Enquadramento dos sistemas ERP numa arquitectura SOA: caso de estudo SAP® NetWeaver

Neste trabalho, propõe-se estudar o enquadramento dos Sistemas Integrados de Gestão Empresarial (Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP) numa Arquitectura Orientada a Serviços (Service Oriented Architecture – SOA) e quais os benefícios que podem ser obtidos no desenvolvimento de novas aplicações e integração com outros Sistemas de Informação (SI). Propõe-se fazer um levantamento da evolução e do estado da arte dos sistemas ERP e da arquitectura SOA. Para ter uma visão concreta, escolheu-se analisar um sistema ERP específico, o ERP da SAP e a plataforma tecnológica em que assenta, o SAP NetWeaver. Que estratégia tem sido seguida pelos principais fabricantes de sistemas ERPs, para enquadrar os seus sistemas ERP numa arquitectura SOA? Finalmente avalia-se o conceito de aplicação composta (Composite Application) baseada na arquitectura SOA, através da utilização de um Ambiente Integrado de Composição (Integrated Composition Environment – ICE). A plataforma utilizada para essa avaliação é o SAP NetWeaver Composition Enviroment (CE). Mais especificamente, desenvolve-se uma aplicação composta, resultante da combinação de serviços expostos pelo sistema ERP da SAP (enterprise services) e um Web Service instalado noutra plataforma.

SIAT:sistema de informações e alertas de trânsito

A evolução tecnológica e das sociedades permitiu que, hoje em dia, uma boa parte da população tenha acesso a dispositivos móveis com funcionalidades avançadas. Com este tipo de dispositivos, temos acesso a inúmeras fontes de informação em tempo-real, mas esta característica ainda não é, hoje em dia, aproveitada na sua totalidade. Este projecto tenta tirar partido desta realidade para, utilizando os diversos dispositivos móveis, criar uma rede de troca de informações de trânsito. O utilizador apenas necessita de servir-se do seu dispositivo móvel para, automaticamente, obter as mais recentes informações de trânsito enquanto, paralelamente, partilha com os outros utilizadores a sua informação. Apesar de existirem outras alternativas no mercado, com soluções que permitem usufruir do mesmo tipo de funcionalidades, nenhuma utiliza este tipo de dispositivos (GPS’s convencionais, por exemplo). Um dos requisitos necessário na implementação deste projecto é uma solução de geocoding. Após terem sido testadas várias soluções, nenhuma cumpria, na totalidade, os requisitos deste projecto, o que originou o desenvolvimento de uma nova solução que cumpre esses requisitos. A solução é, toda ela, muito modular, formada por vários componentes, cada um com responsabilidades bem identificadas. A arquitectura desta solução baseia-se nos padrões de desenvolvimento de uma Service Oriented Architecture. Todos os componentes disponibilizam as suas operações através de web services, e a sua descoberta recorre ao protocolo WS-Discovery. Estes vários componentes podem ser divididos em duas categorias: os do núcleo, responsáveis por criar e oferecer as funcionalidades requisitadas neste projecto e os módulos externos, nos quais se incluem as aplicações que apresentam as funcionalidades ao utilizador. Foram criadas duas formas de consumir a informação oferecida pelo serviço SIAT: a aplicação móvel e um website. No âmbito dos dispositivos móveis, foi desenvolvida uma aplicação para o sistema operativo Windows Phone 7.

Arquitetura para aquisição de respostas a perguntas frequentes

Dissertação de natureza científica realizada para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

Reputação e recomendação como serviços para transportes públicos

Projecto Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

CrimsonHex: a learning objects repository for programming exercises

A repository of learning objects is a system that stores electronic resources in a technology-mediated learning process. The need for this kind of repository is growing as more educators become eager to use digital educa- tional contents and more of it becomes available. The sharing and use of these resources relies on the use of content and communication standards as a means to describe and exchange educational resources, commonly known as learning objects. This paper presents the design and implementation of a service-oriented reposi- tory of learning objects called crimsonHex. This repository supports new definitions of learning objects for specialized domains and we illustrate this feature with the definition of programming exercises as learning objects and its validation by the repository. The repository is also fully compliant with existing commu- nication standards and we propose extensions by adding new functions, formalizing message interchange and providing a REST interface. To validate the interoperability features of the repository, we developed a repository plug-in for Moodle that is expected to be included in the next release of this popular learning management system.

Orchestration of e-learning services for automatic evaluation of programming exercises

Managing programming exercises require several heterogeneous systems such as evaluation engines, learning objects repositories and exercise resolution environments. The coordination of networks of such disparate systems is rather complex. These tools would be too specific to incorporate in an e-Learning platform. Even if they could be provided as pluggable components, the burden of maintaining them would be prohibitive to institutions with few courses in those domains. This work presents a standard based approach for the coordination of a network of e-Learning systems participating on the automatic evaluation of programming exercises. The proposed approach uses a pivot component to orchestrate the interaction among all the systems using communication standards. This approach was validated through its effective use on classroom and we present some preliminary results.

Dpws middleware to support agent-based manufacturing control and simulation

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Addressing software impact in the design of remote laboratories

Remote Laboratories or WebLabs constitute a first-order didactic resource in engineering faculties. However, in many cases, they lack a proper software design, both in the client and server side, which degrades their quality and academic usefulness. This paper presents the main characteristics of a Remote Laboratory, analyzes the software technologies to implement the client and server sides in a WebLab, and correlates these technologies with the characteristics to facilitate the selection of a technology to implement a WebLab. The results obtained suggest the adoption of a Service Oriented Laboratory Architecture-based approach for the design of future Remote Laboratories so that client-agnostic Remote Laboratories and Remote Laboratory composition are enabled. The experience with the real Remote Laboratory, WebLab-Deusto, is also presented.

