and dynamically choose a corresponding cluster head (CH) to transfer the collected information. Sensor nodes adjust an appropriate power level to form clusters and use minimum energy to exchange messages. The network topology is changed dynamically depending on the CH's energy. Moreover, by maintaining the remaining energy of each node, the traffic load is distributed to all nodes and thus prolong the network lifetime efficiently. Simulation results show that ACMP can achieve a highly energy saving effect as well as prolong the network lifetime.
A Fully Distributed Multi‐Channel MAC Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks Based on Location Information
Authors: Wu Shih‐Lin , Sheu Jang‐Ping , Lee Chung‐Chao
Published: June 2010

This paper proposes a distributed multi‐channel MAC protocol which is an extension of our early work GRID [1]. GRID is characterized by the following features: (i) it integrates a location‐aware channel assignment, (ii) it follows an “on‐demand” style to access the medium, (iii) the number of channels required is independent of the network topology, and (iv) no form of clock synchronization is required. The proposed protocol wants to further improve the GRID in two parts. First, we propose a fully distributed medium access mechanism without using a single control channel such that all of the network traffic can be distributed evenly over all data channels. Therefore, the network throughput will be increased significantly. Second, we can set the more suitable transmission range and GRID size by considering the factors of host density and packet arrival rate of the network within an specified area. Thus, all of channels will be reused more efficiently than GRID. Simulation results show that the throughput of our protocol is superior to GRID and IEEE 802.11.
GRAViTy: Geographic Routing around Voids in Sensor Networks
Authors: Dimitriou Tassos , Krontiris Ioannis
Published: June 2010

Nodes in sensor networks do not have enough topology information to make efficient routing decisions. To relay messages through intermediate sensors, geographic routing has been proposed as such a solution. Its greedy nature, however, makes routing inefficient especially in the presence of topology voids or holes. In this paper we present GRAViTy (Geographic Routing Around Voids In any TopologY of sensor networks), a simple greedy forwarding algorithm that combines compass routing along with a mechanism that allows packets to explore the area around voids and bypass them without significant communication overhead. Using extended simulation results we show that our mechanism outperforms the right‐hand rule for bypassing voids and that the resulting paths found well approximate the corresponding shortest paths. GRAViTy uses a cross‐layered approach to improve routing paths for subsequent packets based on experience gained by former routing decisions. Furthermore, our protocol responds to topology changes, i.e. failure of nodes, and efficiently adjusts routing paths towards the destination.
Label Routing Protocol: A New Cross‐Layer Protocol for Multi‐Hop Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
Authors: Wang Yu , Wu Jie
Published: June 2010

Compared to the traditional wireless network, the multi‐hop ad hoc wireless network is self‐configurable, dynamic, and distributed. During the past few years, many routing protocols have been proposed for this particular network environment. While in wired and optical networks, multi‐protocol label switching (MPLS) has clearly shown its advantages in routing and switching such as flexibility, high efficiency, scalability, and low cost. However MPLS is complex and does not consider the mobility issue for wireless networks, especially for ad hoc wireless networks. This paper migrates the label concept into the ad hoc network and provides a framework for the efficient label routing protocol(LRP) in such a network. The MAC layer is also optimized with LRP for shorter delay, power saving, and higher efficiency. The simulation results show that the delay is improved significantly with this cross‐layer routing protocol.
Semantics for the intuitive governance of autonomic user‐centered pervasive computing environments
Authors: O’Donnell Tony , Lewis David , Wade Vincent
Published: June 2010

As Pervasive Computing environments become more richly populated with sensors and computing power it may be possible for the environment to observe and interpret user actions and pre‐emptively provide accurate support for those actions. This requires accurate inference of user intent. Though individual user acts may be inferable from environmental context sensing, the inference of intent for which appropriate support might be offered is more challenging. Numerous researchers have used probabilistic techniques such as Bayesian Analysis techniques to attempt such inference. Unlike a desktop environment, however, pervasive computing environments are extremely heterogeneous, so any heuristics used must be tailored to the physical environment and the users in question. Thus these techniques are only likely to be accurate if configured with accurate knowledge of routine user behavior. Many existing approaches attempt to learn such knowledge from operational data, but this often requires user involvement in training and expert configuration of probabilistic processing structure. In this paper we examine a complimentary approach where users are presented with an intuitive interface to support the direct configuration of probabilistic structure by users with appropriate knowledge. By treating an intent inference system for a particular pervasive computng environment as an autonomic system, we approach the problem as the design of an intuitive governance interface for this system. We then present the design and usability evaluation of this governance interface.
Aspects of service‐oriented component procurement in web‐based information systems
Authors: Gaedke Martin , Meinecke Johannes , Nussbaumer Martin
Published: June 2010

