Modelos de simulação de processos por junção de componentes

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de Informação

Previsão de cheias em Barcelos

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Adesão de Cabo Verde à Organização Mundial do Comércio - Problemas, Desafios e Perspectivas

A dinâmica de desenvolvimento de Cabo Verde vem sendo uma constante, com ganhos significativos para o país, como atestam a recente adesão à Organização Mundial do Comércio, a graduação a País de Rendimento Médio e a Parceria Especial com a União Europeia. No dia 23 de Julho de 2008, Cabo Verde tornou-se no 153º Estado membro da Organização Mundial do Comércio, sendo que nesta conquista foi o primeiro país Africano e o terceiro País Menos Avançado a conseguir este importante marco via negocial. As vantagens advenientes desta adesão são muitas, sendo de destacar a maior confiança dos investidores no país ao propiciar-se a expansão do mercado e a realização de negócios num ambiente mais seguro e estável, e ainda a possibilidade de melhoria da qualidade de prestação de serviços, uma vez que tudo passou a ser norteado por padrões e regras do comércio internacional. Este trabalho foi elaborado com base em pesquisa bibliográfica e exploratória necessária à construção de um referencial teórico sobre o assunto em questão, tendo como base artigos, livros, revistas e consultas em websites. Finalizando, para avaliação, apresentamos uma componente prática com base num questionário aplicado ao tecido empresarial, com perguntas abertas e de múltipla escolha, onde os inquiridos puderam fazer a sua apreciação relativa ao processo de adesão, e às expectativas advenientes. Os resultados obtidos no final do trabalho mostraram de forma clara e inequívoca a necessidade de Cabo Verde se reorganizar, reforçar o sector privado e a competitividade das empresas, através de, designadamente: melhoria do ambiente fiscal das empresas, fomento e apoio às pequenas e médias empresas. Outrossim, há que dar seguimento as reformas no sector comercial, capacitando e formando quadros nacionais uma vez que estes desempenham um papel essencial no crescimento económico do país e permitem dar maior previsibilidade aos investidores, sendo este último um dos pilares decisivos no requisito do investimento externo. The dynamics of the development of Cape Verde is becoming a constant, with significant gains to the country, as attests the recent adhesion to the World Trade Organization, the graduation to Country of Medium Revenue, as well as the Special Partnership with the European Union. On July 23, 2008, Cape Verde became the 153rd State member of the World Trade Organization, and in this conquest it was the first African country and the third Less Advanced Country to get this mark through negotiable way. The advantages proceeding from this adhesion are many, highlighting the investors' largest trust in the country when propitiating the expansion of the market and the accomplishment of business in a safer and stable atmosphere, and still the possibility of improvement of the quality of installment of services, once everything started being guided by patterns and rules of the international trade. This work was elaborated based on bibliographical and exploratory researches necessary to the construction of the theoretical referential about the subject in question, based on articles, books, magazines and website researches. Concluding, for evaluation, we presented a practical component based on a questionnaire applied to the managerial stuff, with open and multiple choice questions, where the inquired could make his appreciation related to the adhesion process, and the proceeding expectations. The results obtained at the end of the work, showed in a clear way the need of Cape Verde to organize, to reinforce the private sector and the competitiveness of the companies, through, namely: the improvement of the fiscal atmosphere of the companies, fomentation and support of the small and medium companies. Meanwhile, it is important to continue the reforms in the commercial sector, qualifying and forming national staff once they play an essential part in the economic growth of the country and allow giving a larger previsibility to the investors, being this last one, one of the decisive pillars in the requirement of the external investment.

Implementing Microsoft .NET Framework for Bitumen-Extranet

Ohjelmistoprojektit pohjautuvat nykyään useasti osittain itsenäisesti suunniteltujen ja; toteutettujen ohjelmakomponenttien yhdistelemiseen. Tällä keinolla voidaan vähentää kehitystyön; viemää aikaa ja kustannuksia, jotta saadaan tuotettua kilpailukykyisempiä ohjelmistoja.; Tässädokumentissa käsitellään komponenttipohjaisen ohjelmistotuotannon näkökulmia ja; Microsoft .NET Framework ympäristöä, joka on kehitysympäristö komponenttipohjaisille; ohjelmistoille. Lisäksi esitellään tapauskohtainen ohjelmistoprojekti extranet-verkon; toteutukseen.

