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We demonstrate in the paper that user movement has great influences on the system performance of mobile cellular networks. We also develop a system model to study to what extent the influences will be, with focusing on the user movement simulation. We concern the parameters that determine the system performance of mobile cellular networks. We show partially in this paper that these parameters vary while user movement changes, but the effects are interactive. Since handoff calls are given a higher priority over new calls and GC mechanism is employed, our analysis shows that a mature mobile cellular network should make use of user movement characteristics and dynamically adjust its reservation threshold of the handoff call requests. Extensive simulation results validate our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, information communication market is reorganized focused on the digital convergence service used for integrating the communication, broadcasting and internet media by connecting the communication equipment, broadcasting equipment and computer via a network. The mobility support protocol enabling the effective handover between heterogeneous networks is emerged as the hot issue in relation with these next generation communication networks. In this paper, we are to suggest the MIH Vertical handover procedure required for the implementation of MIH over MIPv4 Low-Latency vertical handover by analyzing the handover performance in the overlap area between wireless networks using the vertical handover function of MIPv4 Mobile IP Technology of IETF and considering the expected problems. Also, we are to suggest the MIH L2-Trigger generation algorithm required for deciding the optimal handoff. We evaluate the vertical handover performance of MIPv4 low-latency in the overlap area between wireless networks by using the NS-2 and applying the IEEE 802.21 MIH (Media Independent Handover) based on the suggested technique and algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architecting service-oriented systems is a complex design activity. It involves making trade-offs among a number of interdependent design decisions, which are drawn from a range of concerns by various software stakeholders. In order to achieve effective and efficient SOC design we believe a careful study of architectural styles that can form the reference architecture is important. Hence, this paper provides a study of architectural styles for the reference architecture of SOC-based software systems. We propose a classification scheme for the architecture styles. These architectural styles are extracted from existing research projects and industry practices based on our classification scheme. For all those identified styles, we present an evolution trend driven by engineering principles for Internet-scale systems. As a result, this paper moves the first step towards creating a Reference Architecture that can be utilised to provide sensible guidance on the design of Web services application architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distributed dynamic system is a fully distributed system subject to a continual arrival/departure of the entities defining the system. Another characterizing dimension of these systems is their, possibly, arbitrary large size (number of entities) and the possible arbitrary small part of the system a single entity directly interacts with. This interaction occurs through data exchange over logical links, and the constantly changing graph, formed by all links connecting entities, represents the overlay network of the dynamic distributed system. The connectivity of such overlay is of fundamental importance to make the whole system working. This paper gives a precise definition of the connectivity problem in dynamic distributed systems while formally defining assumptions on arrival/departure of entities and on the evolution of the system size along the time. The paper shows the impossibility of achieving connectivity when an arbitrary large number of entities may arrive/depart concurrently at any time, doing so for an arbitrarily long time. A solution is presented achieving overlay connectivity during quiescent periods of the system: periods in which no more arrivals and departures take place. The paper conveys the fact that the finite but not known duration of the perturbed period before quiescence makes the solution of the problem far from being trivial. The paper also provides a simulation study showing that the solution not only achieves connectivity in quiescent periods but it rearranges entities in an overlay that shows good scalability properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to discover resource rapidly and exactly in distributed and heterogeneous grid environment is a key problem that affects grid computing performance. In this paper, the P2P method is used to improve scalability of resource discovery mechanism, and a decentralized resource discovery method with well scalability is presented, this method uses binary tree to manage data, each node in grid is responsible for managing a part of resource information. Experimental result shows that the method presented in this paper can resolve many problems that exist in centralized mechanism, such as poor scalability, heavy load on resource information server and single point failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key issue with Web Services (WS) is the verification and validation (V&V) of services to build trust between service providers and service users. This paper proposed