Modern information systems are increasingly built on Web‐based and component‐based platforms. This raises the need for a service‐oriented infrastructure to simplify the management and procurement of corresponding components. Special focus lies on the deployment and distribution of such software artifacts within the context of the World Wide Web to promote their reuse and there‐fore to save development costs. At the same time, the integrity of the overall system must not be neglected. The use of components from third‐party vendors poses a potential security threat requiring additional care. Furthermore remains the issue of usage rights for the components and the data they provide. Flexible mechanisms can offer a huge range of different licensing models to be enforced on the runtime process. This paper presents an approach to deal with these challenges together with an implementation of a software system supporting component‐based Web portals.
The effect of a website directory when employed in browsing the results of a search engine
Authors: Sato Keizo , Ohtaguro Akira , Nakashima Makoto , ITO Tetsuro
Published: June 2010

A method for improving the retrieval effectiveness of a search engine by employing a website directory, e.g., Yahoo! Japan directory or Google directory, as a concept dictionary is proposed. A user can examine the results of a search engine from the top rank as usual except that he/she is assisted by a suggestion about which webpages are worthy of examination. To make a suggestion the conceptual closeness of an unexamined webpage to a query or to each of the webpages that a user has been interested in is calculated via a website directory. The proposed method was evaluated on the search results of Japanese Excite.
Preserving conceptual constraints during XML updates
Authors: Pardede Eric , Wendy Rahayu J. , Taniar David
Published: June 2010

Despite the increasing demand for an effective XML document repository, many are still reluctant to store XML documents in their natural tree form. One main reason is the inadequacy of XML query languages to update the tree‐form XML documents. Even though some of the languages have
supported minimum update facilities, they do not concern on preserving the documents constraints. The results are updated documents with very low database integrity. In this paper, we propose a methodology to accommodate XML Update without violating the conceptual constraints of the documents. The method
takes form as a set of functions that perform checking mechanisms before update operations. In this paper we discuss the conceptual constraints embedded in three different relationship structures: association, aggregation and inheritance relationship. We highlight four constraints related with association relationship (nuber of participants, referential integrity, cardinality, and adhesion), five constraints related with aggregation relationship
(cardinality, adhesion, ordering, homogeneity and share‐ability) and two constraints related to inheritance relationship (disjoint
and number of super‐class). In addition, a specific constraint, which is collection type of children, will also be discussed.
The proposed method can be implemented in different ways, for example in this paper we use XQuery language. Since the XML update requires schema, in this paper we also propose the mapping of the these constraints in the conceptual level to the XML Schema. We use XML Schema for structure validation, even though the algorithm can be used by any schema languages.
A lattice‐based framework for interactively and incrementally mining web traversal patterns
Authors: Lee Yue‐Shi , Yen Show‐Jane , Hsieh Min‐Chi
Published: June 2010

Web mining is one of the mining technologies, which applies data mining techniques in large amount of web data to improve the web services. Web traversal pattern mining discovers most of the users’ access patterns from web logs. This information can provide the navigation suggestions for web users such that appropriate actions can be adopted. However, the web data will grow rapidly in the short time, and some of the web data may be antiquated. The user behaviors may be changed when the new web data is inserted into and the old web data is deleted from web logs. Besides, it is considerably difficult to select a perfect minimum support threshold during the mining process to find the interesting rules. Even though the experienced experts, they also cannot determine the appropriate minimum support. Thus, we must constantly adjust the minimum support until the satisfactory mining results can be found. The essences of incremental or interactive data mining are that we can use the previous mining results to reduce the unnecessary processes when the minimum support is changed or web logs are updated. In this paper, we propose efficient incremental and interactive data mining algorithms to discover web traversal patterns and make the mining results to satisfy the users’ requirements. The experimental results show that our algorithms are more efficient than the other approaches.
Strategic modelling of web information systems
Authors: Moritz Thomas , Schewe Klaus‐Dieter , Thalheim Bernhard
Published: June 2010

The development of web information systems (WISs) requires modelling on various layers of abstraction. Based on an abstract abstraction layer model (ALM) the work in this article approaches the modelling on the highest layer dealing with strategic modelling. Strategic modelling addresses a very general characterisation of WISs in terms of its content, functionality, context, usage and presentation, and pragmatic guidelines for achieving these. The article discusses branding, utilisation space modelling, utilisation portfolio modelling and atmosphere modelling as the major parts of a strategic model. Furthermore, techniques based on linguistic analysis, communication analysis and metaphors make up the informal means to approach WISs in strategic terms.
Using visual content‐based analysis with textual and structural analysis for improving web filtering
Authors: Hammami Mohamed , Chahir Youssef , Chen Liming
Published: June 2010

