The researchers below were distinguished invited speakers at previous ICSOFT-PT conferences.
We are indebted to them for their contribution to heighten the conference level.
2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006
2015
2014
2013
2012
Domain Modeling
Stephen Mellor, Freeter, United Kingdom
Data, Context, Situation - On the Usefulness of Semantic Layers for Designing Context-aware Systems
Daniela Nicklas, Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg, Germany
Empathy-driven Design for Emotional Wellbeing
Fabio Casati, University of Trento, Italy
Enterprise Ontology Driven Software Generation
Jan Dietz, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
2011
THE IMPACT OF EMERGING COMPUTING MODELS ON ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM
Ivan Ivanov, SUNY Empire State College, United States
TOWARDS ENSURING ETERNAL CONNECTABILITY
Antonia Bertolino, Italian National Research Council - CNR, Italy
DOMAIN MODELING – A LOST ART?
David Marca, University of Phoenix, United States
FROM REQUIREMENTS TO CODE - A Full Model-Driven Development Perspective
Oscar Pastor, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
2010
THE EVOLVING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUSINESS AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Pericles Loucopoulos, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
MODELS. MODELS. MODELS. SO WHAT?
Stephen Mellor, Freeter, United Kingdom
MENTAL DISTANCE - And Its Implications for Software and Data Design for e-Business
David Marca, University of Phoenix, United States
DETECTING, RECOGNIZING AND ASSOCIATING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS FOR EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR
Nikolaos Bourbakis, Wright State University, United States
FILLING THE VOIDS - From Requirements to Deployment with OPEN/Metis
Cesar Gonzalez-Perez, Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain
2009
DESIGN SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Roel Wieringa, University of Twente, Netherlands
THE INTERNET OF SERVICES
Jorge Cardoso, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
PRAGMATIC WEB - Incorporating Semiotics into Web Services
Kecheng Liu, University of Reading, United Kingdom
EUROPEAN STANDARDS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR e-VOTING IN BULGARIA
Mihail Konstantinov, University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy, Bulgaria
2008
Search-Driven Software Engineering
Colin Atkinson, Mannheim University, Germany
User Defined Geo-Referenced Information Management
Dimitri Konstantas, University of Geneva, Switzerland
What's in a Service?
Michael Papazoglou, University of Tilburg, Netherlands
Service-Oriented Modeling and Simulation: Applications in Traffic Management
Alexander Verbraeck, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
2007
Enterprise Ontology and the Identification of Business Components
Jan Dietz, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Document-Driven Software Design: A Novel Approach That Should Not Be Novel
David Parnas, University of Limerick, Ireland
A New Look at an Old Problem: Requirements Determination and its Challenges
Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University, United States
Creativity, Automation and Technology
Stephen Mellor, Freeter, United Kingdom
Service Science for Market Services
Bart Nieuwenhuis, K4B Innovation / University of Twente, Netherlands
Practical SOA
Tony C. Shan, Bank of America, United States
Open Source Software Adoption in Beaumont Hospital: Anatomy of Success and Failure
Brian Fitzgerald, Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, Ireland
2006
Supportable Integration of Enterprise and B2B Applications
Leszek Maciaszek, Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland and Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Ambient Intelligence: Basic Concepts and Applications
Juan C. Augusto, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, United Kingdom
Quantifying the Many Quality Aspects of Any Software Discipline: Using Quantified Qualities for Evaluation, Knowledge Acquisition, Management, Science, and Engineering
Tom Gilb, Result Planning Limited, Norway
Metamodelling Platforms
Dimitris Karagiannis, University of Vienna, Austria
Engineering Object and Agent Methodologies
Brian Henderson-Sellers, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Architectural Styles in Service Oriented Design
Marten van Sinderen, University of Twente, Netherlands
2012
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Domain Modeling
Stephen Mellor
Freeter
United Kingdom
http://www.stephenmellor.com/
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Tying together many aspects of software and system engineering is the concept of a subject matter or domain. Short visits to Mr Google and Ms Wiki reveal many near synonyms: conceptual model, ontology, problem domain, concerns, semantics, etc. Each term is defined within their own context: possibly equivalent, certain to be treated separately within, er, their own domains.
Yet rarely do we see models of the domains in a system. Instead, we see--overwhelmingly--models of software or other implementation mechanisms. We often see appalling mixtures of domains in system models. This makes it difficult to work independently, ties an application unnecessarily to services, and makes subject matters difficult to reuse and compose. Even less do we see explicit discussion within projects of how best to select and organize the domains in a system and the relationships between them.
The keynote presentation will discuss how to model the domains in a system, the relationships between them, and how to work with a domain chart on a project.
