Virtual Agent as a User Interface for Home Network System

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyasu Horiuchi ◽  
Sachio Saiki ◽  
Shinsuke Matsumoto ◽  
Masahide Namamura
Keyword(s):  
User Interface ◽  
Coupled System ◽  
Home Network ◽  
Network System ◽  
Virtual Agent ◽  
Tight Coupling ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Service Oriented

In order to achieve intuitive and easy operations for home network system (HNS), the authors have previously proposed user interface with virtual agent (called HNS virtual agent user interface, HNS-VAUI). The HNS-VAUI was implemented with MMDAgent toolkit. A user can operate appliances and services interactively through dialog with a virtual agent in a screen. However, the previous prototype heavily depends on MMDAgent, which causes a tight coupling between HNS operations and agent behaviors, and poor capability of using external information.To cope with the problem, this paper proposes a service-oriented framework that allows the HNS-VAUI to provide richer interaction. Specifically, the authors decompose the tightly-coupled system into two separate services: MMC Service and MSM service. The MMC service concentrates on controlling detailed behaviors of a virtual agent, whereas the MSM service defines logic of HNS operations and dialog with the agent with richer state machines. The two services are loosely coupled to enable more flexible and sophisticated dialog in the HNS-VAUI. The proposed framework is implemented in a real HNS environment. The authors also conduct a case study with practical service scenarios, to demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Service-Oriented Architecture

2011 ◽  
pp. 998-1002
Author(s):  
Kwan-Ming Wan ◽  
Pouwan Lei ◽  
Chris Chatwin ◽  
Rupert Young
Keyword(s):  
Web Services ◽  
Service Oriented Architecture ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Enterprise Application Integration ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Business Systems ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Enterprise Application ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Service Oriented

The established global business environment is under intense pressure from Asian countries such as Korea, China, and India. This forces businesses to concentrate on their core competencies and adopt leaner management structures. The coordination of activities both within companies and with suppliers and customers has become a crucial competitive advantage. At the same time, the Internet has transformed the way in which businesses run. As the Internet becomes a cheap and effective communication channel, businesses are quick to adopt the Web for integrating their systems together and linking them with their suppliers and customers. Current enterprise computing using J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) has yielded systems in which the coupling between various components in them are too tight to be effective for ubiquitous B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) e-business over the Internet. This approach requires too much agreement and shared context between business systems from different organizations. There is a need to move away from tightly coupled, monolithic systems and toward systems of loosely coupled, dynamically bound components. The emerging technology, Web services, provides the tools to accomplish this integration, but this approach presents many new challenges and problems that must be overcome. In this article, we will discuss the current approaches in enterprise application integration (EAI) and the limitations. There is also a need for service-oriented applications, that is, Web services. Finally, the challenges in implementing Web services are outlined.

scholarly journals Modular Innovation Networks in High-Technology Industries

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-198
Author(s):  
Milton Freitas Chagas ◽  
Roque Rabechini Jr ◽  
Arnoldo Souza Cabral ◽  
Milton De Abreu Campanario
Keyword(s):  
Study Data ◽  
Coordination Mechanism ◽  
Innovation Networks ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Modular Networks ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Technology Industries ◽  
High Technology Industries

The article shows how interorganizational modular networks are structured in two high-tecnology industries: Embraer and Siemens. Three product platforms were used in the research: the Embraer 170/190 program from Embraer and the SX platform and X-ray equipment from Siemens. The objective of this article is to expand our comprehension of systems integration as a coordination mechanism in projects. The method adopted in the research is a case study. Data were collected by interviews and by analysis of documents from the two organizations. It was possible to identify and analyze the influence of the level of coupling and how the networks are structured. The research shows two levels of coupling in the modular innovation networks studied: two loosely coupled networks and one tightly coupled network. In addition, it was verified that the system integrators, the organizations that lead the modular networks, act as a matter of facts as knowledge integrators.

Metering and Accounting for Service-oriented Computing?

2011 ◽  
pp. 274-304
Author(s):  
Arun Kumar ◽  
Vikas Agarwal
Keyword(s):  
Business Models ◽  
Service Level ◽  
Management Service ◽  
Service Usage ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Service Oriented Architectures ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Service Oriented ◽  
Prototype Design

Distributed Systems of today have evolved from tightly coupled architectures such as CORBA and DCOM to loosely coupled service-oriented architectures such as Web Services. The success of such architectures depends upon availability of supporting functions such as security, systems management, service level agreements and development environments with associated tooling. An important management component of such an infrastructure is the metering and accounting for service usage which is essential for successful deployments in commercial environments. This paper explores the problem space and presents an architecture that addresses this need. We start by defining taxonomy of services from the perspective of usage metering, charging and business models. We discuss how service usage can be measured, aggregated and communicated in a uniform way. Finally, we report on a prototype design and implementation.

Service-Oriented Architecture for Migrating Legacy Home Appliances to Home Network System

2010 ◽  
pp. 422-441
Author(s):  
Masahide Nakamura ◽  
Hiroshi Igaki ◽  
Akihiro Tanaka ◽  
Haruaki Tamada ◽  
Ken-ichi Matsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Web Services ◽  
Service Oriented Architecture ◽  
Integrated Services ◽  
Home Network ◽  
Network System ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Home Appliances ◽  
Distributed Components ◽  
Service Oriented ◽  
Service Components

This chapter presents a practical framework that adapts the conventional home electric appliances with the infrared remote controls (legacy appliances) to the emerging home network system (HNS). The proposed method extensively uses the concept of service-oriented architecture to improve programmatic interoperability among multi-vendor appliances. The authors first prepare APIs that assist a PC to send infrared signals to the appliances. Then the APIs are aggregated within self-contained service components, so that each of the components achieves a logical feature independent of device/vendor-specific operations. The service components are finally exhibited to the HNS as Web services. As a result, the legacy appliances can be used as distributed components with open interfaces. To demonstrate the effectiveness, the authors implement an actual HNS and integrated services with multi-vendor legacy appliances. The authors also show practical applications implemented on the developed HNS.

