Performance analysis of Java APIS for XML processing

Over time, XML markup language has acquired a considerable importance in applications development, standards definition and in the representation of large volumes of data, such as databases. Today, processing XML documents in a short period of time is a critical activity in a large range of applications, which imposes choosing the most appropriate mechanism to parse XML documents quickly and efficiently. When using a programming language for XML processing, such as Java, it becomes necessary to use effective mechanisms, e.g. APIs, which allow reading and processing of large documents in appropriated manners. This paper presents a performance study of the main existing Java APIs that deal with XML documents, in order to identify the most suitable one for processing large XML files.

Paralelização de algoritmos de Filtragem baseados em XPATH/XML com recurso a GPUs

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia Informática

Schem@Doc: a web-based XML schema visualizer

XML Schema is one of the most used specifications for defining types of XML documents. It provides an extensive set of primitive data types, ways to extend and reuse definitions and an XML syntax that simplifies automatic manipulation. However, many features that make XML Schema Definitions (XSD) so interesting also make them rather cumbersome to read. Several tools to visualize and browse schema definitions have been proposed to cope with this issue. The novel approach proposed in this paper is to base XSD visualization and navigation on the XML document itself, using solely the web browser, without requiring a pre-processing step or an intermediate representation. We present the design and implementation of a web-based XML Schema browser called schem@Doc that operates over the XSD file itself. With this approach, XSD visualization is synchronized with the source file and always reflects its current state. This tool fits well in the schema development process and is easy to integrate in web repositories containing large numbers of XSD files.

Extending the learning object definition to represent programming problems

The present generation of eLearning platforms values the interchange of learning objects standards. Nevertheless, for specialized domains these standards are insufficient to fully describe all the assets, especially when they are used as input for other eLearning services. To address this issue we extended an existing learning objects standard to the particular requirements of a specialized domain, namely the automatic evaluation of programming problems. The focus of this paper is the definition of programming problems as learning objects. We introduce a new schema to represent metadata related to automatic evaluation that cannot be conveniently represented using existing standards, such as: the type of automatic evaluation; the requirements of the evaluation engine; or the roles of different assets - tests cases, program solutions, etc. This new schema is being used in an interoperable repository of learning objects, called crimsonHex.

CardioML: integrating personal cardiac information for ubiquous diagnosis and analysis

The latest medical diagnosis devices enable the performance of e-diagnosis making the access to these services easier, faster and available in remote areas. However this imposes new communications and data interchange challenges. In this paper a new XML based format for storing cardiac signals and related information is presented. The proposed structure encompasses data acquisition devices, patient information, data description, pathological diagnosis and waveform annotation. When compared with similar purpose formats several advantages arise. Besides the full integrated data model it may also be noted the available geographical references for e-diagnosis, the multi stream data description, the ability to handle several simultaneous devices, the possibility of independent waveform annotation and a HL7 compliant structure for common contents. These features represent an enhanced integration with existent systems and an improved flexibility for cardiac data representation.

PExIL: Programming Exercises Interoperability Language

Several standards appeared in recent years to formalize the metadata of learning objects, but they are still insufficient to fully describe a specialized domain. In particular, the programming exercise domain requires interdependent resources (e.g. test cases, solution programs, exercise description) usually processed by different services in the programming exercise life-cycle. Moreover, the manual creation of these resources is time-consuming and error-prone leading to what is an obstacle to the fast development of programming exercises of good quality. This paper focuses on the definition of an XML dialect called PExIL (Programming Exercises Interoperability Language). The aim of PExIL is to consolidate all the data required in the programming exercise life-cycle, from when it is created to when it is graded, covering also the resolution, the evaluation and the feedback. We introduce the XML Schema used to formalize the relevant data of the programming exercise life-cycle. The validation of this approach is made through the evaluation of the usefulness and expressiveness of the PExIL definition. In the former we present the tools that consume the PExIL definition to automatically generate the specialized resources. In the latter we use the PExIL definition to capture all the constraints of a set of programming exercises stored in a learning objects repository.