a test-broker architecture so that all stakeholder within WS can contribute to improve the testing of the services. The test broker supports the submission, indexing, and querying of test artifacts such as test cases, defect reports and evaluations. It can also provide the services for the test generation, test coordination, and distributed testing services. The DCV&V (Decentralized, Collaborative, Verification and Validation) framework is proposed with a set of distributed and collaborated test brokers dedicated to different V&V tasks to enable scalable and flexible test collaborations. The paper explores the concept of design-by-contract and applies the principle to DCV&V. It identifies two categories of testing contracts including TSC (Testing Service Contracts) and TCC (Test Collaboration Contracts). It illustrates the application of TSC with contract-based test generation based on WS OWL-S specification. It elaborates TCC with the analysis of the test artifacts definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fujaba is an UML [21] based CASE tool with an emphasis on code generation from graphical behavior specifications. The Fujaba tool is accompanied by the Fujaba process, a systematic approach to use Fujaba for system development [5]. To improve the tool support for the Fujaba process, we have developed the XProM plug-in. This paper exemplifies how the XProM plug-in supports the tool developer in following the Fujaba Process. Main parts of this paper are a tutorial to XProM users. However, the paper is also useful for other CASE tool developers as a guide how developers could be supported. Therefore, we also give some hints, how such a support may be realized. As a running example we use the development of model transformations for a simple statechart editor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a transformational approach for the specification and formal verification of concurrent and real-time systems.At upper level, one system is specified using the timed process algebra RT-LOTOS. The output of the proposed transformation is a Time Petri net (TPN). The paper particularly shows how a TPN can be automatically constructed from an RT-LOTOS specification using a compositionally defined mapping. The proof of the translation consistency is sketched in the paper and developed in[1]. The RT-LOTOS to TPN translation patterns formalized in the paper are being implemented. in a prototype tool. This enables reusing TPNs verification techniques and tools for the profit of RT-LOTOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the medical domain, there is a tendency to standardize health care by providing medical guidelines as summary of the best evidence concerning a particular topic. Based on the assumption that guidelines are similar to software, we try to carry over techniques from software engineering to guideline development. In this paper, we show how to apply formal methods, namely interactive verification to improve the quality of guidelines. As an example, we have worked on a guideline from the American Academy of Pediatrics for the management of jaundice in newborns. Contributions of this paper are as follows: (I) a formalized model of a nontrivial example guideline, (II) an approach to verify properties of medical guidelines interactively, and (III) verification of a first example property.This work has been partially funded by the European Commission's IST program, under contract number IST-FP6-508794 Protocure II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses an adaptive modulation technique combined with space-frequency block coded OFDM(SFBC OFDM) over frequency selective channels and evaluates the performance in terms of the outdated channel state information(CSI) in mobile environments. This paper employs the Alamouti's diversity scheme in multiple input multiple output OFDM (MIMO OFDM) and an adaptive modulation with enhanced performance. Adaptive modulation scheme shows very attractive performance when the CSI is perfect. The CSI for bit loading in MIMO OFDM can be obtained from the singular value decomposition(SVD) of MIMO channel. But, SFBC OFDM system based on Alamouti's diversity scheme does not require the SVD process. Through various simulations, the performance of SFBC OFDM employing adaptive modulation is compared with that of fixed modulation. Also, in adaptive modulation scheme, the effects of the outdated CSI under mobile environments are shown [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a class of random additively decomposable problems (rADPs) with and without interactions between the subproblems. The paper then tests the hierarchical Bayesian optimization algorithm (hBOA) and other evolutionary algorithms on a large number of random instances of the proposed class of problems. The results show that hBOA can scalably solve rADPs and that it significantly outperforms all other methods included in the comparison. Furthermore, the results provide a number of interesting insights into both the difficulty of a broad class of decomposable problems as well as the sensitivity of various evolutionary algorithms to different sources of problem difficulty. rADPs can be used to test other optimization algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe a framework for the application of semantic granularities to the Semantic Web. Given a data source and an ontology formalizing qualities which describe the source, we define a dynamic granularity system for the navigation of the repository according to different levels of detail, i.e., granularities. Semantic granularities