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Data, Context, Situation - On the Usefulness of Semantic Layers for Designing Context-aware Systems
Daniela Nicklas
Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg
Germany
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Context-aware applications adapt their behavior according to the current situation of their user or their (often physical) environment. This adaptation could be the change of the user interface, the performance of actions (like sending messages or triggering actuators), or the change of used resources (like network bandwidth or processing power). To determine relevant situations, many heterogeneous data sources could be used, ranging from sensor data over mined patterns in files to explicit user input. Since most sensors are not perfect, context quality has to be considered. And since many context-aware applications are mobile, the set of data sources changes during runtime.
All this issues make context management and reasoning, and the development of correct adaptations within context-aware applications a challenging task.
This keynote introduces a layered model to separate different tasks and concerns in designing data models for context-aware applications. It shows how existing works map to this layered model, and how the model can help in designing context aware applications that are better to maintain and safer to use.
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Empathy-driven Design for Emotional Wellbeing
Fabio Casati
University of Trento
Italy
https://sites.google.com/site/sphoebss/Home
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In this talk I will discuss how to design applications that can help people, and specifically older adults, improve their emotional wellbeing - or, in bold terms, happiness.
Despite the obvious importance of the topic and the terrific impact this line of research can have for society, it is surprising how little progress has been made in the last decade, both in terms of research and in terms of products.
In the talk I will first elaborate on why this is the case and exemplify the main flaws in the design thinking process that led to the current state of affairs.
I will then discuss how to approach the design of applications for emotional wellbeing, stressing that the key is the need for every single designer and programmer to develop empathy with the people they are trying to help.
I will then move on to discuss which are the main characteristics an application should possess, introduce some example applications and report on experiments, results, and findings in different contexts.
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Enterprise Ontology Driven Software Generation
Jan Dietz
Delft University of Technology
Netherlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Dietz
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Model Driven Engineering has been with us for quite some time, the most well known approach being OMG's Model Driven Architecture. However, although it has brought substantial benefits compared to other software engineering approaches, Model Driven Engineering presently still suffers from two major shortages. First, it is unable to deliver domain models from which the correct functional requirements can be derived. Hence, true validation is hardly possible: the software does not meet user expectations. Second, the models to be produced during the system development process, are not formally defined. Hence, their verification remains a cumbersome task. One of the theoretical pillars of Enterprise Engineering (EE) is the Generic System Development Process. It distinguishes between the using system and the object system (the system to be built), and it states that any software development process should start from the ontological construction model of the using system. In addition, EE’s systemic notion of Enterprise Ontology offers a formalized ontological model of an enterprise that satisfies the C4E quality criteria (coherent, consistent, comprehensive, concise, and essential). An operational application software generator will be presented that takes this ontological model, with some extensions, as source code input and executes the model as a professional software application. Changes in the software, as required by any agile enterprise, are brought about ‘on the fly’, through re-generation, based on the modified ontological model of the enterprise.
2011
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THE IMPACT OF EMERGING COMPUTING MODELS ON ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM
Ivan Ivanov
SUNY Empire State College
United States
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Consolidated Enterprise IT solutions have proven to enhance business efficiency when significant fractions of local computing activities are migrating away from desktop PCs and departmental servers and are being integrated and packaged on the Web into "the computing cloud". Whether referred to Grid, Utility or Cloud Computing, the idea is basically the same: instead of investing in and maintaining expensive applications and systems, users access and utilize dynamic computing structures to meet their fluctuating demands on IT resources efficiently and pay a fixed subscription or an actual usage fee. The immense economic demands in the last several years, in conjunction with the immediate reduction of upfront capital and operational costs when cloud-based services are employed, increase the speed and the scale of cloud computing adoption both horizontally - across industries -, and vertically - in organizations' technology stacks.
In actuality, the radical changes for organizations are in rethinking and reengineering their traditional IT resources, advancing them with cloud architectures and implementing services based on dynamic computing delivery models. The changes and business transformations are underway on a large scale, from providers and customers to vendors and developers. The key issues are not only in economics and management, but essentially how emerging IT models impact organizational structure, capabilities, business processes, and consequential opportunities. This talk will explore the impact of the dynamic computing models on the organizational socio-technical system and will provide the author's vision and experience in strategizing and utilizing emerging cloud-based applications and services.
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TOWARDS ENSURING ETERNAL CONNECTABILITY
Antonia Bertolino
Italian National Research Council - CNR
Italy
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Modern software applications are increasingly pervasive, dynamic and heterogeneous. Systems of systems emerge from the inter-operation among independently developed Networked Systems (NSs). However, the fast pace at which technology evolves tends to form gaps among separate technological islands, and calls for the continuous development of ad hoc bridging solutions to fill those communication gaps.
