Análise de desempenho de sistemas distribuídos de grande porte na plataforma Java

The lava Platform is increasing1y being adopted in the development of distributed sys¬tems with higb user demando This kind of application is more complex because it needs beyond attending the functional requirements, to fulfil1 the pre-established performance parameters. This work makes a study on the Java Vutual Machine (JVM), approaching its intemal aspects and exploring the garbage collection strategies existing in the literature and used by the NM. It also presents a set of tools that helps in the job of optimizing applications and others that help in the monitoring of applications in the production envi¬ronment. Doe to the great amount of technologies that aim to solve problems which are common to the application layer, it becomes difficult to choose the one with best time response and less memory usage. This work presents a brief introduction to each one of tbe possible technologies and realize comparative tests through a statistical analysis of the response time and garbage collection activity random variables. The obtained results supply engineers and managers with a subside to decide which technologies to use in large applications through the knowledge of how they behave in their environments and the amount of resources that they consume. The relation between the productivity of the technology and its performance is also considered ao important factor in this choice

Desenvolvimento de um middleware para comunicação via web services e sua aplicação em sistemas de aquisição de dados industriais

The control of industrial processes has become increasingly complex due to variety of factory devices, quality requirement and market competition. Such complexity requires a large amount of data to be treated by the three levels of process control: field devices, control systems and management softwares. To use data effectively in each one of these levels is extremely important to industry. Many of today s industrial computer systems consist of distributed software systems written in a wide variety of programming languages and developed for specific platforms, so, even more companies apply a significant investment to maintain or even re-write their systems for different platforms. Furthermore, it is rare that a software system works in complete isolation. In industrial automation is common that, software had to interact with other systems on different machines and even written in different languages. Thus, interoperability is not just a long-term challenge, but also a current context requirement of industrial software production. This work aims to propose a middleware solution for communication over web service and presents an user case applying the solution developed to an integrated system for industrial data capture , allowing such data to be available simplified and platformindependent across the network

Comparison of Two Methodologies for CD4+T Lymphocytes Relative Counting on Immune Monitoring of Patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Considering that counting the percentage of CD4 T lymphocytes can add prognostic information regarding patients infected with HIV, the aim of this study was to evaluate the percentage values of CD4+ T lymphocytes from 81 patients determined by flow cytometry and estimated by flow cytometry in conjunction with a hematology counter. Means were compared through the Student's t-test. Pearson's correlation was determined, and the agreement between results was tested by Bland-Altman. The level of significance was P < 0.05. It was found a significantly higher mean difference between the relative values of CD4+ T lymphocytes to the hematologic counter (P < 0.05), for all strata studied. Positive and significant correlations (P < 0.01) were found between the strata CD4 < 200 cells/mL (r = 0.93), between 200 and 500 cells/mL (r = 0.65), and >500 cells/mL (r = 0.81). The limits of agreement were 1.0 +/- 3.8% for the stratum of CD4 < 200 cells/mL, approximately 2.2 +/- 13.5% for the stratum of CD4 between 200 and 500 cells/mL, and approximately 6.2 +/- 20.4% for the stratum > 500 cells/mL. The differences in the percentages of CD4+ T lymphocytes obtained by different methodologies could lead to conflict when used in clinical decisions related to the treatment and care of people infected with HIV.

Influence of Excitation Signal on Impedance-based Structural Health Monitoring

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Uma plataforma de integração de middleware para computação ubíqua

One of the current challenges of Ubiquitous Computing is the development of complex applications, those are more than simple alarms triggered by sensors or simple systems to configure the environment according to user preferences. Those applications are hard to develop since they are composed by services provided by different middleware and it is needed to know the peculiarities of each of them, mainly the communication and context models. This thesis presents OpenCOPI, a platform which integrates various services providers, including context provision middleware. It provides an unified ontology-based context model, as well as an environment that enable easy development of ubiquitous applications via the definition of semantic workflows that contains the abstract description of the application. Those semantic workflows are converted into concrete workflows, called execution plans. An execution plan consists of a workflow instance containing activities that are automated by a set of Web services. OpenCOPI supports the automatic Web service selection and composition, enabling the use of services provided by distinct middleware in an independent and transparent way. Moreover, this platform also supports execution adaptation in case of service failures, user mobility and degradation of services quality. The validation of OpenCOPI is performed through the development of case studies, specifically applications of the oil industry. In addition, this work evaluates the overhead introduced by OpenCOPI and compares it with the provided benefits, and the efficiency of OpenCOPI s selection and adaptation mechanism