summarize the degree of informativeness of the qualities, taking into account both the individuals populating the repository, which concur in the definition of the implicit semantics, and the ontology schema, which gives the formal semantics. The method adapts and extends to ontologies existing natural language processing techniques for topics generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing development of web-based reputation systems in the 21st century will have a powerful social and economic impact on both business entities and individual customers, because it makes transparent quality assessment on products and services to achieve customer assurance in the distributed web-based Reputation Systems. The web-based reputation systems will be the foundation for web intelligence in the future. Trust and Reputation help capture business intelligence through establishing customer trust relationships, learning consumer behavior, capturing market reaction on products and services, disseminating customer feedback, buyers' opinions and end-user recommendations. It also reveals dishonest services, unfair trading, biased assessment, discriminatory actions, fraudulent behaviors, and un-true advertising. The continuing development of these technologies will help in the improvement of professional business behavior, sales, reputation of sellers, providers, products and services. Given the importance of reputation in this paper, we propose ontology for reputation. In the business world we can consider the reputation of a product or the reputation of a service or the reputation of an agent. In this paper we propose ontology for these entities that can help us unravel the components and conceptualize the components of reputation of each of the entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service-Oriented computing can be characterized as the motivating force for interoperable web applications. Businesses that embark on service-oriented technology are inclined to an effective interoperation with other businesses. This interoperation not only can expand businesses' markets but also allow the provision of quality services to citizens for carrying out their everyday transactions. However for an effective utilization of service-oriented computing a variety of other technologies must be involved namely semantics, pragmatics, effective search techniques, intelligent agents and pervasive services. In this paper we focus in one of the phases of service-oriented computing, the web service discovery, and propose an effective pragmatic and pervasive methodology that will enable potential business partners to discover the web servicesThe term web services, as in this paper, is used to refer to semantic web services./processes of their interest. We are particularly emphasizing on the importance of pragmatics and their application during web service discovery, because only a pragmatic consideration can provide complete and unambiguous meaning to web service usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When using electronic services, people are often asked to provide personal information. This raises many privacy issues. To gain the trust of the user, service providers can use privacy policy languages such as P3P to declare the purpose and usage of this personal information. User agents can compare these policies to privacy preferences of a user and warn the user if his privacy is threatened. This paper extends two languages: P3P and APPEL. It makes it possible to refer to certified data and credentials. This allows service providers to define the minimal level of assurance. It is also shown how different ways of disclosure (exact, blurred, verifiably encrypted...) can be specified to achieve more privacy friendly policies. Last, the paper describes a privacy agent that makes use of the policies to automate privacy friendly information disclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless PAN Mesh Network (WMN) is currently going to be standardized and enhanced to take full advantages of the flexible and heterogeneous networks. Although the standard (802.15.5) is under-construction, WMNs are expected to become popular as they have the ability to connect all kinds of current networks. So far, there is no applied architecture which is efficient enough to completely solve routing and security problems in WMN. To assist IEEE P805.15 in routing and security aspects, in this paper, we propose an adaptive algorithm for detecting bogus nodes when they attempt to intrude into the network by attacking routing protocol. In addition, a procedure to find the most optimal path between two nodes is presented along with adaptive pre-conditions for WMNs. We also show that our algorithm is robust according to the mobility of the nodes and it is easy to implement in currently proposed architectures. It can work with many kinds of wireless networks as well as can reduce computational costs. Keywords: Wireless PAN Mesh Networks, Security, Intrusion Detection, Clustering, Optimal Path, Routing, Attack on Routing Protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OLAP provides an efficient way for business data analysis. However, most up-to-date OLAP tools often make the analysts lost in the sea of data while the analysts usually focus their interest on a subset of the whole dataset. Unfortunately, OLAP operators are usually not capsulated within the subset. What's more, the users' interests often arise in an impromptu way after the user getting some information from the data. In this paper, we give the definition of users' interests and