Automatic Determination of Compatibility in Evolving Services

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Becker ◽  
Jim Pruyne ◽  
Sharad Singhal ◽  
Andre Lopes ◽  
Dejan Milojicic
Keyword(s):  
Automatic Determination ◽  
Service Oriented Architectures ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Service Oriented ◽  
Run Time ◽  
The Impact

A major advantage of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) is composition and coordination of loosely coupled services. Because the development lifecycles of services and clients are de-coupled, multiple service versions must be maintained to support older clients. Typically versions are managed within the SOA by updating service descriptions using conventions on version numbers and namespaces. In all cases, the compatibility among services descriptions must be evaluated, which can be hard, error-prone and costly if performed manually, particularly for complex descriptions. In this paper, the authors describe a method to automatically determine when two service descriptions are backward compatible. The authors describe a case study to illustrate version compatibility information in a SOA environment and present initial performance overheads. By automatically exploring compatibility information, a) service developers can assess the impact of proposed changes; b) proper versioning requirements can be put in client implementations guaranteeing that incompatibilities will not occur during run-time; and c) messages exchanged in the SOA can be validated to ensure that only expected messages or compatible ones are exchanged.

Using formal methods to increase confidence in a home network system implementation: a case study

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydie du Bousquet ◽  
Masahide Nakamura ◽  
Ben Yan ◽  
Hiroshi Igaki
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
Home Network ◽  
Network System ◽  
System Implementation

A LOOSELY COUPLED ASPECT LANGUAGE FOR SOA APPLICATIONS

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (02) ◽  
pp. 243-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
NABOR C. MENDONÇA ◽  
CLAYTON F. SILVA ◽  
IAN G. MAIA ◽  
MARIA ANDRÉIA F. RODRIGUES ◽  
MARCO TÚLIO O. VALENTE
Keyword(s):  
Service Oriented Architecture ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Software Developers ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Service Oriented ◽  
Execution Platform ◽  
Application Developers ◽  
The Impact

The aspect-oriented programming (AOP) paradigm offers software developers with powerful modularization abstractions to help them explicitly separate design concerns at the source code level. However, the impact of AOP in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm has been dwarfed by the fact that existing AOP solutions are tightly coupled to a particular programming language, middleware system or execution platform. Clearly, this not only restricts the implementation choices available to application developers, but it also clashes with the heterogeneous and loosely coupled nature of SOA. This paper presents the Web Service Aspect Language (WSAL) that seamlessly integrates AOP and SOA concepts, thus avoiding the drawbacks of existing solutions. In WSAL, aspects themselves are freely specified, implemented and executed as loosely coupled web services. This characteristic allows WSAL aspects to be easily woven into the message flow exchanged between service consumers and service providers, in a way that is completely independent from any particular implementation technology. This paper also reports on the implementation and preliminary evaluation of a prototype aspect weaver for WSAL, which is based on an existing web intermediary technology.

Sovereignty Relinquished? Explaining Commitment to the International Human Rights Covenants, 1966-1999

2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wade M. Cole
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Tight Coupling ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
World Polity ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
International Human

This article examines whether the content of the International Human Rights Covenants and the costs associated with their ratification influence the decision of countries to join. The author evaluates three theoretical perspectives-rationalism, world polity institutionalism, and the clash of civilizations-with data for more than 130 countries between 1966 and 1999. Rationalists contend that treaty ratification is tightly coupled with internal sovereignty arrangements, human rights practices, and ideological commitments, all of which become more important as treaty enforcement strengthens. World polity institutionalists expect ratification to be loosely coupled with a country's conduct or its political, ideological, or cultural commitments, although this gap narrows as compliance is more effectively enforced. A civilizations approach predicts tight coupling between ratification and cultural values, regardless of the mechanisms in place for enforcing compliance. Results lend partial support to rationalism and world polity theory, whereas the clash of civilizations thesis is much less successful in accounting for patterns of ratification. Furthermore, the costs of ratifying a treaty, considered in terms of its surveillance and enforcement provisions, influence rates of accession more than the specific rights a treaty protects.

RuCAS

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroki Takatsuka ◽  
Sachio Saiki ◽  
Shinsuke Matsumoto ◽  
Masahide Namamura
Keyword(s):  
Web Services ◽  
Web Service ◽  
Real World ◽  
Cloud Services ◽  
Home Network ◽  
Network System ◽  
Context Aware ◽  
Uniform Manner ◽  
Context Aware Service

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) systems and cloud services provide various kinds of data via distributed Web services. A context-aware service recognizes real-world contexts from such data and behaves autonomously. However, it has been challenging to manage contexts and services defined on the heterogeneous and distributed Web services. In this paper, the authors propose a framework, called RuCAS, which systematically creates and manages context-aware service using various Web services. RuCAS describes every context-aware service by an ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rule. For this, an event is a context triggering the service, a condition is a set of contexts to be satisfied for execution, and the action is a set of Web services to be executed by the service. Thus, every context-aware service is managed in a uniform manner. Since RuCAS is published as a Web service, created contexts and services are reusable. As a case study, RuCAS is applied to a real home network system.

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