RVDynDB: Repositorio abierto para el intercambio de datos dinámicos de vehículos ferroviarios

En este artículo se describe el proceso de diseño e implementación de la base de datos RVDynDB (Rail Vehicle Dynamic parameters DataBase), que pretende ser un extenso repositorio de los modelos de dominio público empleados en la simulación dinámica de vehículos ferroviarios en todo el mundo. Atendiendo a sus características de flexibilidad, extensibilidad e independencia de la plataforma, se ha escogido un modelo de datos XML, que facilita el almacenamiento de datos de procedencia muy heterogénea, al tiempo que permite compartir el contenido de la base de datos con otros usuarios a través de internet. Se ha presentado también el lenguaje RVDynML (Rail Vehicle Dynamic parameters Markup Language), que define la estructura de la información almacenada en la base de datos. Al ser un lenguaje basado en XML, con el tiempo podría llegar a convertirse en un estándar para el intercambio de datos sobre los principales parámetros constructivos que definen el comportamiento dinámico de los vehículos.Se han seleccionado 173 referencias bibliográficas, cuyos datos se han utilizado para construir la base de datos, constituida por un total de 957 registros. Finalmente, se ha desarrollado una aplicación específica con MATLAB para gestionar las búsquedas en la base de datos. Para ello se ha empleando una API de Java que proporciona una interfaz para el DOM, que permite permiten acceder, modificar, insertar o eliminar los elementos y atributos que componen un documento XML.

A Focused Crawler in order to Get Semantic Web Resources (CSR)

This paper presents a Focused Crawler in order to Get Semantic Web Resources (CSR). Structured data web are available in formats such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Ontology Web Language (OWL) that can be used for processing. One of the main challenges for performing a manual search and download semantic web resources is that this task consumes a lot of time. Our research work propose a focused crawler which allow to download these resources automatically and store them on disk in order to have a collection that will be used for data processing. CRS consists of three layers: (a) The User Interface Layer, (b) The Focus Crawler Layer and (c) The Base Crawler Layer. CSR uses as a selection policie the Shark-Search method. CSR was conducted with two experiments. The first one starts on December 15 2012 at 7:11 am and ends on December 16 2012 at 4:01 were obtained 448,123,537 bytes of data. The CSR ends by itself after to analyze 80,4375 seeds with an unlimited depth. CSR got 16,576 semantic resources files where the 89 % was RDF, the 10 % was XML and the 1% was OWL. The second one was based on the Web Data Commons work of the Research Group Data and Web Science at the University of Mannheim and the Institute AIFB at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This began at 4:46 am of June 2 2013 and 1:37 am June 9 2013. After 162.51 hours of execution the result was 285,279 semantic resources where predominated the XML resources with 99 % and OWL and RDF with 1 % each one.

Exchanging uncertainty: interoperable geostatistics?

Traditionally, geostatistical algorithms are contained within specialist GIS and spatial statistics software. Such packages are often expensive, with relatively complex user interfaces and steep learning curves, and cannot be easily integrated into more complex process chains. In contrast, Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) promote interoperability and loose coupling within distributed systems, typically using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and Web services. Web services provide a mechanism for a user to discover and consume a particular process, often as part of a larger process chain, with minimal knowledge of how it works. Wrapping current geostatistical algorithms with a Web service layer would thus increase their accessibility, but raises several complex issues. This paper discusses a solution to providing interoperable, automatic geostatistical processing through the use of Web services, developed in the INTAMAP project (INTeroperability and Automated MAPping). The project builds upon Open Geospatial Consortium standards for describing observations, typically used within sensor webs, and employs Geography Markup Language (GML) to describe the spatial aspect of the problem domain. Thus the interpolation service is extremely flexible, being able to support a range of observation types, and can cope with issues such as change of support and differing error characteristics of sensors (by utilising descriptions of the observation process provided by SensorML). XML is accepted as the de facto standard for describing Web services, due to its expressive capabilities which allow automatic discovery and consumption by ‘naive’ users. Any XML schema employed must therefore be capable of describing every aspect of a service and its processes. However, no schema currently exists that can define the complex uncertainties and modelling choices that are often present within geostatistical analysis. We show a solution to this problem, developing a family of XML schemata to enable the description of a full range of uncertainty types. These types will range from simple statistics, such as the kriging mean and variances, through to a range of probability distributions and non-parametric models, such as realisations from a conditional simulation. By employing these schemata within a Web Processing Service (WPS) we show a prototype moving towards a truly interoperable geostatistical software architecture.