propose the user-defined virtual cubes to solve this problem. At the same time, we present an algorithm to answer the queries upon virtual cube. All the OLAP operators will be encapsulated within this virtual cube without superfluous information retrieved. Experiments show the effectiveness and efficiency of the virtual cube mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper ascribes a formal semantics to advice weaving in AspectJ. Since the version 1.1, AspectJ language is developed using bytecode weaving, which combines aspects and classes to produce ".class" files that run in a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In AspectJ, advice weaving is done statically by inserting the advice functionality in some regions of the code. These regions are join points that are declared using pointcuts. In this paper, we focus only on static pointcuts, i.e., pointcuts that correspond directly to locations in the bytecode. AspectJ dynamic pointcuts such as target, this, and cflow are not in the focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past twenty-five years or so Saddleback search has been used as an paradigm of how methods of formal program construction can quickly lead to a simple and effective algorithm for searching an ordered table. In this paper we revisit the problem and show that saddleback search is not in fact the best algorithm when one dimension of the table is much smaller than the other. The paper is structured in the form of a classroom discussion involving a teacher and four very clever students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has an introductory nature. It sets the scene for the three papers in the thematic session "Structured Data Tools". We discuss interaction and coordination in general and look more specifically at the XML data format and the dataflow driven coordination language Reo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical Data Mining is a very active and challenging research area in Data Mining community. However researchers entering Medical Data Mining should be aware that in core clinical, dentistry and nursing, data mining is not welcomed as much as we believe and publication of results in these journals based on Data Mining algorithms is not easily possible. In this paper, in addition to presenting one of our "successful" KDD projects in Urology that did not get to anywhere, we back up our belief based on designed searches on PubMed and review literature based on these searches. Our findings suggest that few Data Mining algorithms made their ways into core clinical journals. The paper concludes by reasons we have collected through our experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a new type of reducts called the λ-Fuzzy-Reduct, where the fuzzy similarity relation is constructed by means of cosine-distances of decision vectors and the parameter λ is used to tune the similarity precision level. The λ-Fuzzy-Reduct can eliminate harsh requirements of the distribution reduct, and it is more flexible than the maximum distribution reduct, the traditional reduct, and the generalized decision reduct. Furthermore, we prove that the distribution reduct, the maximum distribution reduct, and the generalized decision reduct can be converted into the traditional reduct. Thus in practice the implementations of knowledge reductions for the three types of reducts can be unified into efficient heuristic algorithms for the traditional reduct. We illustrate concepts and methods proposed in this paper by an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a music information retrieval system in real mobile environment is proposed. In order to alleviate distortions due to the mobile noise, a noise reduction algorithm is applied and then a feature extraction using Multi-Feature Clustering is implemented to improve the system performance. The proposed system shows quite successful performance with real world cellular phone data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incrementally maintaining association rules based on two or more classes of frequent item sets may reduce the costs of scanning the original database remarkably. However, it was considered as a method of saving time with more storage spaces. It is suggested in this paper that all frequent item sets of several minimal supports can be stored in a table with a little additional storage, and a representation model is given. Based on this model, the paper systematically discusses the problem of incremental maintenance based on discovered association rules of several minimal supports. Theoretical analysis and experiments show that the approach makes full use of the previous results and reduces the complexity of incremental maintenance algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the assumption that in the future, UMTS, HIPERLAN-2 and DVB-T can be three (co-operating) components of a composite radio infrastructure that offers wideband wireless access to broadband IP-based services. Managing the resources of this powerful, composite-radio infrastructure in an aggregate manner, and multi-operator scenario, is a complex task. This paper presents an approach to the overall UMTS, HIPERLAN-2 and DVB-T network and service management problem, providing the internal operation of a system addressing this problem. Key points addressed are the development of an architecture that can jointly optimise the resources of the technologies in the composite radio environment, and the development of open interfaces with Service Provider mechanisms and the heterogeneous managed infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a QoS evaluation in a DiffServ experimental test-bed scenario. We implemented our field trial using prototypal routers running under Linux OS and we arranged them in order to make possible the interconnection with a remote island of a Multi-domain DiffServ network. The performance evaluation of Real-time applications presented in the paper will make clear how it is possible to provide "mission critical" applications with tool-quality level of service when appropriate algorithm and resource sharing are chosen and when these features are associated with a fair degree of aggregation. As a consequence the paper describes the results by means of a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) evaluation campaign to show how Real-Time applications (such as voice and video conferencing) may suffer for the lack of QoS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A policy based management networking is a new paradigm used to achieve the network management. This paper presents a new policy based Mobile IP users management architecture based on a Common Open Policy Service (COPS) protocol which is currently deployed for QoS management. This paper introduces a new concept of terminal policy enforcement point (TPEP) which allows the terminal to interact with the network enforcing network policies defined by the network manager; it is a key feature of our architecture. The paper presents also the global architecture to support the mobile IP users requirements based mainly on two extensions of COPS protocol; COPS-SLS [1] for QoS negotiation and COPS-MU/MT [2] for policy based user and terminal mobility management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CE-ants (Cross Entropy ants) is a distributed, robust and adaptive swarm intelligence system for dealing with path management in communication networks. This paper focuses on strategies for adjusting the overhead generated by the CE-ants as the state of the network changes. The overhead is in terms of number of management packets (ants) generated, and the adjustments are done by controlling the generation rate of ants traversing the network. The self-tuned strategies proposed in this paper detect state changes implicitly by monitoring parameters and ant rates in the management system. Rate adaptation is done both in the network nodes and in the peering points of the virtual paths. The results are promising, and compared to fixed rate strategies the self-tuned strategies show a significant saving (70-85%) in number of packets, and has similar (even slightly better) data packet delay and service availability. The rate adaptation in network nodes provides fast restoration with short path detection times and hence also high service availability. The implicit self-tuned ant rate in the path endpoints improves the convergence time on link state events without flooding the network with management packets in steady state when these are not required. Keywords: Cross Entropy, swarm intelligence, CE-ants, network management, restoration time, service availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In UML 2.0 sequence diagrams have been considerably extended and are now fundamentally better structured. Interactions in sequence diagrams can be structured using so-called interaction fragments, including alt (alternative behaviour), par (parallel behaviour), neg (forbidden behaviour), assert (mandatory behaviour) and ref (reference another diagram). The operator ref in particular greatly improves the way diagrams can be decomposed. In previous work we have given a semantics to a subset of sequence diagrams using labelled event structures, a true-concurrent model that naturally captures alternative and parallel behaviour. In this paper, we expand that work to address refinement and show how to obtain a refined model by means of a powerful categorical construction over two categories of labelled event structures. The underlying motivation for this work is reasoning and verification of complex scenario-based inter-object behavioural models. We conclude the paper with a discussion on future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how to refine a Gaia design by applying agent-oriented extensions of UML. First, we show how the Gaia Interaction model can be improved by applying the first two layers of the Agent Interaction Protocol (AIP) of AUML. Second, Gaia Agent and Service models are refined by applying the AIP's third layer combined with Extended UML Class Diagrams. Third, Gaia Organisational Structure is enriched by applying the Aalaadin model. The final aim of the whole process is to obtain a more concrete design closer to implementation. We demonstrate how the refinement process can be applied to the development of an agent-based system for conference management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to enable the intelligent agents to be aware of the dynamic business requirements and strategies, and cooperate with other agents in a stable and explicit way, a policy and contract extended BDI logic (called BGIPDC logic) has been proposed, by integrating contracts and policies into traditional BDI model. On the basis of BGIPDC logic, this paper proposes a model of agent architecture as a concrete realization of it, called PDC-agent. PDC-agent is an extension of traditional BDI agent, by adding a policy engine, a contract engine and a goal maintenance component into agent's interpreter. Besides, PDC-agent has two characteristics. First, the operation of PDC-agent is based on an event-driven mechanism. Various events drive the components