Transparent access to relational, autonomous and distributed databases using semantic web and service oriented technologies

With the constant grow of enterprises and the need to share information across departments and business areas becomes more critical, companies are turning to integration to provide a method for interconnecting heterogeneous, distributed and autonomous systems. Whether the sales application needs to interface with the inventory application, the procurement application connect to an auction site, it seems that any application can be made better by integrating it with other applications. Integration between applications can face several troublesome due the fact that applications may not have been designed and implemented having integration in mind. Regarding to integration issues, two tier software systems, composed by the database tier and by the “front-end” tier (interface), have shown some limitations. As a solution to overcome the two tier limitations, three tier systems were proposed in the literature. Thus, by adding a middle-tier (referred as middleware) between the database tier and the “front-end” tier (or simply referred application), three main benefits emerge. The first benefit is related with the fact that the division of software systems in three tiers enables increased integration capabilities with other systems. The second benefit is related with the fact that any modifications to the individual tiers may be carried out without necessarily affecting the other tiers and integrated systems and the third benefit, consequence of the others, is related with less maintenance tasks in software system and in all integrated systems. Concerning software development in three tiers, this dissertation focus on two emerging technologies, Semantic Web and Service Oriented Architecture, combined with middleware. These two technologies blended with middleware, which resulted in the development of Swoat framework (Service and Semantic Web Oriented ArchiTecture), lead to the following four synergic advantages: (1) allow the creation of loosely-coupled systems, decoupling the database from “front-end” tiers, therefore reducing maintenance; (2) the database schema is transparent to “front-end” tiers which are aware of the information model (or domain model) that describes what data is accessible; (3) integration with other heterogeneous systems is allowed by providing services provided by the middleware; (4) the service request by the “frontend” tier focus on ‘what’ data and not on ‘where’ and ‘how’ related issues, reducing this way the application development time by developers.

Technologies that motivates healthy toothbrushing: practices through social translucence

Fifty percent of the European Union’s population suffers from an oral disease. Studies have repeatedly shown that while acquiring healthy toothbrushing practices early on in one’s life is of significance, children and adults often fail to adhere to those. In this thesis we attempt to design and prototype interactive technologies that motivate healthy tooth brushing habits on individuals. Rather than focusing on the technologies’ persuasive power over individuals, we tap on the social mechanisms employed by families. In this sense, we think of these technologies as social translucent rather than persuasive, whose goal is to raise awareness within the family on each other’s habits and that aim at leveraging families’ existing social mechanisms for behavior change, rather than replacing them. More specifically, we aim to gain insights with respect to the following questions: a) What are the drivers and barriers towards adhering to healthy tooth brushing behaviors? b) Can we effectively measure toothbrushing behaviors? c) How can technologies leverage family communication practices in motivating proper toothbrushing behaviors? First, we present two studies about children and adults’ tooth brushing behaviors and how these are influenced by social interactions within the family. Secondly, we present the design and prototyping of two systems that sense toothbrushing practices and provide feedback, using the Social Translucence Framework as a design lens. We conclude with an overview of lessons learnt from the prototyping of these systems supported by an analysis of the strengths and pitfalls of the developed technologies.

De touch: extending service channels in an airport through touch technologies

This project aimed to create a communication and interaction channel between Madeira Airport and its passengers. We used the pre-existent touch enabled screens at the terminal since their potential was not being utilised to their full capacity. To achieve our goal, we have followed an agile strategy to create a testable prototype and take advantages of its results. The developed prototype is based on a plugin architecture turning it into a maintainable and highly customisable system. The collected usage data suggests that we have achieved the initially defined goals. There is no doubt that this new interaction channel is an improvement regarding the provided services and, supported by the usage data, there is an opportunity to explore additional developments to the channel.