Chia-Chu Chiang

A Parallel Apriori Algorithm for Frequent Itemsets Mining

Finding frequent itemsets is one of the most investigated fields of data mining. The Apriori algorithm is the most established algorithm for frequent itemsets mining (FIM). Several implementations of the Apriori algorithm have been reported and evaluated. One of the implementations optimizing the data structure with a trie by Bodon catches our attention. The results of the Bodons implementation for finding frequent itemsets appear to be faster than the ones by Borgelt and Goethals. In this paper, we revised Bodons implementation into a parallel one where input transactions are read by a parallel computer. The effect a parallel computer on this modified implementation is presented

The use of adapters to support interoperability of components for reusability

Abstract Interoperability of heterogeneous applications is defined as the ability for multiple software applications written in different programming languages running on different platforms with different operating systems to communicate and interact with one another over different computer networks. The emerging middleware technologies, including CORBA, COM/DCOM, and Enterprise JavaBeans offer an industrial defacto standard communication infrastructure to support the interoperability of heterogeneous applications in components. However, the implementation of a component suffers from high interaction complexities in the component that seriously degrades the application independence. Software components should be built to be independent of the context in which they are used, allowing them to be reused in many different computing environments. In this paper, we are presenting an adapter to isolate, encapsulate, and manage a components interactions outside the component. The dynamic interface binding was designed to allow an adapter to examine the signature of the requested services at runtime such as operation names, parameters orders, parameters types, and parameters sizes. The interfaces of interconnecting components are bound at runtime. In addition, the interface language mapping allows an interface in a specific programming language to be automatically generated from an IDL interface. The use of adapters increases the reusability of components and also simplifies the integration of the components to an application.

A new approach for software requirements elicitation

Requirements elicitation is both the hardest and most critical part of software development, since errors at this beginning stage propagate through the development process and are the hardest to repair later. This paper proposes an improved process for requirements elicitation. The key improvements are: (1) to train the non-technical stakeholders (primarily the users) in the capabilities and limitations of computer hardware, software, and of software developers; (2) identify keywords while interviewing the stakeholders, visually as well as in text form; (3) use keyword mapping to generate candidate system requirements; (4) apply the techniques of quality function deployment (QFD) and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) during the elicitation process.

Legacy Software Modernization

Software modernization converts legacy systems into component-based systems. The process involves program understanding, business rules extraction, and software transformation. In this paper, we will present a semi-automated program slicing technique for business rules extraction from legacy code and convert the reusable code into a component conforming to the protocols of a component interconnection model. The component interconnection model was developed to standardize the development of the components so they can communicate with each other seamlessly in a heterogeneous computing environment. We adopted CORBA as an underlying communicating infrastructure in the model.

A framework for dynamically converting components to Web services

Components are the basic building blocks of enterprise and distributed applications. Component-based development (CBD) is the technique of using a component framework to develop components and it focuses on developing large software systems by integrating previously existing software components. Software development based on component based architecture is already in wide use throughout the software industry. Component based development makes it possible to assemble an application from a repository of components developed in various languages by homogeneous or heterogeneous composition. Web services provide an easy way to extend component based development by adopting open Internet standards. Web services represent an evolution of the Web to allow the open and flexible interaction of applications over the Internet. Web services standards provide a high level of interoperability across platforms, programming languages and applications. In our current research we have created a model for automatically converting components created in different languages to Web services. The components that are developed in various languages are deployed dynamically (just in time) in the Web servers by using custom built deployers. Using this model the users can access the components that reside in the server using open Internet standards, without having to worry about the language and platform restrictions. The security aspects to access the Web services were also considered while implementing the model.

Middleware support for coordination in distributed applications

The current state of the art of existing middleware technologies does not support the development of distributed applications that need processes to complete a task collaboratively. We extend current middleware technologies with multiparty interaction rather than design a new distributed programming language for application developers. An object adapter for coordination running as a component provides support for the coordinated applications by isolating, encapsulating, and managing a components interactions outside the component. Dynamic interface binding was designed to allow an adapter to examine the signature of the requested services at runtime such as operation names, parameter orders, parameter types, and parameter sizes. The interfaces of interconnecting components are bound at runtime. In addition, the interface language mapping allows an interface in a specific programming language to be automatically generated from an IP (interacting processes)-like IDL (IP-IDL) interface. The use of IP-IDL for coordination simplifies the development of distributed applications for coordination.

Extracting business rules from legacy systems into reusable components

Companies follow the business rules to conduct their businesses daily where the business rules are often implemented into the software systems. Over time, business rules evolve and the software that implemented the business rules is also modified to respond to the new business requirements. Unfortunately, timely updates on the documents corresponding to the software are usually ignored. The documents gradually become outdated and less useful for reference. In this paper, we present a method for identifying and extracting business rules from legacy code by means of data identification and program slicing. The extracted code corresponding to a business rule is then compiled into a component for interoperability where the component is built conforming to a protocol. The components abiding by the protocol can communicate with each other seamlessly in a heterogeneous object-oriented computing environment

An event driven architecture for application integration using Web services

The history of computing has seen several interesting trends. From a programmer building custom packaged applications to the development of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and other business specific packages. The need for integrating different systems in the organization led to point to point interface and spaghetti architecture. Fallout of these spaghetti architectures is the development of the enterprise application integration (EAI) concept. In this paper we are going to discuss about the evolution of EAI concepts and a new architecture for event driven data transformation for application integration using Web services. The new architecture overcomes the drawback of request-reply semantics of Web services by providing an event driven architecture, which supports asynchronous communication between applications using Web services. We have also implemented a secure framework for accessing third party Web services using message level encryption and digital certificates.

A role-based secure group communication framework

Building a secure group communication system is an active research topic. Several studies have focused on achieving a good level of privacy among a group of people via agreement on a shared encryption key. However, there is not much work published on easily manageable, simple, and effective systems that can provide secure communication in a role-based environment. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive solution to the key exchange problem for group communication. A centralized key server is used to produce a key chain, based on recursive hashing, and securely distributing the keys to the recipients according to their roles. The proposed work makes it possible that a user with a higher clearance can audit the communications among the users that are hierarchically below him/her. Moreover, the system has the ability to isolate communications among different groups, which means the compartmentation is reserved.

An Architecture for Parallelizing Fully Homomorphic Cryptography on Cloud

Fully homomorphic cryptography allows arbitrary computations to be carried out on encrypted data and an encrypted result to be obtained which encrypts the result of the computation performed on the plaintext. The first fully homomorphic cryptosystem was introduced by Gentry in the summer of 2009. In this research, we are interested in evaluating the performance of Gentrys algorithm applied to cloud computing. To conduct the experiments, a cloud was built using Open Stack to provide the virtualized infrastructure for execution. The software architecture was then designed to support parallel processing of Gentrys algorithm on the cloud. The cloud and architecture together provide an environment for experimental instrumentation and study. This paper focuses on the design of an architecture for the study of parallel processing of fully homomorphic algorithms on the cloud.