of the interpreter. Second, the representation of PDC-agent is on the basis of ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a unique mechanism that enables seamless interconnection and scalability of the interface between the sensor platform layer and the middleware layer in pervasive computing. The disadvantages of using one-to-one hard coding for various device drivers and firmware for interfacing sensor platform and middleware layers are primarily a lack of flexibility and scalability when the system changes environments. The encapsulation of access point of the sensor platform layer provides developers and designers with an effective way of interconnecting and scaling up with diverse and various kinds of sensors and actuators. In this paper, we define encapsulation of the access point of the sensor platform layer. The module for encapsulating the detected sensor data is called ‘context representer'. The context representer converts detected sensor data to raw context. For interconnecting with the sensor platform layer and the middleware layer, ‘entity manager' module in the middleware layer for each entity of context representer is defined. The entity manager is for transforming the raw context to a general context. Then, the middleware is able to interact with context-aware applications according to the reasoning with context in the middleware layer, upper layer requests and lower layer status, without being influenced by a change of sensor node and sensor platform environments. We present the encapsulation mechanism and entity manager for efficient interfacing and scalability of contextaware applications and compare them with other approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a prototype desktop ambient display system known as the Ambient Workplace (AW) that is used to visualise some aspects of cooperation among a group of co-workers. The AW draws on the ambient technology paradigm by providing a visualisation that represents the interactions of the co-workers (either individuals or groups) in their peripheral attention zone. The paper discusses the development of a prototype system based on a series of indices and uses a maritime flags metaphor. The paper also presents some early results from a user study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Document clustering is classifying a data set of documents into groups of closely related documents, so that its resulting clusters can be used in browsing and searching the documents of a specific topic. In most cases of such as application, a set of new documents are incrementally added to the data set and there can be a large variation in the number of words in each document. This paper proposes an incremental document clustering method for an incrementally increasing data set of documents. The normalized inverse document frequency of a word in the data set is introduced to cope with the variation of the number of words in each document. Furthermore, an average link method for document clustering instead of using one similarity measure used in two similarity measures: a cluster cohesion rate and a cluster participation rate. Furthermore, a category tree for a set of identified clusters is introduced to assist the incremental document clustering of newly added documents. In this paper, the performance of the proposed method is analyzed by a series of experiments to identify their various characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current paper proposes an efficient alternative for traditional gate-level fault simulation. The authors explain how Structurally Synthesized Binary Decision Diagrams (SSBDD) can be used for representation, simulation and fault modeling of digital circuits. It is shown how the first phase of any fault simulation algorithm: the fault-free simulation can be accelerated using this model. Moreover, it is pointed out that simultaneous to simulation on SSBDDs, the set of potential fault locations can be significantly reduced. In addition, algorithms for deductive and concurrent fault simulation on SSBDD models are introduced in the paper. While full implementation of the new SSBDD based algorithms needs to be carried out, the paper presents experimental data revealing the advantages of the proposed data structure in the fault simulation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) involves automated trans-formations between software models defined in different languages at different abstraction levels. This paper takes an MDA approach to integrate a formal modeling language (Object-Z) with an informal modeling language (UML) via model transformation. This paper shows how formal and informal modeling languages can be cooperatively used in the MDA framework and how the trans-formations between models in these languages can be achieved using an MDA development environment. The MDA model transformation techniques allow us to have a reusable transformation between formal and informal modeling languages. The integrated approach provides an effective V&V technique for the MDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present movement in the adoption of agile methodologies as a contemporary approach to the management of the software development processes has seen a growing trend towards the selection of relevant practices from the agile family as opposed to the adoption of specific methods. This paper reports work-in-progress of a proposed novel modeling technique for tailoring methodologies to a particular environment using the family of methodologies approach. The tool is being applied by one software