BSmart: desenvolvimento rigoroso de aplicações Java Card com base no método formal B

Java Card technology allows the development and execution of small applications embedded in smart cards. A Java Card application is composed of an external card client and of an application in the card that implements the services available to the client by means of an Application Programming Interface (API). Usually, these applications manipulate and store important information, such as cash and confidential data of their owners. Thus, it is necessary to adopt rigor on developing a smart card application to improve its quality and trustworthiness. The use of formal methods on the development of these applications is a way to reach these quality requirements. The B method is one of the many formal methods for system specification. The development in B starts with the functional specification of the system, continues with the application of some optional refinements to the specification and, from the last level of refinement, it is possible to generate code for some programming language. The B formalism has a good tool support and its application to Java Card is adequate since the specification and development of APIs is one of the major applications of B. The BSmart method proposed here aims to promote the rigorous development of Java Card applications up to the generation of its code, based on the refinement of its formal specification described in the B notation. This development is supported by the BSmart tool, that is composed of some programs that automate each stage of the method; and by a library of B modules and Java Card classes that model primitive types, essential Java Card API classes and reusable data structures

Um middleware reflexivo e orientado a aspectos: arquitetura e implementações

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

Uma abordagem na camada de middleware para troca dinâmica de componentes em sistemas multimídia distribuídos baseados no framework Cosmos

To manage the complexity associated with the management of multimedia distributed systems, a solution must incorporate concepts of middleware in order to hide specific hardware and operating systems aspects. Applications in these systems can be implemented in different types of platforms, and the components of these systems must interact each with the other. Because of the variability of the state of the platforms implementation, a flexible approach should allow dynamic substitution of components in order to ensure the level of QoS of the running application . In this context, this work presents an approach in the layer of middleware that we are proposing for supporting dynamic substitution of components in the context the Cosmos framework , starting with the choice of target component, rising taking the decision, which, among components candidates will be chosen and concluding with the process defined for the exchange. The approach was defined considering the Cosmos QoS model and how it deals with dynamic reconfiguration

GingaForAll: linha de Produtos do Middleware Ginga

Many challenges have been imposed on the middleware to support applications for digital TV because of the heterogeneity and resource constraints of execution platforms. In this scenario, the middleware must be highly configurable so that it can be customized to meet the requirements of applications and underlying platforms. This work aims to present the GingaForAll, a software product line developed for the Ginga - the middleware of the Brazilian Digital TV (SBTVD). GingaForAll adds the concepts of software product line, aspect orientation and model-driven development to allow: (i) the specification of the common characteristics and variables of the middleware, (ii) the modularization of crosscutting concerns - both mandatory and concepts variables - through aspects, (iii) the expression of concepts as a set of models that increase the level of abstraction and enables management of various software artifacts in terms of configurable models. This work presents the architecture of the software product line that implements such a tool and architecture that supports automatic customization of middleware. The work also presents a tool that implements the process of generating products GingaForAll

KitSmart: Uma biblioteca de componentes para o desenvolvimento rigoroso de aplicações Java Card com o método B

The development of smart card applications requires a high level of reliability. Formal methods provide means for this reliability to be achieved. The BSmart method and tool contribute to the development of smart card applications with the support of the B method, generating Java Card code from B specifications. For the development with BSmart to be effectively rigorous without overloading the user it is important to have a library of reusable components built in B. The goal of KitSmart is to provide this support. A first research about the composition of this library was a graduation work from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, made by Thiago Dutra in 2006. This first version of the kit resulted in a specification of Java Card primitive types byte, short and boolean in B and the creation of reusable components for application development. This work provides an improvement of KitSmart with the addition of API Java Card specification made in B and a guide for the creation of new components. The API Java Card in B, besides being available to be used for development of applications, is also useful as a documentation of each API class. The reusable components correspond to modules to manipulate specific structures, such as date and time. These structures are not available for B or Java Card. These components for Java Card are generated from specifications formally verified in B. The guide contains quick reference on how to specify some structures and how some situations were adapted from object-orientation to the B Method. This work was evaluated through a case study made through the BSmart tool, that makes use of the KitSmart library. In this case study, it is possible to see the contribution of the components in a B specification. This kit should be useful for B method users and Java Card application developers

Métricas de sistemas de middleware orientado a aspectos e Aplicação em um sistema de monitoramento de Poços de Petróleo