The European project Connect (http://www.connect-forever.eu) precisely aims at enabling seamless interoperability in spite of technology diversity and evolution. The ambitious goal of the project is to have eternally functioning distributed systems within a dynamically evolving context. This is pursued through the on-the-fly synthesis of the connectors via which heterogeneous NSs can communicate in dependable and secure way.
Indeed, beyond functional compatibility, effective interoperability requires to ensure also that such on-the-fly connected systems provide the required non-functional properties and continue to do so even in presence of evolution. In Connect, we coined the inclusive term "connectability" to refer altogether to performance, dependability, security and trust related properties of dynamic evolving systems.
Approaches to both off-line and run-time analysis are under development to analyse and ensure connectability. In particular, a lightweight flexible monitoring infrastructure is the key technological enabler for the continuous on-line assessment of non-functional properties, thus supporting run-time verification and adaptation. In this talk, we overview the Connect objectives and overall strategy, and the challenges of assuring connectability properties in dynamic connected systems. Then we focus on the Connect performance and dependability enabler and its interaction with the developed Glimpse monitor for the continuous runtime refinement of analysis.
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DOMAIN MODELING – A LOST ART?
David Marca
University of Phoenix
United States
http://www.openprocess.com
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Many experts state that: a) specifying "all the small parts of a system" and b) correct expected system usage, can make agile software development more effective. Unified Modeling Methodology (UML) addresses the former, and usability engineering addresses the later. Taken together, they create a systems development framework, capable of: a) specifying functions, data, behavior and usage, b) rapid prototyping, and c) verifying system usability and correctness. All three methods focus on the system, while trying to ascertain context. Correct and complete context requires domain modeling. Structured Analysis and Design Technique (SADT/IDEF0) is a proven way to model any kind of domain. Its power and rigor come from: a) a synthesis of graphics, natural language, hierarchical decomposition, and relative context coding, b) distinguishing control from transformation, c) function activation rules, and d) heuristics for managing model complexity. This talk will explain how SADT/IDEF0 domain modeling can bring correct and complete context to agile system development, Unified Modeling Language (UML) specifications, and usability engineering.
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FROM REQUIREMENTS TO CODE - A Full Model-Driven Development Perspective
Oscar Pastor
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Spain
http://www.pros.upv.es
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A crucial success factor in information systems development is the alignment of the system with business goals, business semantics and business processes. Developers should be freed from programming concerns and be able to concentrate on these alignment problems. Model-driven system development (MDD) not only provides a structured and systematic approach to systems development, but also offers developers the possibility of using model transformation technologies to derive models of a lower abstraction level that can be further refined, and even generate software code automatically.
This talk will show how to successfully integrate business process modelling (BPM), requirements engineering (RE) and object-oriented conceptual modelling with the objective of leveraging MDD capabilities. The current state of the art on modelling methods and code generation tools will be discussed to explore different ways to match an information system with business requirements. Concrete principles, concepts and common practices of MDD will be presented with a special focus on model-driven requirements engineering, meaning by it how business process models and requirements models can be embedded in a complete MDD process. As a practical application, a specific method and notations are explained, but the ultimate goal is that assistants are able to apply this knowledge to their own contexts, to either industrial practice or academic research.
2010
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THE EVOLVING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUSINESS AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Pericles Loucopoulos
Loughborough University
United Kingdom
www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~bspl
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The relationship of information systems to the business has evolved over the years from that of a tool builder that enabled the business to perform their tasks more efficiently to a facilitator for introducing new differentiated products and services and even transforming the way organizations and individuals work. Inevitably there has been an increased amount of business concepts being controlled by software components rather than business experts. The distinction between business and software is not as clear as it may have been in the past. How many business rules are handled by software in a manner that is so opaque that a domain expert has to delegate the evolution of such rules to a software engineer? What kind of business opportunities, innovation, and differentiation can an information system offer the business or an entire industrial sector? On reflection, the relationship between the business and IT is neither uni-directional nor linear. The traditional model whereby business experts establish, the goals, the constraints, the functions and the quality levels that the software must meet and the developers deliver a system that meet these characteristics is nowadays often challenged as inadequate. The very essence of a software system may itself offer opportunities for change to the business objectives, constraints and functions. These feedback mechanisms need to be externalized, and evaluated during a most critical development activity, namely that of requirements engineering.
This talk will explore the strategic role of requirements in analyzing the intertwining between business and software focusing on the role of conceptual modeling and simulation in a process that represents an exploration of alternatives, continuous evolution in the design direction and validation and feedback on user requirements.
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MODELS. MODELS. MODELS. SO WHAT?
Stephen Mellor
Freeter
United Kingdom
http://www.stephenmellor.com/
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In 1985, in an interview for some then-popular magazine, I was asked when models and model-driven development would become commonplace. "In three years time," I replied confidently. In 1987, I was asked the same question, and my answer remained the same. And 1989. And '91. Were you to ask me the same question today, I would answer it in the same way. Perhaps I should have gone surfing instead.