development organisation in Southern Africa and the partial results are included in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Source repositories are a promising database of information about software projects. This paper proposes a tool to extract and summarize information from CVS logs in order to identify whether there are differences in the development approach of Agile and non-Agile teams. The tool aims to improve empirical investigation of the Agile Methods (AMs) without affecting the way developers write code. There are many claims about the benefits of AMs; however, these claims are seldom supported by empirical analysis. Configuration management systems contain a huge amount of quantitative data about a project. The retrieval and part of the analysis can be automated in order to get useful insights about the status and the evolution of the project. However, this task poses formidable challenges because the data source is not designed as a measurement tool. This paper proposes a tool for extracting and summarizing information from CVS (Concurrent Versions System) repositories and a set of analysis that can be useful to identify common or different behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how System Metaphor delivers a coherent system of names that carry more information than unrelated names would. Keywords: Extreme Programming, Metaphor, Names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme programming (XP) has been introduced in various scenarios primarily because some in industry argued for a move away from what they feel are rigid documentation-based development techniques. This has usually taken place with experienced developers. This paper describes attempts by researchers from the University of Sheffield to introduce XP to relatively inexperienced student developers. This paper describes some of the important findings and provides evidence relating to common problems encountered when students attempt to adjust to XP. Keywords: Extreme Programming, Agile Methods, Empirical Software Engineering [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by the issue of geo-spatial data mining under grid computing environment, a new representation method called spatial information multi-grid (SIMG) for depicting spatial data and spatial information is presented in this paper. A strategy of dividing the globe with multi-level spatial grid is proposed. And through further studying on the precision of description on feature of detail, this paper tries to divide the globe with SIMG and constructs the framework of SIMG in China. Based on SIMG this paper tries to realize data mining of different thematic information on the same geographical position, data mining of dynamic spatial-temporal information of the same thematic content, data mining and transforming of different coordinate systems and to make SIMG a fundamental research work for further developing spatial information sharing and data mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a challenging issue to analyze video content for video mining due to the difficulty in video representation. A hierarchical model of video representation is proposed with a schema for content-based analysis of news video in this paper. The research problem targeted in this paper is to mine a massive video database to retrieve specific clip based on content defined by users. This is frequently encountered in entertainment and video editing. A novel solution to this problem is developed in this paper, in which the consecutive news video is segmented into shots, scenes and news items using multimodal features based on the hierarchical model. To summarize the content of video, a video abstract is developed. The experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of the approaches discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet Technology Track received around 60 papers and the papers were reviewed by the International program committee and finally 9 papers have been selected for presentation (6 full and 3 short papers). As the track chair, I would like to thank all the authors who submitted their papers in this track and all the PC members who reviewed the papers in timely fashion. The paper presentation in this track is organized into three sessions, (1) Internet Search and Query, (2) E-commerce, (3) Web Browsing. I hope you enjoyed your presence in these sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Distributed Computing track of ICDCIT 2005 received 181 papers. Based on the review by the members of the Program Committee, 16 full and 9 short papers were selected for inclusion in the proceedings of the conference. The accepted papers cover a wide range of topics in Distributed Computing. Design of MAC protocol, network architecture and routing protocol for Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks seem to attract the attention of many researchers. 