Adaptive Protocol Stacks for Mobile Devices

Tulevaisuudessa siirrettävät laitteet, kuten matkapuhelimet ja kämmenmikrot, pystyvät muodostamaan verkkoyhteyden käyttäen erilaisia yhteysmenetelmiä eri tilanteissa. Yhteysmenetelmillä on toisistaan poikkeavat viestintäominaisuudet mm. latenssin, kaistanleveyden, virhemäärän yms. suhteen. Langattomille yhteysmenetelmille on myös ominaista tietoliikenneyhteyden ominaisuuksien voimakas muuttuminen ympäristön suhteen. Parhaan suorituskyvyn ja käytettävyyden saavuttamiseksi, on siirrettävän laitteen pystyttävä mukautumaan käytettyyn viestintämenetelmään ja viestintäympäristössä tapahtuviin muutoksiin. Olennainen osa tietoliikenteessä ovat protokollapinot, jotka mahdollistavat tietoliikenneyhteyden järjestelmien välillä tarjoten verkkopalveluita päätelaitteen käyttäjäsovelluksille. Jotta protokollapinot pystyisivät mukautumaan tietyn viestintäympäristön ominaisuuksiin, on protokollapinon käyttäytymistä pystyttävä muuttamaan ajonaikaisesti. Perinteisesti protokollapinot ovat kuitenkin rakennettu muuttumattomiksi niin, että mukautuminen tässä laajuudessa on erittäin vaikeaa toteuttaa, ellei jopa mahdotonta. Tämä diplomityö käsittelee mukautuvien protokollapinojen rakentamista käyttäen komponenttipohjaista ohjelmistokehystä joka mahdollistaa protokollapinojen ajonaikaisen muuttamisen. Toteuttamalla esimerkkijärjestelmän, ja mittaamalla sen suorituskykyä vaihtelevassa tietoliikenneympäristössä, osoitamme, että mukautuvat protokollapinot ovat mahdollisia rakentaa ja ne tarjoavat merkittäviä etuja erityisesti tulevaisuuden siirrettävissä laitteissa.

Uudelleenkäytettävyys eräässä ohjelmistoprojektissa

Tässä työssä kuvataan erästä kaupallista ohjelmistoprojektia, jossa ohjelmistojen uudelleenkäyttöä tavoiteltiin komponenttipohjaisen uudelleenkäytön ja ohjelmistojen sovittamisen kautta. Projektissa toteutettiin matkapuhelinsovellus, jonka ydin eristettiin uudelleenkäytettäväksi ja sovitettavaksi komponentiksi. Ytimen sovitettavuus verifioitiin sovittamalla ydin toiselle ympäristölle ja edelleen toteuttamalla toimiva prototyyppisovellus sovitetun ytimen varaan. Ytimen sovittamisen sekä prototyyppisovelluksen toteuttamisen vaatima työmäärä oli huomattavasti pienempi kuin ytimen tekemiseen alkuperin käytetty työmäärä. Työssä on osoitettu ohjelmistometriikoiden avulla, että merkittävä osa ohjelmiston toiminnallisuudesta saatiin uudelleenkäytettäväksi sovitettavan ytimen avulla. Lisäksi työssä on kuvattu millaisia kehitysprosessikäytäntöjä projektissa oli käytössä tukemassa uudelleenkäytettävyystavoitetta.

Development of agnostic mobile applications with cross-platform cloud computing platforms

Smart phones became part and parcel of our life, where mobility provides a freedom of not being bounded by time and space. In addition, number of smartphones produced each year is skyrocketing. However, this also created discrepancies or fragmentation among devices and OSes, which in turn made an exceeding hard for developers to deliver hundreds of similar featured applications with various versions for the market consumption. This thesis is an attempt to investigate whether cloud based mobile development platforms can mitigate and eventually eliminate fragmentation challenges. During this research, we have selected and analyzed the most popular cloud based development platforms and tested integrated cloud features. This research showed that cloud based mobile development platforms may able to reduce mobile fragmentation and enable to utilize single codebase to deliver a mobile application for different platforms.