While my answer has the virtue of consistency, how could I--how could we?--have been so wrong? Of course, we didn't have the technology back then. And we didn't have the computer power that could allow us to ignore certain inefficiencies introduced by abstraction. But have things really changed that much in nearly a quarter of a century? Our tools and computers are certainly better, but it is clear that we have failed to convert the great unwashed to the benefits and wonders of models and model-driven engineering.
This keynote will take a personal view of why we have (let's be positive, shall we?) yet to succeed. It will explore several technical, business and marketing issues that have impeded our progress. And because a keynote is intended to be positive, leaving delegates upbeat and energized, we shall also examine some encouraging indicators that could lead to model-driven engineering soon becoming commonplace. In, oh, let's say, three years.
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MENTAL DISTANCE - And Its Implications for Software and Data Design for e-Business
David Marca
University of Phoenix
United States
http://www.openprocess.com
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Some executives and pundits today think that social networks are hard to penetrate. In fact, recent news cite a decrease in corporate investment in social networks. This makes sense from the perspective that typical corporate use of social networks has focused on creating relationships and eavesdropping. The result: online ads in social networks have weak alignment to the current conversation, whose participants and content can change rapidly. One possible improvement is to use “conversational distance” to identify the dynamic markets that are constantly created by different social network content and participants. To do this, the notion of “conversational distance” must take on the interpretation of “mental distance,” and not its more typical “physical distance” interpretation. This keynote will: explore the nature of mental distance, introduce some of its elements, show how these elements can be combined into a software-oriented architecture, and give examples of how to use that architecture to create better online ads.
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DETECTING, RECOGNIZING AND ASSOCIATING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS FOR EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR
Nikolaos Bourbakis
Wright State University
United States
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Detecting faces and facial expressions has become a common task in human-computer interaction systems. A robust face detection system must be able to detect faces irrespective of illuminations, shadows, cluttered backgrounds, facial pose, orientation and facial expressions. Many approaches for face detection have been proposed in the literature mainly dealing with the detection or recognition of faces in still conditions rather than the person’s facial expressions and the reflecting emotional behavior. In this talk, we describe a Local-Global (LG) graph based method for detecting faces and for recognizing facial expressions accurately in real world image capturing conditions both indoor and outdoor, and with a variety of illuminations (shadows, high-lights, non-white lights) and in cluttered backgrounds. We also offer a methodology for recognizing facial expressions associated to emotional behavior. This methodology uses most important facial features such as eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth (lips) as the primitive elements of an alphabet of a simple formal language in order to synthesize facial features and generate emotional expressions. Illustrative examples are also provided for proving the concept of the methodology.
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FILLING THE VOIDS - From Requirements to Deployment with OPEN/Metis
Cesar Gonzalez-Perez
Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Spain
http://www.verdewek.com/work
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We are often told that the development of a software system begins with the gathering of some requirements and ends when the system is deployed in the production environment where final users will employ it. Myriads of methodologies have been proposed to bridge this gap, and countless paths from requirements to deployment have been used with success. However, some specific areas of this journey remain poorly explored; this talk will focus on two of these: user interaction development and functional-to-structural modelling transition.
User interaction development refers to the modelling and refining of the structures and mechanisms that will allow human users to interact with the system. In our experience, over 35% of the effort made by a development team on a project is spent on user interface-related tasks. However, most software development methodologies and modelling languages (such as UML) blatantly neglect this area. Functional-to-structural modelling transition refers to the necessary move from a functional approach to problem description, given by user requirements and use cases, to a structural approach to solution prescription, given by the very nature of an object-oriented design. Very few methodologies give us a clear and solid explanation of how to create classes and other structural artefacts from the functional descriptions that we get from requirement analysis. In other words: "where do classes come from?"
This talk will use OPEN/Metis (www.openmetis.com) as a specific example of a methodology designed in industry with a strong academic background, and which gives (hopefully) satisfactory answers to both challenges described above.
2009
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DESIGN SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Roel Wieringa
University of Twente
Netherlands
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In software engineering, as in other engineering disciplines, there is a confusion about the relative roles of design and empirical science in an engineering discipline. There is however a significant difference between inventing useful artifacts (design) and discovering true propositions (science). In this talk I will explore this difference by means of examples from science and engineering, and provide a model for the interaction between design and empirical science in the engineering disciplines.. Contrary to what nowadays is propagated by the design science movement, I will show that design and science are distinct but concurrent activities. Examples from other engineering disciplines show that the distinction between them is one in problems to be solved and in criteria to be applied to proposed solutions, and consequently in problem-solving methods to be used. I will then apply these insights to examples of software engineering research.