Probabilistic uncertainty in an interoperable framework

This thesis provides an interoperable language for quantifying uncertainty using probability theory. A general introduction to interoperability and uncertainty is given, with particular emphasis on the geospatial domain. Existing interoperable standards used within the geospatial sciences are reviewed, including Geography Markup Language (GML), Observations and Measurements (O&M) and the Web Processing Service (WPS) specifications. The importance of uncertainty in geospatial data is identified and probability theory is examined as a mechanism for quantifying these uncertainties. The Uncertainty Markup Language (UncertML) is presented as a solution to the lack of an interoperable standard for quantifying uncertainty. UncertML is capable of describing uncertainty using statistics, probability distributions or a series of realisations. The capabilities of UncertML are demonstrated through a series of XML examples. This thesis then provides a series of example use cases where UncertML is integrated with existing standards in a variety of applications. The Sensor Observation Service - a service for querying and retrieving sensor-observed data - is extended to provide a standardised method for quantifying the inherent uncertainties in sensor observations. The INTAMAP project demonstrates how UncertML can be used to aid uncertainty propagation using a WPS by allowing UncertML as input and output data. The flexibility of UncertML is demonstrated with an extension to the GML geometry schemas to allow positional uncertainty to be quantified. Further applications and developments of UncertML are discussed.

INTAMAP: the design and implementation of an interoperable automated interpolation web service

INTAMAP is a Web Processing Service for the automatic spatial interpolation of measured point data. Requirements were (i) using open standards for spatial data such as developed in the context of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), (ii) using a suitable environment for statistical modelling and computation, and (iii) producing an integrated, open source solution. The system couples an open-source Web Processing Service (developed by 52°North), accepting data in the form of standardised XML documents (conforming to the OGC Observations and Measurements standard) with a computing back-end realised in the R statistical environment. The probability distribution of interpolation errors is encoded with UncertML, a markup language designed to encode uncertain data. Automatic interpolation needs to be useful for a wide range of applications and the algorithms have been designed to cope with anisotropy, extreme values, and data with known error distributions. Besides a fully automatic mode, the system can be used with different levels of user control over the interpolation process.

Describing and communicating uncertainty within the semantic web

The Semantic Web relies on carefully structured, well defined, data to allow machines to communicate and understand one another. In many domains (e.g. geospatial) the data being described contains some uncertainty, often due to incomplete knowledge; meaningful processing of this data requires these uncertainties to be carefully analysed and integrated into the process chain. Currently, within the SemanticWeb there is no standard mechanism for interoperable description and exchange of uncertain information, which renders the automated processing of such information implausible, particularly where error must be considered and captured as it propagates through a processing sequence. In particular we adopt a Bayesian perspective and focus on the case where the inputs / outputs are naturally treated as random variables. This paper discusses a solution to the problem in the form of the Uncertainty Markup Language (UncertML). UncertML is a conceptual model, realised as an XML schema, that allows uncertainty to be quantified in a variety of ways i.e. realisations, statistics and probability distributions. UncertML is based upon a soft-typed XML schema design that provides a generic framework from which any statistic or distribution may be created. Making extensive use of Geography Markup Language (GML) dictionaries, UncertML provides a collection of definitions for common uncertainty types. Containing both written descriptions and mathematical functions, encoded as MathML, the definitions within these dictionaries provide a robust mechanism for defining any statistic or distribution and can be easily extended. Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) are used to introduce semantics to the soft-typed elements by linking to these dictionary definitions. The INTAMAP (INTeroperability and Automated MAPping) project provides a use case for UncertML. This paper demonstrates how observation errors can be quantified using UncertML and wrapped within an Observations & Measurements (O&M) Observation. The interpolation service uses the information within these observations to influence the prediction outcome. The output uncertainties may be encoded in a variety of UncertML types, e.g. a series of marginal Gaussian distributions, a set of statistics, such as the first three marginal moments, or a set of realisations from a Monte Carlo treatment. Quantifying and propagating uncertainty in this way allows such interpolation results to be consumed by other services. This could form part of a risk management chain or a decision support system, and ultimately paves the way for complex data processing chains in the Semantic Web.