Identification d’une architecture à base de composants dans une application orientée objets à l’aide d’une analyse dynamique

Un système, décrit avec un grand nombre d'éléments fortement interdépendants, est complexe, difficile à comprendre et à maintenir. Ainsi, une application orientée objet est souvent complexe, car elle contient des centaines de classes avec de nombreuses dépendances plus ou moins explicites. Une même application, utilisant le paradigme composant, contiendrait un plus petit nombre d'éléments, faiblement couplés entre eux et avec des interdépendances clairement définies. Ceci est dû au fait que le paradigme composant fournit une bonne représentation de haut niveau des systèmes complexes. Ainsi, ce paradigme peut être utilisé comme "espace de projection" des systèmes orientés objets. Une telle projection peut faciliter l'étape de compréhension d'un système, un pré-requis nécessaire avant toute activité de maintenance et/ou d'évolution. De plus, il est possible d'utiliser cette représentation, comme un modèle pour effectuer une restructuration complète d'une application orientée objets opérationnelle vers une application équivalente à base de composants tout aussi opérationnelle. Ainsi, La nouvelle application bénéficiant ainsi, de toutes les bonnes propriétés associées au paradigme composants. L'objectif de ma thèse est de proposer une méthode semi-automatique pour identifier une architecture à base de composants dans une application orientée objets. Cette architecture doit, non seulement aider à la compréhension de l'application originale, mais aussi simplifier la projection de cette dernière dans un modèle concret de composant. L'identification d'une architecture à base de composants est réalisée en trois grandes étapes: i) obtention des données nécessaires au processus d'identification. Elles correspondent aux dépendances entre les classes et sont obtenues avec une analyse dynamique de l'application cible. ii) identification des composants. Trois méthodes ont été explorées. La première utilise un treillis de Galois, la seconde deux méta-heuristiques et la dernière une méta-heuristique multi-objective. iii) identification de l'architecture à base de composants de l'application cible. Cela est fait en identifiant les interfaces requises et fournis pour chaque composant. Afin de valider ce processus d'identification, ainsi que les différents choix faits durant son développement, j'ai réalisé différentes études de cas. Enfin, je montre la faisabilité de la projection de l'architecture à base de composants identifiée vers un modèle concret de composants.

Konzeption eines generischen Vorgehensmodells zur strategieorientierten und partizipativen Einführung komplexer Softwaresysteme unter Berücksichtigung organisatorischer Gestaltungsprozesse