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THE INTERNET OF SERVICES
Jorge Cardoso
Universidade de Coimbra
Portugal
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The vision of the Internet of Services (IoS) can be seen as a new business model that can radically change the way we discover, select, invoke and interact with services. In the same way that the Internet can be viewed as a Web of Information, it can also be configured to support an Internet of Services. The IoS describes an approach that uses the Internet as a medium for selling and purchasing services. As a result, services become tradable entities. Service marketplaces, a logical location where providers and consumers are brought together to trade services and to engage in business interaction, are enabling the creation of platforms for the IoS vision. Thus, the IoS provides the business and technical base for advanced business models where service providers and consumers form business networks for service provision and consumption.
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PRAGMATIC WEB - Incorporating Semiotics into Web Services
Kecheng Liu
University of Reading
United Kingdom
http://www.henley.ac.uk/bisa
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The evolution of the web exhibits a trend towards the needs of consumers as opposed to providers by
offering contextualised information. The same trend is moving towards the notion of the Pragmatic Web by
building on the Syntactic and Semantic versions. The ideas of the Pragmatic Web affords an array of
opportunities should a business organisation wish to implement a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
based upon web services. The Pragmatic Web will in the future provide the means to identify and consume
contextually relevant web services. However, the challenges to achieve this aim require competencies that
move beyond the current boundaries of web technology. Semiotics (the science of signs) is a longestablished
theory that can make a significant contribution to formulating an approach to discovering and
consuming web services in the format of the Pragmatic Web.
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EUROPEAN STANDARDS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR e-VOTING IN BULGARIA
Mihail Konstantinov
University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy
Bulgaria
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On 30 September 2004 the Committee of the Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted Recommendation Rec(2004)11 on Legal, Operational and Technical Standards for E-Voting [see ISBN 978-92-871-5635-8]. Two years before that date a Multidisciplinary Ad hoc Group of Specialists on this subject (IP1-S-EE) had been created. Specialists from more than 30 countries (including Bulgaria) have taken part in the development of the Standards. On 30 June 2004, three months prior to the official adoption of the Standards, a Draft Law on E-Voting had been developed in Bulgaria which incorporated the Standards. It has been presented to the 39-th and 40-th National Assemblies of Bulgaria and for some time Bulgaria was the first European state with such a draft law. Unfortunately, this Law has not been adopted by the Bulgarian Parliament yet. During 2004-2005 a technical project for the implementation of e-voting in Bulgarian elections and referendums according to this Law has been developed as well. In this lecture we briefly consider the above mentioned Standards as well as the progress made and the perspectives for e-voting in Bulgaria.
2008
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Search-Driven Software Engineering
Colin Atkinson
Mannheim University
Germany
http://swt.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/index.php?id=9,0,0,1,0,0
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Although the use of web services and component technologies is becoming widespread, and more software is freely accessible on the Internet than ever before, there has been little change in levels of software reuse. Most applications are still created by integrating in-house legacy software and self-developed modules, rather than by assembling third party components/services, despite the fact that in many development situations, perfectly suitable software components are available on the Internet. The main barrier to third party software reuse, whether it be of program modules, web services or more complex components, is still the overhead involved in finding software that is "fit for purpose". Most developers still feel that the "build" option is more cost effective that the "find" or "buy" option. However, this balance has started to change in the last few years with the advent of a new generation of code search engines. Not only do these engines index far more components than was possible before, but they make it much easier to find software that meet a particular need. They also make it possible to consider component reuse during early stages of development such as modelling and design. In this talk Colin Atkinson will introduce some of the key features of the latest generation of code search engines and will explain how software engineering practices can be enhanced by integrating code search into the development process.
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User Defined Geo-Referenced Information Management
Dimitri Konstantas
University of Geneva
Switzerland
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During the last few years mobile devices, like phones and PDAs, became a standard accessory for more than 80% of the population of industrialised countries. This expansion in use of mobile devices gave rise to the creation of a multitude of new services and applications, allowing users to access, exchange and create information of different forms (from text to video and audio). Recently geo-localisation hardware (that is GPS and Galileo receivers) started being integrated into mobile phones and PDAs, adding a new dimension to the abstract information of the cyberspace. With integrated geo-localization hardware, information can be physically located in a well defined location.This new spatial dimension of information, combined with the ability of the users to create and disseminate content, creates a new area for the development of collaborative spatially oriented services and applications. Users in the future will be able to create information linked to a spatial location and leave it there for other users to “read”, as it was done in the past with signs placed by trekkers in difficult paths. However with the new technological abilities of the users, these tags will no longer be physical but virtual, linked to a location and stored in the cyberspace. These /virtual tags/, as we call them, being the product of individuals will pose new challenges for the information consumers. Can this information be trusted? Is it still actual? What is the confidence we give the author of the information? What types of new information can we anticipate? what new services can we offer and what are the main challenges? This type of questions will eventually need to be addressed, if we the user defined spatial information is to be of any real use to the information consumers.
