Franclin S. Foping

A new hybrid schema-sharing technique for multitenant applications

This paper presents a new schema-sharing technique for multitenant applications. Our approach is built on top of the Extension table method and makes use of the native XML data support to store the additional data supplied by each tenant. Our proposed technique can be used to implement multitenancy on top of a standard relational database. This paper also describes an implementation of our approach using a real-world case study aiming at improving the communication channel of information related to drinking water quality parameters used by all stakeholders involved in the water treatment process in Ireland. These include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Health Service Executive, drinking water treatment plant staff, local authorities and everybody consuming water.

Towards a Novel Early Warning Service for State Agencies: A Feasibility Study

The paper presents the results of a feasibility study in need to determine if viable, effective and reliable web based early warning service in the domain of drinking water utilities can be developed. The early warning service is intended to be used by many actors in the Republic of Ireland including water utilities managers, the Irish Environmental Protection Agency personnel and the Irish Health and Safety Executive personnel. The results of this feasibility study include an assessment of whether or not a statement of requirements for a novel early warning service can be realised using a set of existing technologies. Based on these results it is concluded that it is feasible to develop a reliable and effective web-based early warning service for drinking water utilities by adapting technologies derived from multiple disciplines including safety engineering, artificial intelligence, software and web engineering.

Product-Seeded and Basket-Seeded Recommendations for Small-Scale Retailers

Product recommendation in e-commerce is a widely applied technique which has been shown to bring benefits in both product sales and customer satisfaction. In this work, we address a particular product recommendation setting—small-scale retail websites where the small amount of returning customers makes traditional user-centric personalization techniques inapplicable. We apply an item-centric product recommendation strategy which combines two well-known methods—association rules and text-based similarity—for generating recommendations based on a single ‘seed’ product. Furthermore, we adapt the proposed approach to also recommend products based on a set of ‘seed’ products in a user’s shopping basket. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the recommendation approach in the product-seeded and basket-seeded scenarios through online and offline evaluation studies with real customer data.

Product Recommendation for Small-Scale Retailers

Product recommendation in e-commerce is a widely applied technique which has been shown to bring benefits in both product sales and customer satisfaction. In this work we address a particular product recommendation setting — small-scale retail websites where the small amount of returning customers makes traditional user-centric personalization techniques inapplicable. We apply an item-centric product recommendation strategy which combines two well-known methods – association rules and text-based similarity – and demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach through two evaluation studies with real customer data.

Design and Implementation of a Private RESTful API to Leverage the Power of an eCommerce Platform

An Application Programming Interface (API) facilitates direct access to the functionality provided by the web site and therefore leverages third-party efforts to add value to existing services. Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of APIs being made available to customers. In the domain of eCommerce, more and more companies are starting to release them to leverage the power of their platforms. Currently, the development of an API is rather a subdued activity with no established or widely accepted guidelines. This paper reports our experience in designing and implementing a RESTful private API to leverage the power of the NitroSell eCommerce platform. We use Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams to model the relationship between the resources of the API. As security is a hot topic in the field of eCommerce, we also describe how we dealt with the authentication process.

A Web‐based Early Warning System for Water Treatment Plants Safety

A complex SMS that involves government departments, state agencies, local authorities, and technical components such as water purification technologies and IT systems is responsible for the provision of safe drinking water to the general public in the Republic of Ireland. Figure 1 shows the key components of this SMS that include DWTPs, the Water Service Authorities (WSA) and state agencies such as the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and the Health Service Executive (HSE). The WSA are special departments of the local authorities of the country. These are responsible for the day‐to‐day operation of DWTPs and should notify the EPA and be consulted by the HSE whenever a drinking water quality parameter exceeds its accepted quality threshold value.