Die Dissertation befasst sich mit der Einführung komplexer Softwaresysteme, die, bestehend aus einer Kombination aus parametrisierter Standardsoftware gepaart mit Wettbewerbsvorteil sichernden Individualsoftwarekomponenten, keine Software-Engineering-Projekte im klassischen Sinn mehr darstellen, sondern einer strategieorientierten Gestaltung von Geschäftsprozessen und deren Implementierung in Softwaresystemen bedürfen. Die Problemstellung einer adäquaten Abwägung zwischen TCO-optimierender Einführung und einer gleichzeitigen vollständigen Unterstützung der kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren des Unternehmens ist hierbei von besonderer Bedeutung. Der Einsatz integrierter betriebswirtschaftlicher Standardsoftware, mit den Möglichkeiten einer TCO-Senkung, jedoch ebenfalls der Gefahr eines Verlustes von Alleinstellungsmerkmalen am Markt durch Vereinheitlichungstendenzen, stellt ein in Einführungsprojekten wesentliches zu lösendes Problem dar, um Suboptima zu vermeiden. Die Verwendung von Vorgehensmodellen, die sich oftmals an klassischen Softwareentwicklungsprojekten orientieren oder vereinfachte Phasenmodelle für das Projektmanagement darstellen, bedingt eine fehlende Situationsadäquanz in den Detailsituationen der Teilprojekte eines komplexen Einführungsprojektes. Das in dieser Arbeit entwickelte generische Vorgehensmodell zur strategieorientierten und partizipativen Einführung komplexer Softwaresysteme im betriebswirtschaftlichen Anwendungsbereich macht - aufgrund der besonders herausgearbeiteten Ansätze zu einer strategieorientierten Einführung, respektive Entwicklung derartiger Systeme sowie aufgrund der situationsadäquaten Vorgehensstrategien im Rahmen der Teilprojektorganisation � ein Softwareeinführungsprojekt zu einem Wettbewerbsfaktor stärkenden, strategischen Element im Unternehmen. Die in der Dissertation diskutierten Überlegungen lassen eine Vorgehensweise präferieren, die eine enge Verschmelzung des Projektes zur Organisationsoptimierung mit dem Softwareimplementierungsprozess impliziert. Eine Priorisierung der Geschäftsprozesse mit dem Ziel, zum einen bei Prozessen mit hoher wettbewerbsseitiger Priorität ein organisatorisches Suboptimum zu vermeiden und zum anderen trotzdem den organisatorischen Gestaltungs- und den Systemimplementierungsprozess schnell und ressourcenschonend durchzuführen, ist ein wesentliches Ergebnis der Ausarbeitungen. Zusätzlich führt die Ausgrenzung weiterer Prozesse vom Einführungsvorgang zunächst zu einem Produktivsystem, welches das Unternehmen in den wesentlichen Punkten abdeckt, das aber ebenso in späteren Projektschritten zu einem System erweitert werden kann, welches eine umfassende Funktionalität besitzt. Hieraus ergeben sich Möglichkeiten, strategischen Anforderungen an ein modernes Informationssystem, das die kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren eines Unternehmens konsequent unterstützen muss, gerecht zu werden und gleichzeitig ein so weit als möglich ressourcenschonendes, weil die Kostenreduktionsaspekte einer Standardlösung nutzend, Projekt durchzuführen. Ein weiterer wesentlicher Aspekt ist die situationsadäquate Modellinstanziierung, also die projektspezifische Anpassung des Vorgehensmodells sowie die situationsadäquate Wahl der Vorgehensweisen in Teilprojekten und dadurch Nutzung der Vorteile der verschiedenen Vorgehensstrategien beim konkreten Projektmanagement. Der Notwendigkeit der Entwicklung einer Projektorganisation für prototypingorientiertes Vorgehen wird in diesem Zusammenhang ebenfalls Rechnung getragen. Die Notwendigkeit der Unternehmen, sich einerseits mit starken Differenzierungspotenzialen am Markt hervorzuheben und andererseits bei ständig sinkenden Margen einer Kostenoptimierung nachzukommen, lässt auch in Zukunft das entwickelte Modell als erfolgreich erscheinen. Hinzu kommt die Tendenz zu Best-Of-Breed-Ansätzen und komponentenbasierten Systemen im Rahmen der Softwareauswahl, die eine ausgesprochen differenzierte Vorgehensweise in Projekten verstärkt notwendig machen wird. Durch die in das entwickelte Modell integrierten Prototyping-Ansätze wird der auch in Zukunft an Bedeutung gewinnenden Notwendigkeit der Anwenderintegration Rechnung getragen.

Rotation Invariant Real-time Face Detection and Recognition System

In this report, a face recognition system that is capable of detecting and recognizing frontal and rotated faces was developed. Two face recognition methods focusing on the aspect of pose invariance are presented and evaluated - the whole face approach and the component-based approach. The main challenge of this project is to develop a system that is able to identify faces under different viewing angles in realtime. The development of such a system will enhance the capability and robustness of current face recognition technology. The whole-face approach recognizes faces by classifying a single feature vector consisting of the gray values of the whole face image. The component-based approach first locates the facial components and extracts them. These components are normalized and combined into a single feature vector for classification. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used as the classifier for both approaches. Extensive tests with respect to the robustness against pose changes are performed on a database that includes faces rotated up to about 40 degrees in depth. The component-based approach clearly outperforms the whole-face approach on all tests. Although this approach isproven to be more reliable, it is still too slow for real-time applications. That is the reason why a real-time face recognition system using the whole-face approach is implemented to recognize people in color video sequences.