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What's in a Service?
Michael Papazoglou
University of Tilburg
Netherlands
http://infolab.uvt.nl/staff/mikep/
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Automated services help enterprises create new value from reuse of software and resources and achieve new levels of agility through greater flexibility and lower cost structures. As services come in many flavors and guises they have differing characteristics. In this paper we describe the most necessary aspects and features of automated services. We also focus on the interplay of SOAs and Business Process Management technologies and argue that the key enablers for Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) should focus on four inter-related elements: engineering and planning the SOA, SOA implementation, SOA management and monitoring and SOA governance.
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Service-Oriented Modeling and Simulation: Applications in Traffic Management
Alexander Verbraeck
Delft University of Technology
Netherlands
www.tbm.tudelft.nl/webstaf/alexandv
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Service-orientation is slowly finding its way to the modeling and simulation field, and in the first projects, it demonstrates tremendous potentials. In the late 1990s it has been demonstrated that it is possible to prototype traffic management and control systems in simulated environments. However, due to the rigidness of existing simulation applications, it turned out to be difficult to test all kinds of control strategies and logistic interventions in a flexible and open way. Where the traditional simulation environments provide access to one user to one-model at a time, the complexity of today's traffic management situations ask for multiple users accessing multiple models at the same time. Service orientation is an excellent way to provide the needed access to the simulation models, but it asked for a complete rethinking of the way simulation applications and simulation models are being designed, built, and used. Using the open-source D-SOL simulation environment that was developed as a service-oriented, distributed technology, it has now become possible to easily link pieces of real software, emulations, and simulation models into a fully distributed modeling and testing environment. Several projects for traffic management have been carried out to develop generic test-beds for new traffic management services. Projects that will be demonstrated have answered important questions for the Port of Rotterdam, for a public tram transport company, and for road safety management.
2007
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Enterprise Ontology and the Identification of Business Components
Jan Dietz
Delft University of Technology
Netherlands
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For developing effective inter- and intra-enterprise information systems, these systems need to be modeled on a high-level of abstraction that is understood both by business people, who are defining their functionality, and software engineers, who are constructing and implementation the software systems that realize the systems functionality. The idea of business components for modeling informa-tion systems is very valuable since they directly reflect the business rules and the constraints that ap-ply to the enterprise domain (all other software components are considered either to deliver services to these business components or to offer some general functionality). The identification of business components seems still to be in its infancy, however. The notion of en-terprise ontology, as developed at Delft University of Technology, appears to be a powerful revelation of the essence of an enterprise (or an enterprise network). The reported research seeks to improve the identification of business components based on the ontological model of an enterprise, while at the same time satisfying well-defined quality criteria. The result of applying the developed identifica-tion method are reusable and self-contained business components with well-defined interaction points that facilitate the accessing and execution of coherent packages of business functionality.
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Document-Driven Software Design: A Novel Approach That Should Not Be Novel
David Parnas
University of Limerick
Ireland
http://www.sqrl.ul.ie/staff.html
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In traditional Engineering disciplines, designing and documenting are interleaved with design decisions being documented and each such documented decision serving as a constraints on future decisions. Decisions may be reversed or revised but only by revising the associated documents and submitting the revisions for approval. In contrast, in Software documentation is often an afterthought and early design documents often gather dust on shelves as they are ignored. This talk discusses and illustrates how precise design documents can be used to improve the software design process.
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A New Look at an Old Problem: Requirements Determination and its Challenges
Kalle Lyytinen
Case Western Reserve University
United States
http://weatherhead.case.edu/faculty/Kalle-Lyytinen/
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The age old adage is that good software development process starts with a good requirements determination process which states the requirements for an application in a coherent, concise and unambiguous way. This process helps determine the scope of the initiative and control the outcomes. Most of the information in requirements is expected to be found from potential users using various elicitation and requirements discovery techniques like interviewing, modelling and so on. A recent field study funded by NSF about requirements determination processes in large and complex software development environments that covered automotive, aerospace, media, telecommunication, finance and health industries and involved interviews among 25 leading experts shows a different picture of software requirements. Requirements complexity has risen to an unprecedented level and needs a new mind-set, requirements do not cover applications but sets of capabilities or processes in an enterprise, requirements are always anchored into existing legacy of capabilities and they need to address the tensions between stability and change, requirements are often driven from existing platforms and models,- not the other way round, systems have become so embedded in business processes that distinctions between functional and non-functional requirements are fictive, requirements framing is radically different between innovative and incremental changes, requirements are negotiated within the scope of project time, risk and scope, and requirements are not fixed but remain volatile for longer periods of time. We also observe, that contrary to academics belief, the challenge is not in the methods to find out and describe systems, but to scale up and relate system models to the other elements in the environment. We discuss challenges associated with these findings and suggest some future research avenues to address those challenges.