XML storage and retrieval using the semantic binary object -oriented database system (SEM-ODB)

Over the past five years, XML has been embraced by both the research and industrial community due to its promising prospects as a new data representation and exchange format on the Internet. The widespread popularity of XML creates an increasing need to store XML data in persistent storage systems and to enable sophisticated XML queries over the data. The currently available approaches to addressing the XML storage and retrieval issue have the limitations of either being not mature enough (e.g. native approaches) or causing inflexibility, a lot of fragmentation and excessive join operations (e.g. non-native approaches such as the relational database approach). ^ In this dissertation, I studied the issue of storing and retrieving XML data using the Semantic Binary Object-Oriented Database System (Sem-ODB) to leverage the advanced Sem-ODB technology with the emerging XML data model. First, a meta-schema based approach was implemented to address the data model mismatch issue that is inherent in the non-native approaches. The meta-schema based approach captures the meta-data of both Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and Sem-ODB Semantic Schemas, thus enables a dynamic and flexible mapping scheme. Second, a formal framework was presented to ensure precise and concise mappings. In this framework, both schemas and the conversions between them are formally defined and described. Third, after major features of an XML query language, XQuery, were analyzed, a high-level XQuery to Semantic SQL (Sem-SQL) query translation scheme was described. This translation scheme takes advantage of the navigation-oriented query paradigm of the Sem-SQL, thus avoids the excessive join problem of relational approaches. Finally, the modeling capability of the Semantic Binary Object-Oriented Data Model (Sem-ODM) was explored from the perspective of conceptually modeling an XML Schema using a Semantic Schema. ^ It was revealed that the advanced features of the Sem-ODB, such as multi-valued attributes, surrogates, the navigation-oriented query paradigm, among others, are indeed beneficial in coping with the XML storage and retrieval issue using a non-XML approach. Furthermore, extensions to the Sem-ODB to make it work more effectively with XML data were also proposed. ^

Adding Run-Time Monitoring to UML-RT by Modifying the Papyrus-RT Code Generator

In Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), the developer creates a model using a language such as Unified Modeling Language (UML) or UML for Real-Time (UML-RT) and uses tools such as Papyrus or Papyrus-RT that generate code for them based on the model they create. Tracing allows developers to get insights such as which events occur and timing information into their own application as it runs. We try to add monitoring capabilities using Linux Trace Toolkit: next generation (LTTng) to models created in UML-RT using Papyrus-RT. The implementation requires changing the code generator to add tracing statements for the events that the user wants to monitor to the generated code. We also change the makefile to automate the build process and we create an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file that allows developers to view their traces visually using Trace Compass, an Eclipse-based trace viewing tool. Finally, we validate our results using three models we create and trace.

Page Composition using PPML as a Link-editing Script

The advantages of a COG (Component Object Graphic) approach to the composition of PDF pages have been set out in a previous paper [1]. However, if pages are to be composed in this way then the individual graphic objects must have known bounding boxes and must be correctly placed on the page in a process that resembles the link editing of a multi-module computer program. Ideally the linker should be able to utilize all declared resource information attached to each COG. We have investigated the use of an XML application called Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML) to control the link editing process for PDF COGs. Our experiments, though successful, have shown up the shortcomings of PPML's resource handling capabilities which are currently active at the document and page levels but which cannot be elegantly applied to individual graphic objects at a sub-page level. Proposals are put forward for modifications to PPML that would make easier any COG-based approach to page composition.

