Firat Kart

A Distributed e-Healthcare System Based on the Service Oriented Architecture

Large-scale distributed systems, such as e-healthcare systems, are difficult to develop due to their complex and decentralized nature. The service oriented architecture facilitates the development of such systems by supporting modular design, application integration and interoperation, and software reuse. With open standards, such as XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI, the service oriented architecture supports interoperability between services operating on different platforms and between applications implemented in different programming languages. In this paper we describe a distributed e-healthcare system that uses the service oriented architecture as a basis for designing, implementing, deploying, invoking and managing healthcare services. The e-healthcare system that we have developed provides support for physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals, as well as for patients and medical devices used to monitor patients. Multi-media input and output, with text, images and speech, make the system more user friendly than existing e-healthcare systems.

Building a Distributed E-Healthcare System Using SOA

This article describes a distributed e-healthcare system that uses the service-oriented architecture as a means of designing, implementing, and managing healthcare services. Medical monitoring devices worn by the patient, and frequent electronic communication between the patient and a nurse, can ensure that the prescribed treatment is being followed and that the patient is making good progress. The e-healthcare system described here can be readily extended to other healthcare professionals, including medical technicians who perform and report tests and analyses requested by physicians. In addition, the system can be interfaced to other applications that provide information on medications and dosages and warn of interactions between medications. Finally, it can be interfaced to drug-delivery devices that prompt and monitor the regular and timely consumption of medications.

A Reservation-based Extended Transaction Protocol for Coordination of Web Services

Web services can be used to automate business activities that span multiple enterprises over the Internet. Such business activities require a coordination protocol to reach consistent results among the participants in the business activity. In the current state of the art, either classical distributed transactions or extended transactions with compensating transactions are used. However, classical distributed transactions lock data in the databases of different enterprises for unacceptable durations or involve repeated retries, and compensating transactions can lead to inconsistencies in the databases of the different enterprises. In this article, we describe a novel reservation protocol that can be used to coordinate the tasks of a business activity. Instead of resorting to compensating transactions, the reservation protocol employs an explicit reservation phase and an explicit confirmation and cancellation phase. We show how our reservation protocol maps to the Web services coordination specification, and describe our implementation of the reservation protocol. We compare the performance of the reservation protocol with that of the two-phase commit protocol and optimistic two-phase commit protocol. We also compare the probability of inconsistency for the reservation protocol with that for compensating transactions.

A Collaborative Computing Infrastructure based on atom

We present a collaborative computing infrastructure that facilitates interactions between distributed applications using the pull-based, event-based model of distributed computing. The collaborative computing infrastructure uses the Atom XML format to provide interoperability between application programs, even if they run on dissimilar computing platforms. The collaborating applications can be programmed in different programming languages and can use different data schema. The Atom server allows applications to publish their output as Atom feed entries for other applications to read using the Atom Publishing Protocol. We have implemented the currently specified Atom Publishing Protocol, which requires feed entries to be retrieved one by one, and also a modified version of the Atom Publishing Protocol, which supports retrieval of all of the feed entries in a collection at once. The modified version results in shorter retrieval times for feed entries, requires fewer connections to the Atom Server for each consumer, and supports larger numbers of concurrent consumers.

Collaborative Web Data Record Extraction

This paper describes a Web Service that automatically parses and extracts data records from Web pages containing structured data. The Web Service allows multiple users to share and manage a Web data record extraction task to increase its utility. A recommendation system, based on the Probabilistic Latency Semantic Indexing algorithm, enables a user to find potentially interesting content or other users who share the same interests with the user. A distributed computing platform improves the scalability of the Web Service in supporting multiple users by employing multiple server computers. A Web Service interface allows users to access the Web Service, and allows programmers to develop their own applications and, thus, extend the functionality of the Web Service.

Database Fusion Using Atom

This paper describes a database fusion infrastructure that produces a local database consisting of aggregated information that is selected from multiple remote databases and is transformed into a common table format and data representation in the local database. The database fusion infrastructure provides reliable data distribution (RDD), consistent data replication (CDR), and database aggregation (DBA) and is based on the atom syndication technology. RDD ensures that the publisher knows that a consumer has received the data intended for it and, thus, that the publisher can garbage collect the data. CDR uses RDD to provide data replication from a source database to a target database for the purposes of security, high availability and fast local access. DBA uses CDR to aggregate information from remote database sources, possibly deployed on different computing platforms in different enterprises, using different databases from different vendors, different database schemas and different communication protocols.

Managing and Integrating Demand and Supply Using Web Services and the Service Oriented Architecture

The Internet and the World Wide Web have had a significant impact on business management thinking and practice. Globalization has affected how businesses interact with other businesses, and even how divisions within companies interact with each other, and has increased competition and consolidation worldwide (Murch, 2004). The new business models are supported by modern information technology such as the Service Oriented Architecture (Erl, 2005; Moser & Melliar-Smith, 2008; Newcomer and Lomow, 2004; OASIS, 2006) and Web Services (Alonso et al., 2004; Champion et al., 2002; Chatterjee & Webber, 2003). Supply chains (ComputerWorld, 2006; Wilson, 2005) are particularly affected by these developments in business and technology. The MIDAS (Managing and Integrating Demand and Supply) system that we have developed is an automated supply chain management system based on the Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services. The benefits of MIDAS (and of the Service Oriented Architecture in general) for supply chains are that it increases business flexibility and it enables businesses to adapt more quickly to changing business needs. The MIDAS system provides a loosely coupled distributed environment that allows customers, manufacturers, and suppliers to cooperate over the Internet and the World Wide Web. Generally, supply chain management considers three types of flow: • Information flow, which pertains to placing, transmitting and filling orders, and updating their delivery status • Product flow, which involves movement of goods from a supplier to a customer, as well as customer returns • Financial flow, which relates to credit terms, payments, payment schedules, consignment, and title ownership. The MIDAS supply chain system described here focuses, in particular, on the management of information flow. MIDAS, which is inspired by the build-to-order business model (Ghiassi & Spera, 2003; Gunasekarana & Ngai, 2005), enables customers to customize their products before they order. At the manufacturer, MIDAS receives orders from the customer, O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .in te ch w eb .o rg

Collaborative Computing Using the Atom Publishing Protocol

In this paper we present a collaborative computing infrastructure that enables applications that are distributed across a network of computers to collaborate using the atom publishing protocol. The collaborative computing infrastructure couples together, and facilitates interactions between, application programs using the pull-based, event-based distributed computing paradigm. The atom server allows publishers to publish events as atom feed entries for consumers to read. The current specification of the atom publishing protocol, which we have implemented, requires feed entries to be retrieved one by one. To provide better performance, we have also implemented a modification of the atom publishing protocol that supports retrieval of all of the feed entries in a collection at once. This modification results in shorter retrieval times for feed entries, fewer connections to the atom server for each consumer, and larger numbers of concurrent consumers.