5 of the 16 accepted full papers fall in this area. The other popular areas include, Network Security, Sensor Networks, Fault Detection and Recovery and Grid Computing. Each of these areas will have at least 3 papers in the proceedings. The Distributed Computing track will also have papers in the areas of Cellular Networks, Peer-to-Peer Networks, Optical Networks, Information Retrieval, QoS and Mobile IP. We have put together a program that covers many important areas of Distributed Computing. We hope you will find the papers in this track informative, interesting and useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We welcome our workshop attendees to a very interesting collection of discussions. We received many papers and had to limit the acceptance rate to 40those papers submitted. The papers cover a range of topics from Infrastructure, Service Discovery, Personalization, Environments, Security, Privacy, to Wireless and Sensor Networks showing the scope of interests and activities represented by the PerSys participants. We would like to thank everyone who submitted a paper and believe you will all find the presentations and discussions stimulating and worthwhile. The reviewers of the papers have done a terrific job in helping authors prepare better final papers and deserve special thanks for completing the job promptly. Last, we would like to thank the organizers of the conference a sincere thanks for the hard work they have put in to providing us with the opportunity to gather, present, listen, and discuss our research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early Aspects are aspects found in the early life cycle phases of software development, including requirements elicitation and analysis, domain analysis and architecture design activities. Aspects at these stages crosscut the modular units appropriate for their lifecycle activity; traditional requirements documentation, domain knowledge capture and architectural artifacts do not afford separate description of early aspects. As such, early aspects necessitate new modularizations to be effectively captured and maintained. Without new tools and techniques, early aspects remain tangled and scattered in lifecycle artifacts, and may lead to development, maintenance and evolution difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the development of large software systems, there is significant value in being able to predict changes. If we can predict the likely changes that a system will undergo, then we can estimate likely developer effort and allocate resources appropriately. Within object oriented software development, these changes are often identified as refactorings. Very few studies have explored the prediction of refactorings on a wide-scale. Within this paper we aim to do just this, through applying intelligent data analysis techniques to a uniquely large and comprehensive software engineering time series dataset. Our analysis show extremely promising results, allowing us to predict the occurrence of future large changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), it has been recently shown that Public-Key Cryptography (PKC) is indeed feasible on resource-constrained nodes. This feasibility, however, does not necessarily mean attractiveness, as the obtained results are still not satisfactory enough. In this paper, we present results on implementing ECC, as well as the related emerging field of Pairing-Based Cryptography (PBC), on two of the most popular sensor nodes. By doing that, we show that PKC is not only viable, but in fact attractive for WSNs. As far as we know pairing computations presented in this paper are the most efficient results on the MICA2 (8-bit/7.3828-MHz ATmega128L) and Tmote Sky (16-bit/8.192-MHz MSP-430) nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to the process of query optimization in all real-life modern-day Database Management Systems (DBMS) is the use of histograms. These have been used for decades in approximating query result sizes in the query optimizer, and methods such as the Equi-Width and Equi-Depth histograms have been incorporated in all real-life systems. This is because histograms are simple structures, and can be easily utilized in determining efficient Query Evaluation Plans (QEPs). This paper demonstrates how we can incorporate two recently-developed histogram methods into the ORACLE real-life DBMS. These two new histograms methods were introduced by Oommen and Thiyagarajah [1], and called the the Rectangular Attribute Cardinality Map (R-ACM), and the Trapezoidal Attribute Cardinality Map (T-ACM). The superiority of the R-ACM and the T-ACM in yielding more accurate query result size estimates has been well demonstrated, and the resulting superior QEPs for a theoretically-modeled database was shown in [2]. In this paper we make a "conceptual leap" and demonstrate how the ACMs can be incorporated into a real-life DBMS. This has been done by designing and implementing a prototype which sits on top of an ORACLE 9i system. The integration is achieved in C/C++ and PL/SQL, and serves as a prototype "plug-in" to the ORACLE system, since it is fully integrated and completely transparent to users. The superiority of utilizing the ACM histograms is rigorously validated by conducting an extensive set of experiments on the TPC-H benchmark data sets, and by testing on equi-select and equi-join queries. The entire set of experimental results obtained by integrating the underlying algorithms into the ORACLE query optimizer can be found in [3]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a set of components that support psychotherapy processes on mobile and office settings. One provides patients the required access to psychotherapy artefacts, enabling an adequate and tailored aid and motivation for fulfilment of common therapy tasks. Another offers therapists the ability to define and refine the artefacts, in order to present, help and react to the patient according to his/her specific needs and therapy progress. Two other components allow the analysis and annotation of the aforementioned artefacts. All these components run on a PDA base. Evaluation results validated some of the design choices, and indicate future directions and improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]