Programa de controlo de acessos com configuração de regras em XML: Volume 1

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

Making programming exercises interoperable with PExIL

Several standards have appeared in recent years to formalize the metadata of learning objects, but they are still insufficient to fully describe a specialized domain. In particular, the programming exercise domain requires interdependent resources (e.g. test cases, solution programs, exercise description) usually processed by different services in the programming exercise lifecycle. Moreover, the manual creation of these resources is time-consuming and error-prone, leading to an obstacle to the fast development of programming exercises of good quality. This chapter focuses on the definition of an XML dialect called PExIL (Programming Exercises Interoperability Language). The aim of PExIL is to consolidate all the data required in the programming exercise lifecycle from when it is created to when it is graded, covering also the resolution, the evaluation, and the feedback. The authors introduce the XML Schema used to formalize the relevant data of the programming exercise lifecycle. The validation of this approach is made through the evaluation of the usefulness and expressiveness of the PExIL definition. In the former, the authors present the tools that consume the PExIL definition to automatically generate the specialized resources. In the latter, they use the PExIL definition to capture all the constraints of a set of programming exercises stored in a learning objects repository.

An Approach To Publish a Data Warehouse Content as Linked Data

Mestrado em Engenharia Informática - Área de Especialização em Tecnologias do Conhecimento e Decisão

Tuning metadata for better movie content-based recommendation systems

The increasing number of television channels, on-demand services and online content, is expected to contribute to a better quality of experience for a costumer of such a service. However, the lack of efficient methods for finding the right content, adapted to personal interests, may lead to a progressive loss of clients. In such a scenario, recommendation systems are seen as a tool that can fill this gap and contribute to the loyalty of users. Multimedia content, namely films and television programmes are usually described using a set of metadata elements that include the title, a genre, the date of production, and the list of directors and actors. This paper provides a deep study on how the use of different metadata elements can contribute to increase the quality of the recommendations suggested. The analysis is conducted using Netflix and Movielens datasets and aspects such as the granularity of the descriptions, the accuracy metric used and the sparsity of the data are taken into account. Comparisons with collaborative approaches are also presented.

E.D.I.: electronic data interchange

O presente trabalho tem como tema a Troca Electrónica de Dados (Electronic Data Interchange – EDI) transferência de dados estruturados, respeitando mensagens normalizadas estabelecidas, computador a computador, por meios electrónicos. Trocas entre computadores refere-se a trocas entre aplicações informáticas: por exemplo o sistema de encomendas envia ordens ao sistema central de controlo da produção, o qual então fará o envio da respectiva factura. O EDI aberto faz a troca electrónica de dados entre parceiros autónomos que se associaram para fazerem trocas de dados estruturados que são destinados a serem processados por programas de aplicações.

Assessment of metadata associated with geotag pictures

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

Video metadata extraction in a videoMail system

Currently the world swiftly adapts to visual communication. Online services like YouTube and Vine show that video is no longer the domain of broadcast television only. Video is used for different purposes like entertainment, information, education or communication. The rapid growth of today’s video archives with sparsely available editorial data creates a big problem of its retrieval. The humans see a video like a complex interplay of cognitive concepts. As a result there is a need to build a bridge between numeric values and semantic concepts. This establishes a connection that will facilitate videos’ retrieval by humans. The critical aspect of this bridge is video annotation. The process could be done manually or automatically. Manual annotation is very tedious, subjective and expensive. Therefore automatic annotation is being actively studied. In this thesis we focus on the multimedia content automatic annotation. Namely the use of analysis techniques for information retrieval allowing to automatically extract metadata from video in a videomail system. Furthermore the identification of text, people, actions, spaces, objects, including animals and plants. Hence it will be possible to align multimedia content with the text presented in the email message and the creation of applications for semantic video database indexing and retrieving.

Hardwicke's science-gossip : an illustrated medium of interchange and gossip for students and lovers of nature.

v.7=no.73-84 (1871)

Hardwicke's science-gossip : an illustrated medium of interchange and gossip for students and lovers of nature.

v.2=no.13-24 (1866)