Interoperability in pedagogical e-learning services

The ultimate goal of this research plan is to improve the learning experience of students through the combination of pedagogical eLearning services. Service oriented architectures are already being used in eLearning but in this work the focus is on services of pedagogical value, rather then on generic services adapted from other business systems. This approach to the architecture of eLearning platforms raises challenges addressed by this work, namely: conceptual modeling of the pedagogical eLearning services domain; interoperability and coordination of pedagogical eLearning service; conversion of existing eLearning systems to pedagogical services; adaptation of eLearning services to individual learners. An improved eLearning platform will incorporate learning tools adequate to the domains it covers and will focus on the individual learner that uses it. With this approach we expect to raise the pedagogical value of eLearning platforms.

From e-learning systems to specialised e-learning services

Learning systems are evolving from component based and centralized architectures towards service oriented and decentralized architectures. The standardization of e-learning content and interoperability is a powerful force in this evolution. In this chapter we put in perspective the evolution of e-learning systems and standards, and argue that specialized services will play an important role in future learning systems, especially in those targeted for competitive learning.

Integration of repositories in Moodle

Current Learning Management Systems focus on the management of students, keeping track of their progress across all types of training activities. This type of systems lacks integration with other e-Learning systems. For instance, learning objects stored in a centralized repository are unavailable throughout an organization for potential reuse. In this paper we present the interoperability features of crimsonHex - a service oriented repository of learning objects - highlighting the use of XML languages. Its nteroperability features are compliant with the existing standards and we propose extensions to the IMS interoperability recommendation, adding new functions, formalizing an XML message interchange and providing also a REST interface. To validate the proposed extensions and its implementation in crimsonHex we designed two repository plugins for Moodle 2.0, the first of which is already implemented and is expected to be included in the next release of this popular learning management system.

Modelling text file evaluation processes

Text file evaluation is an emergent topic in e-learning that responds to the shortcomings of the assessment based on questions with predefined answers. Questions with predefined answers are formalized in languages such as IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification (QTI) and supported by many e-learning systems. Complex evaluation domains justify the development of specialized evaluators that participate in several business processes. The goal of this paper is to formalize the concept of a text file evaluation in the scope of the E-Framework – a service oriented framework for development of e-learning systems maintained by a community of practice. The contribution includes an abstract service type and a service usage model. The former describes the generic capabilities of a text file evaluation service. The later is a business process involving a set of services such as repositories of learning objects and learning management systems.

Modelling a network of heterogeneous e-learning systems

In recent years emerged several initiatives promoted by educational organizations to adapt Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) to e-learning. These initiatives commonly named eLearning Frameworks share a common goal: to create flexible learning environments by integrating heterogeneous systems already available in many educational institutions. However, these frameworks were designed for integration of systems participating in business like processes rather than on complex pedagogical processes as those related to automatic evaluation. Consequently, their knowledge bases lack some fundamental components that are needed to model pedagogical processes. The objective of the research described in this paper is to study the applicability of eLearning frameworks for modelling a network of heterogeneous eLearning systems, using the automatic evaluation of programming exercises as a case study. The paper surveys the existing eLearning frameworks to justify the selection of the e-Framework. This framework is described in detail and identified the necessary components missing from its knowledge base, more precisely, a service genre, expression and usage model for an evaluation service. The extensibility of the framework is tested with the definition of this service. A concrete model for evaluation of programming exercises is presented as a validation of the proposed approach.

PETCHA: a Programming Exercises Teaching Assistant

This paper presents a tool called Petcha that acts as an automated Teaching Assistant in computer programming courses. The ultimate objective of Petcha is to increase the number of programming exercises effectively solved by students. Petcha meets this objective by helping both teachers to author programming exercises and students to solve them. It also coordinates a network of heterogeneous systems, integrating automatic program evaluators, learning management systems, learning object repositories and integrated programming environments. This paper presents the concept and the design of Petcha and sets this tool in a service oriented architecture for managing learning processes based on the automatic evaluation of programming exercises. The paper presents also a case study that validates the use of Petcha and of the proposed architecture.

Integrated Management of IaaS Resources

This paper proposes and reports the development of an open source solution for the integrated management of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing resources, through the use of a common API taxonomy, to incorporate open source and proprietary platforms. This research included two surveys on open source IaaS platforms (OpenNebula, OpenStack and CloudStack) and a proprietary platform (Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure - PACI) as well as on IaaS abstraction solutions (jClouds, Libcloud and Deltacloud), followed by a thorough comparison to determine the best approach. The adopted implementation reuses the Apache Deltacloud open source abstraction framework, which relies on the development of software driver modules to interface with different IaaS platforms, and involved the development of a new Deltacloud driver for PACI. The resulting interoperable solution successfully incorporates OpenNebula, OpenStack (reuses pre-existing drivers) and PACI (includes the developed Deltacloud PACI driver) nodes and provides a Web dashboard and a Representational State Transfer (REST) interface library. The results of the exchanged data payload and time response tests performed are presented and discussed. The conclusions show that open source abstraction tools like Deltacloud allow the modular and integrated management of IaaS platforms (open source and proprietary), introduce relevant time and negligible data overheads and, as a result, can be adopted by Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) cloud providers to circumvent the vendor lock-in problem whenever service response time is not critical.