Integration of process planning and scheduling using mobile-agent based approach in a networked manufacturing environment

Effective and efficient implementation of intelligent and/or recently emerged networked manufacturing systems require an enterprise level integration. The networked manufacturing offers several advantages in the current competitive atmosphere by way to reduce, by shortening manufacturing cycle time and maintaining the production flexibility thereby achieving several feasible process plans. The first step in this direction is to integrate manufacturing functions such as process planning and scheduling for multi-jobs in a network based manufacturing system. It is difficult to determine a proper plan that meets conflicting objectives simultaneously. This paper describes a mobile-agent based negotiation approach to integrate manufacturing functions in a distributed manner; and its fundamental framework and functions are presented. Moreover, ontology has been constructed by using the Protégé software which possesses the flexibility to convert knowledge into Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema of Web Ontology Language (OWL) documents. The generated XML schemas have been used to transfer information throughout the manufacturing network for the intelligent interoperable integration of product data models and manufacturing resources. To validate the feasibility of the proposed approach, an illustrative example along with varied production environments that includes production demand fluctuations is presented and compared the proposed approach performance and its effectiveness with evolutionary algorithm based Hybrid Dynamic-DNA (HD-DNA) algorithm. The results show that the proposed scheme is very effective and reasonably acceptable for integration of manufacturing functions.

Rede sem fios de microcontroladores com acesso remoto aplicada à domótica

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

Geração de código VHDL a partir de especificações IOPT PNML2VHDL

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

Discovery and retrieval of Geographic data using Google

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

SmART: an application reconfiguration framework

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática.

Plataforma web de informação automobilística

Esta dissertação enquadra-se no âmbito dos Sistemas de Informação, em concreto, no desenvolvimento de aplicações Web, como é o caso de um website. Com a utilização em larga escala dos meios tecnológicos tem-se verificado um crescimento exponencial dos mesmos, o que se traduz na facilidade com que podem ser encontradas na Internet diversos tipos de plataformas informáticas. Além disso, hoje em dia, uma grande parte das organizações possui o seu próprio sítio na Internet, onde procede à divulgação dos seus serviços e/ou produtos. Pretende-se com esta dissertação explorar estas novas tecnologias, nomeadamente, os diagramas UML - Unified Modeling Language e a concepção de bases de dados, e posteriormente desenvolver um website. Com o desenvolvimento deste website não se propõe a criação de uma nova tecnologia, mas o uso de diversas tecnologias em conjunto com recurso às ferramentas UML. Este encontra-se organizado em três fases principais: análise de requisitos, implementação e desenho das interfaces. Na análise de requisitos efectuou-se o levantamento dos objectivos propostos para o sistema e das necessidades/requisitos necessários à sua implementação, auxiliado essencialmente pelo Diagrama de Use Cases do sistema. Na fase de implementação foram elaborados os arquivos e directórios que formam a arquitectura lógica de acordo com os modelos descritos no Diagrama de Classes e no Diagrama de Entidade-Relação. Os requisitos identificados foram analisados e usados na composição das interfaces e sistema de navegação. Por fim, na fase de desenho das interfaces foram aperfeiçoadas as interfaces desenvolvidas, com base no conceito artístico e criativo do autor. Este aperfeiçoamento vai de encontro ao gosto pessoal e tem como objectivo elaborar uma interface que possa também agradar ao maior número possível de utilizadores. Este pode ser observado na maneira como se encontram distribuídas as ligações (links) entre páginas, nos títulos, nos cabeçalhos, nas cores e animações e no seu design em geral. Para o desenvolvimento do website foram utilizadas diferentes linguagens de programação, nomeadamente a HyperText Markup Language (HTML), a Page Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) e Javascript. A HTML foi utilizada para a disposição de todo o conteúdo visível das páginas e para definição do layout das mesmas e a PHP para executar pequenos scripts que permitem interagir com as diferentes funcionalidades do site. A linguagem Javascript foi usada para definir o design das páginas e incluir alguns efeitos visuais nas mesmas. Para a construção das páginas que compõem o website foi utilizado o software Macromedia Dreamweaver, o que simplificou a sua implementação pela facilidade com que estas podem ser construídas. Para interacção com o sistema de gestão da base de dados, o MySQL, foi utilizada a aplicação phpMyAdmin, que simplifica o acesso à base de dados, permitindo definir, manipular e consultar os seus dados.