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Creativity, Automation and Technology
Stephen Mellor
Freeter
United Kingdom
http://www.stephenmellor.com/
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As we raise the level of abstraction, technology becomes hidden (look at ASICs in the hardware world, or dialling a phone call). To effect this hiding of technology we automate, and the better the automation, the better hidden the underlying technology can be. Today, we use programming languages at various levels of sophistication, but that leaves open the question of how we create the conceptual entities therein. How much can that be automated? How complete should that automation be? How far can we go? How well can we teach the creativity involved in abstraction? This keynote will raise these questions, among others, focussing on the several areas targetted by the conference, and offer answers.
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Service Science for Market Services
Bart Nieuwenhuis
K4B Innovation / University of Twente
Netherlands
http://www.mb.utwente.nl/iscm/staff/academic/Nieuwenhuis/
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The market service share in Western European economies is growing at cost of agriculture and manufacturing. More than seventy percent of employment and economic growth is due to growth of market services. According to various reports, productivity growth of market services through the use of ICT in Europe is lagging behind that of the US during the last five years. Hence, companies in Europe seem to benefit less from ICT than companies in the US. A vast number of studies show that innovations of products and services are not only driven by technological innovations but also depend on other determinants like organisational changes, structural changes, attitude against experiments and the availability of competent human resources. In European countries both, organisations in the private and public sector, don’t take advantage of their strong position on communication infrastructure, e.g., the high penetration of broadband Internet connections and mobile phones. Controversy exists about possible differences between innovations of products and innovations of services. Research shows that market service industry invests more on innovations than generally thought but is less strong connected to the knowledge infrastructure than the manufacturing industry. This talk elaborates on these issues using practical examples and presents the results of a study identifying ways how public and private organisations may benefit from available knowledge produced by technological, social, economic and management sciences.
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Practical SOA
Tony C. Shan
Bank of America
United States
http://tonycshan.spaces.live.com/
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In this lecture, a practical method is presented to effectively cope with the complexity of service-oriented architecture design and the lifecycle of service-oriented solutions development. This method consists of seven major elements: Reference model, Optimization, Architecture, Discipline, Maturity, Automation and Platform (ROADMAP). The key SOA issues are addressed, such as fragmented specifications efforts, immature technologies, and non-standard visual diagramming. The goal of this comprehensive approach is to filter the inessential from the essential with a mature integration of appropriate knowledge and capabilities. Best practices are discussed in the context.
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Open Source Software Adoption in Beaumont Hospital: Anatomy of Success and Failure
Brian Fitzgerald
Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre
Ireland
http://www.csis.ul.ie/Staff/BF/
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Current estimates suggest widespread adoption of open source software (OSS) in organizations worldwide. However, the problematic nature of OSS adoption is readily evidenced in the fairly frequent reports of problems, unforeseen hold-ups, and outright abandonment of OSS implementation over time. Beaumont Hospital, an Irish public sector organization, have embarked on the adoption of a range of OSS applications over several years, some of which have been successfully deployed and remain in live use within the organisation, whereas others, despite achieving high levels of assimilation over a number of years, have not been ultimately retained in live use in the organization. Using a longitudinal case study, we discuss in depth the deployment process for two OSS applications – the desktop application suite whose deployment was unsuccessful ultimately, and the email application which was successfully deployed. To our knowledge, this is the first such in-depth study into successful and unsuccessful OSS implementation. Given that our study was a longitudinal one in a single organization, we can control a number of potentially important influencing elements which would not be possible if multiple organizations were involved. In particular, the complex interaction of issues to do with voluntariness of adoption, image, trialability and absorptive capacity were critical influences in the process.
2006
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Supportable Integration of Enterprise and B2B Applications
Leszek Maciaszek
Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland and Macquarie University, Sydney
Australia
http://www.leszek.maciaszek.ue.wroc.pl/
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This keynote lecture will reflect on some of the most fundamental challenges facing the IT profession today. Business has embraced the Internet-age technology with zeal. Thanks to application integration technologies, organizations can function as loosely connected networks of cooperating units. Development of stand-alone applications is all but history. Accordingly, the term “application development” is being replaced by the more accurate term – “integration development”. Whether the application integration is internal to the enterprise or takes the form of external Business-to-Business (B2B) integration, the main integration challenge is similar – How to make the application a part of an integrated solution in a situation in which the integration developers have little control over participating applications and in a situation in which all applications are in a state of flux? In other words, how to make the integration solution supportable (i.e. understandable, maintainable, and scalable)? This talk will attempt to identify strategic (architectural), tactical (engineering), and operational (managerial) imperatives for building supportability into software. These imperatives will be defined for application development and then reconsidered as quality goals of integration development.