Promoting sustainability: Efficacy and adoption of tobacco-based insecticides in Nigeria

The promotion of technologies seen to be aiding in the attainment of agricultural sustainability has been Popular amongst Northern-based development donors for many years. One of these, botanical insecticides (e.g., those based on neem, Pyrethrum and tobacco) have been a particular favorite as they are equated with being 'natural' and hence less damaging to human health and the environment. This paper describes the outcome of interactions between one non-government organisation (NGO), the Diocesan Development Services (DDS), based in Kogi State, Nigeria, and a major development donor based in Europe that led to the establishment of a programme designed to promote the Virtues of a tobacco-based insecticide to small-scale farmers. The Tobacco Insecticide Programme (TIP) began in the late 1980s and ended in 200 1, absorbing significant quantities of resource in the process. TIP began with exploratory investigations of efficacy on the DDS seed multiplication farm followed by stages of researcher-managed and farmer-managed on-farm trials. A survey in 2002 assessed adoption of the technology by farmers. While yield benefits from using the insecticide were nearly always positive and statistically significant relative to an untreated control, they were not as good as commercial insecticides. However, adoption of the tobacco insecticide by local farmers was poor. The paper discusses the reasons for poor adoption, including relative benefits in gross margin, and uses the TIP example to explore the differing power relationships that exist between donors, their field partners and farmers. (C) 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Analysing institutional partnerships in development: a contract between equals or a loaded process?

Partnerships are complex, diverse and subtle relationships, the nature of which changes with time, but they are vital for the functioning of the development chain. This paper reviews the meaning of partnership between development institutions as well as some of the main approaches taken to analyse the relationships. The latter typically revolve around analyses based on power, discourse, interdependence and functionality. The paper makes the case for taking a multianalytical approach to understanding partnership but points out three problem areas: identifying acceptable/unacceptable trade-offs between characteristics of partnership, the analysis of multicomponent partnerships (where one partner has a number of other partners) and the analysis of long-term partnership. The latter is especially problematic for long-term partnerships between donors and field agencies that share an underlying commitment based on religious beliefs. These problems with current methods of analysing partnership are highlighted by focusing upon the Catholic Church-based development chain, linking donors in the North (Europe) and their field partners in the South (Abuja Ecclesiastical Province, Nigeria). It explores a narrated history of a relationship with a single donor spanning 35 years from the perspective of one partner (the field agency).

Uma arquitetura de software baseada em componentes visualização de informações industriais

Due to the current need of the industry to integrate data of the beginning of production originating from of several sources and of transforming them in useful information for sockets of decisions, a search exists every time larger for systems of visualization of information that come to collaborate with that functionality. On the other hand, a common practice nowadays, due to the high competitiveness of the market, it is the development of industrial systems that possess characteristics of modularity, distribution, flexibility, scalability, adaptation, interoperability, reusability and access through web. Those characteristics provide an extra agility and a larger easiness in adapting to the frequent changes of demand of the market. Based on the arguments exposed above, this work consists of specifying a component-based architecture, with the respective development of a system based on that architecture, for the visualization of industrial data. The system was conceived to be capable to supply on-line information and, optionally, historical information of variables originating from of the beginning of production. In this work it is shown that the component-based architecture developed possesses the necessary requirements for the obtaining of a system robust, reliable and of easy maintenance, being, like this, in agreement with the industrial needs. The use of that architecture allows although components can be added, removed or updated in time of execution, through a manager of components through web, still activating more the adaptation process and updating of the system

Um framework baseado em modelos para desenvolvimento de sistemas multimídia distribuídos autoadaptativos

Distributed multimedia systems have highly variable characteristics, resulting in new requirements while new technologies become available or in the need for adequacy in accordance with the amount of available resources. So, these systems should provide support for dynamic adaptations in order to adjust their structures and behaviors at runtime. This paper presents an approach to adaptation model-based and proposes a reflective and component-based framework for construction and support of self-adaptive distributed multimedia systems, providing many facilities for the development and evolution of such systems, such as dynamic adaptation. The propose is to keep one or more models to represent the system at runtime, so some external entity can perform an analysis of these models by identifying problems and trying to solve them. These models integrate the reflective meta-level, acting as a system self-representation. The framework defines a meta-model for description of self-adaptive distributed multimedia applications, which can represent components and their relationships, policies for QoS specification and adaptation actions. Additionally, this paper proposes an ADL and architecture for model-based adaptation. As a case study, this paper presents some scenarios to demonstrate the application of the framework in practice, with and without the use of ADL, as well as check some characteristics related to dynamic adaptation