Along with the ever growingWeb is the proliferation of objectionable content, such as sex, violence, racism, etc. We need efficient tools for classifying and filtering undesirable web content. In this paper, we investigate this problem through WebGuard, our automatic machine learning based pornographic website classification and filtering system. Facing the Internet more and more visual and multimedia as exemplified by pornographic websites, we focus here our attention on the use of skin color related visual content based analysis along with textual and structural content based analysis for improving pornographic website filtering. While the most commercial filtering products on the marketplace are mainly based on textual content‐based analysis such as indicative keywords detection or manually collected black list checking, the originality of our work resides on the addition of structural and visual content‐based analysis to the classical textual content‐based analysis along with several major‐data mining techniques for learning and classifying. Experimented on a testbed of 400 websites including 200 adult sites and 200 non pornographic ones, WebGuard, our Web filtering engine scored a 96.1% classification accuracy rate when only textual and structural content based analysis are used, and 97.4% classification accuracy rate when skin color related visual content based analysis is driven in addition. Further experiments on a black list of 12 311 adult websites manually collected and classified by the French Ministry of Education showed that WebGuard scored 87.82% classification accuracy rate when using only textual and structural content‐based analysis, and 95.62% classification accuracy rate when the visual content‐based analysis is driven in addition. The basic framework of WebGuard can apply to other categorization problems of websites which combine, as most of them do today, textual and visual content.
A logical foundation for nested semi‐structured data and web forms
Authors: Ykhlef Mourad
Published: June 2010

Semi‐structured data are commonly represented by labeled flat db‐graphs. In this paper, we study an extension of db‐graph model for representing nested semi‐structured data. This extension allows one to have db‐graphs whose vertex labels are db‐graphs themselves. Bringing the data model closer to the natural presentation of data stored via Web documents is the main motivation behind nesting db‐graphs. The importance of nested db‐graphs is similar to the importance of nested tables in relational model. The main purpose of the paper is to provide a mechanism to query nested semi‐structured data and Web forms in a uniform way. Most of the languages proposed so far have been designed as extensions of SQL with, among others, the advantage to provide a user‐friendly syntax and commercial flavor. The major focus of the paper is on defining a graph query language in a multi‐sorted calculus like style.
Web services and multimedia in m‐business applications: Opportunities and concerns
Authors: Georgiadis Christos K. , Fouliras Panayotis E. , Mavridis Ioannis , Manitsaris Athanasios
Published: June 2010

Web services refer to a specific set of technologies used to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. Thanks to maturing Web‐services standards, and to new mobile devices and application solutions, progress is being made in presenting similar Web‐services offerings in both mobile and fixed networks. To bring that architecture and the solutions it will support to the world of mobility is indeed a significant issue in m‐business applications, because mobile Web services present various advantages: Reduction of the overall cost of development (by reusing existing system components), faster time to market introduction of products (provided by applications’ rapid development and deployment) and remarkable possibilities to emerge new applications with increased functionalities. In addition, the new and forthcoming mobile networks, with native IP connection and high speed transmission capability, allow the development of a variety of modern multimedia services. Multimedia Messaging Services (capable to mix the media types in order to enable more intuitive messaging operation), and Instant Messaging and Presence Services (dedicated for presence, instant messaging, and distribution and sharing of multimedia content in groups of users), provide suitable underlying capabilities to support location‐based and context‐sensitive multimedia services. In this paper we will present the current approaches regarding architectural, functional and security features that allow enterprises to enjoy the benefits of traditional Web services in the mobile multimedia domain.
Handheld Computing and Programming for Mobile Commerce
Authors: Hu Wen‐Chen , Yeh Jyh‐Haw , Fu Lixin , Yang Hung‐Jen
Published: June 2010

Using Internet‐enabled mobile handheld devices to access the World Wide Web is a promising addition to the Web and traditional e‐commerce. Mobile handheld devices provide convenience and portable access to the huge information on the Internet for mobile users from anywhere and at anytime. However, mobile commerce has not enjoyed the same level of success as the e‐commerce has so far because mobile Web contents are scarce and mostly awkward for browsing. The major reason of the problems is most software engineers are not familiar with handheld devices, let alone programming for them. To help software engineers better understand this subject, this article gives a comprehensive study of handheld computing and programming for mobile commerce. It includes five major topics: (i) mobile commerce systems, (ii) mobile handheld devices, (iii) handheld computing, (iv) server‐side handheld computing and programming, and (v) client‐side handheld computing and programming. The most popular server‐side handheld applications are mostly functioning through mobile Web contents, which are constructed by using only few technologies and languages. On the other hand, various environments/languages are available for client‐side handheld computing and programming. Five of the most popular are (i) BREW, (ii) J2ME, (iii) Palm OS, (iv) Symbian OS, and (v) Windows Mobile. They are using either C/C++ or Java programming languages. This article will explain J2ME, a micro version of Java, and Palm OS programming, using C, by giving step‐by‐step procedures of J2ME and Palm application development.
Sibling‐First Data Organization for Parse‐Free XML Data Processing
Authors: Homayounfar Hooman , Wang Fangju
Published: June 2010