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Ambient Intelligence: Basic Concepts and Applications
Juan C. Augusto
University of Ulster at Jordanstown
United Kingdom
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Ambient Intelligence is growing fast as a multi-disciplinary area which can allow many areas of research to have a real beneficial influence in our society. The basic idea is that by enriching an environment with technology (sensors and devices interconnected through networks), a system can be built such that based on the real-time information gathered and the historical data accumulated, decisions can be taken to benefit the users of that environment. Examples of such environments are Smart Homes, probably the most well-known and well-advertised realization of the concept of Ambient Intelligence. But other applications are feasible and equally relevant. Specific areas of hospital, public transport stations, or any other public or private building can be equipped in such a way that the environment cooperates to improve safety, comfort and efficiency of the people interacting with it. This talk will describe the characteristics of these system, provide examples of applications and highlight the challenges ahead and the areas for potential development from the perspective of researchers and professionals attending ICSOFT2006.
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Quantifying the Many Quality Aspects of Any Software Discipline: Using Quantified Qualities for Evaluation, Knowledge Acquisition, Management, Science, and Engineering
Tom Gilb
Result Planning Limited
Norway
http://www.gilb.com
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What can we do if we can quantify quality ideas?
- Evaluation solutions/designs/architectures against the quantified quality requirements (Impact Estimation)
- Test and measure the degree to which solutions meet quality and cost expectations ( when they were chosen)
- Measure evolutionary project progress towards quality goals and get early & continuous improved estimates for time to completion
- Communicate quality goals much better to all parties (users, customers, developers, testers, lawyers)
- Contract for results
- Pay for results only (not effort expended)
- Reward teams for results achieved
- Motivate technical people to focus on real business results
- Simplify requirements ( the top few quantified- everything else is design)
- Collect numeric data about designs, processes, organizational structures, to learn and use in future
- Permits systematic corporate or academic research of a development environment
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Metamodelling Platforms
Dimitris Karagiannis
University of Vienna
Austria
http://www.cs.univie.ac.at/employee.php?eid=44
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The state-of-the-art in the area of modelling of organisations is based on fixed metamodels. Due to rapid changing business requirements the complexity in developing applications which deliver business solutions is continuously growing. To manage this complexity, environments providing flexible metamodelling capabilities instead of fixed metamodels have shown to be helpful. The main characteristic of such environments is that the formalism of modelling – the metamodel – can be freely defined and therefore be adapted to the problem under consideration. The invited talk will give an introduction into metamodelling concepts and presents a generic architecture for metamodelling platforms. Three best practice examples fro industry projects, applying metamodelling concepts in the area of business process modelling for e-business, e-learning, and knowledge management are presented. Finally, an outlook to future developments and research directions in the area of metamodelling is given.
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Engineering Object and Agent Methodologies
Brian Henderson-Sellers
University of Technology, Sydney
Australia
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The FAME project uses method engineering to construct a methodological approach for agent-oriented software development. Its precursor was a project utilizing the object-oriented OPEN Process Framework, in which its repository of OO-focussed method fragments was extended to support various agent-oriented methodological approaches. In this talk, I will show how method engineering provides an excellent base for constructing situation specific software engineering methodologies for both object and agent software development. Both OPF and FAME use an existing repository coupled to an appropriate metamodel (which in the near future will be the new ISO standard metamodel ISO24744, itself based on the concept of powertypes). This flexible, yet standardized repository supplies method fragments that are then configured to support specific projects. In addition, all existing, and new, OO and AO methodologies can be recreated, thus providing an industry strength resource for object-oriented and agent-oriented software development.
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Architectural Styles in Service Oriented Design
Marten van Sinderen
University of Twente
Netherlands
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~sinderen/
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Service oriented architecture (SOA) is characterized by the separation of (service) functionality from (service) provider. A service denotes the functionality that is relevant to the user of the service, without burdening the user with irrelevant details on how the service is implemented. A user is not interested in who provides the service. Many different providers may implement the same service, differentiating among each other through the cost/performance ratios achieved by their implementations. Therefore, services are advertised in cyberspace by service descriptions, each one capturing information on essential characteristic of a service and on the locations of associated providers. Special infrastructure functions can find and evaluate a set of service descriptions that have (near) match to a user request, thus supporting automated discovery, selection, invocation and even composition of services. The SOA paradigm is very attractive, since it promises a “lego approach” to software applications. However, the technological state-of-the art (Web Services) so far offers only a partial implementation of the SOA potential, and design approaches with clear architectural guidelines and incorporating the business view are still subject of research. This talk will discuss one such approach and consider architectural styles that play a role in it.