Nowadays, there are many aspect-oriented middleware implementations that take advantage of the modularity provided by the aspect oriented paradigm. Although the works always present an assessment of the middleware according to some quality attribute, there is not a specific set of metrics to assess them in a comprehensive way, following various quality attributes. This work aims to propose a suite of metrics for the assessment of aspect-oriented middleware systems at different development stages: design, refactoring, implementation and runtime. The work presents the metrics and how they are applied at each development stage. The suite is composed of metrics associated to static properties (modularity, maintainability, reusability, exibility, complexity, stability, and size) and dynamic properties (performance and memory consumption). Such metrics are based on existing assessment approaches of object-oriented and aspect-oriented systems. The proposed metrics are used in the context of OiL (Orb in Lua), a middleware based on CORBA and implemented in Lua, and AO-OiL, the refactoring of OIL that follows a reference architecture for aspect-oriented middleware systems. The case study performed in OiL and AO-OiL is a system for monitoring of oil wells. This work also presents the CoMeTA-Lua tool to automate the collection of coupling and size metrics in Lua source code

The variability and predictors of quality of AIDS care services in Brazil

Background: Since establishing universal free access to antiretroviral therapy in 1996, the Brazilian Health System has increased the number of centers providing HIV/AIDS outpatient care from 33 to 540. There had been no formal monitoring of the quality of these services until a survey of 336 AIDS health centers across 7 Brazilian states was undertaken in 2002. Managers of the services were asked to assess their clinics according to parameters of service inputs and service delivery processes. This report analyzes the survey results and identifies predictors of the overall quality of service delivery.Methods: The survey involved completion of a multiple-choice questionnaire comprising 107 parameters of service inputs and processes of delivering care, with responses assessed according to their likely impact on service quality using a 3-point scale. K-means clustering was used to group these services according to their scored responses. Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of high service quality.Results: The questionnaire was completed by 95.8% (322) of the managers of the sites surveyed. Most sites scored about 50% of the benchmark expectation. K-means clustering analysis identified four quality levels within which services could be grouped: 76 services (24%) were classed as level 1 (best), 53 (16%) as level 2 (medium), 113 (35%) as level 3 (poor), and 80 (25%) as level 4 (very poor). Parameters of service delivery processes were more important than those relating to service inputs for determining the quality classification. Predictors of quality services included larger care sites, specialization for HIV/AIDS, and location within large municipalities.Conclusion: The survey demonstrated highly variable levels of HIV/AIDS service quality across the sites. Many sites were found to have deficiencies in the processes of service delivery processes that could benefit from quality improvement initiatives. These findings could have implications for how HIV/AIDS services are planned in Brazil to achieve quality standards, such as for where service sites should be located, their size and staffing requirements. A set of service delivery indicators has been identified that could be used for routine monitoring of HIV/AIDS service delivery for HIV/AIDS in Brazil (and potentially in other similar settings).

Luxation injuries in primary teeth: a retrospective study in children assisted at an emergency service

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Genetic monitoring of the Amazonian fish matrincha (Brycon cephalus) using RAPD markers: insights into supportive breeding and conservation programmes

The importance of genetic evaluations in aquaculture programmes has been increased significantly not only to improve effectiveness of hatchery production but also to maintain genetic diversity. In the present study, wild and captive populations of a commercially important neotropical freshwater fish, Brycon cephalus (Amazonian matrincha), were analyzed in order to evaluate the levels of genetic diversity in a breeding programme at a Brazilian research institute of tropical fish. Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA fingerprinting was used to access the genetic variability of a wild stock from the Amazon River and of three captive stocks that correspond to consecutive generations from the fishery culture. Although farmed stocks showed considerably lower genetic variation than the wild population, a significantly higher level of polymorphism was detected in the third hatchery generation. The results seem to reflect a common breeding practice on several hatchery fish programmes that use a small number of parents as broodstocks, obtaining reproductive success with few non-identified mating couples. The obtained data were useful for discussing suitable strategies for the genetic management and biodiversity conservation of this species.

On the efficacy of texture analysis for crowd monitoring

The goal of this work is to assess the efficacy of texture measures for estimating levels of crowd densities ill images. This estimation is crucial for the problem of crowd monitoring. and control. The assessment is carried out oil a set of nearly 300 real images captured from Liverpool Street Train Station. London, UK using texture measures extracted from the images through the following four different methods: gray level dependence matrices, straight lille segments. Fourier analysis. and fractal dimensions. The estimations of dowel densities are given in terms of the classification of the input images ill five classes of densities (very low, low. moderate. high and very high). Three types of classifiers are used: neural (implemented according to the Kohonen model). Bayesian. and an approach based on fitting functions. The results obtained by these three classifiers. using the four texture measures. allowed the conclusion that, for the problem of crowd density estimation. texture analysis is very effective.