XML is becoming one of the most important structures for data exchange on the web. Despite having many advantages, XML structure imposes several major obstacles to large document processing. Inconsistency between the linear nature of the current algorithms (e.g. for caching and prefetch) used in operating systems and databases, and the non‐linear structure of XML data makes XML processing more costly. In addition to verbosity (e.g. tag redundancy), interpreting (i.e. parsing) depthfirst (DF) structure of XML documents is a significant overhead to processing applications (e.g. query engines). Recent research on XML query processing has learned that sibling clustering can improve performance significantly. However, the existing clustering methods are not able to avoid parsing overhead as they are limited by larger document sizes. In this research, We have developed a better data organization for native XML databases, named sibling‐first (SF) format that improves query performance significantly. SF uses an embedded index for fast accessing to child nodes. It also compresses documents by eliminating extra information from the original DF format. The converted SF documents can be processed for XPath query purposes without being parsed. We have implemented the SF storage in virtual memory as well as a format on disk. Experimental results with real data have showed that significantly higher performance can be achieved when XPath queries are conducted on very large SF documents.
M3PS: A JXTA‐based Multi‐platform P2P System and its Web Application Tools
Authors: Barolli Leonard , Xhafa Fatos , Durresi Arjan , De Marco Giuseppe
Published: June 2010

Peer‐to‐Peer computing offers many attractive features, such as collaboration, self‐organization, load balancing, availability, fault tolerance and anonymity. However, it also faces many serious challenges. In our previous work, we implemented a synchronous P2P collaboration platform called TOMSCOP. However, the TOMSCOP was implemented only in Windows XPOS. In this work, we extend our previous work and present a multi‐platform Peer‐to‐Peer system. The proposed system operates very smoothly in UNIX Solaris 9 OS, Linux Suse 9.1 OS, Mac OSX, and Windows XP. In this paper, we present the design of proposed system and four web application tools: info, joint draw pad, shared web browser and subaru avatar.
Delivering a Fully Interactive Mobile TV
Authors: Tjondronegoro Dian , Wang Lei , Joly Adrien
Published: June 2010

Affordable mobile devices with video playback functionality are rapidly growing in the market. Current wireless and third generation communication networks enable smoother and higher quality streaming video. With the support of these technologies, most participants in telecom value‐added service chain are planning to shift their business focus to a more profitable and appealing area, mobile TV. Previous work that survey on users' behavior while consuming mobile TV has indicated that users normally watch brief and casual contents, and not the full program. However, most of the current services adopt a “push” approach since users passively receive pre‐defined contents, rather than pulling the interesting topics and segments. In order to promote a more enjoyable and rewarding watching experience, this paper will propose a framework to support a fully interactive mobile TV. The main goal is to enable users to: 1) visually locate interesting topics across multiple genres (such as news, sports and entertainment) and 2) fully control the playback flow of the multimedia items while selecting the most interesting segments. A web‐based system has been developed to implement and test the effectiveness of the proposed framework in a wireless and mobile setting.
Effects of site design on consumer emotions: role of product involvement
Authors: Ha Young , Lennon Sharron J.
Published: June 2010

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of low task relevant cues presented on apparel web sites on consumer emotions (pleasure and arousal) that in turn influence consumer response behaviors (purchase intention and approach behavior) and examine the influence of product involvement as a moderator of the relationship between such cues and emotions.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 157 female students participated in an online experiment using mock web sites. The paper employed a 2×2 between‐subjects factorial design: low task relevant web cues (presence vs absence) and product involvement (low vs high).

Findings

The results revealed that low task relevant web cues induce more pleasure and arousal for online browsers with low levels of clothing product involvement than for those with high levels of clothing product involvement. The results also showed that emotions mediated the relationship between low task relevant web cues and various consumer response behaviors.

Research limitations/implications

The sample of the study was female college students. The relatively homogeneous sample may limit the generalizability of the results.

Practical implications

The paper provides an important implication for online apparel retailers developing web sites that may increase consumer pleasure and arousal and attract consumers with different levels of product involvement.

Originality/value

No study has examined a moderating effect of product involvement, an enduring involvement, between low task relevant web cues and consumer pleasure and arousal. The paper provides understanding of how low task relevant web cues influence consumers with different levels of product involvement.