Itana Maria de Souza Gimenes

Discovering interesting knowledge from a science and technology database with a genetic algorithm

Data mining consists of extracting interesting knowledge from data. This paper addresses the discovery of knowledge in the form of prediction IF-THEN rules, which are a popular form of knowledge representation in data mining. In this context, we propose a genetic algorithm (GA) designed specifically to discover interesting fuzzy prediction rules. The GA searches for prediction rules that are interesting in the sense of being new and surprising for the user. This is done adapting a technique little exploited in the literature, which is based on user-defined general impressions (subjective knowledge). More precisely, a prediction rule is considered interesting (or surprising) to the extent that it represents knowledge that not only was previously unknown by the user but also contradicts his original believes. In addition, the use of fuzzy logic helps to improve the comprehensibility of the rules discovered by the GA. This is due to the use of linguistic terms that are natural for the user. A prototype was implemented and applied to a real-world science & technology database, containing data about the scientific production of researchers. The GA implemented in this prototype was evaluated by comparing it with the J4.8 algorithm, a variant of the well-known C4.5 algorithm. Experiments were carried out to evaluate both the predictive accuracy and the degree of interestingness (or surprisingness) of the rules discovered by both algorithms. The predictive accuracy obtained by the proposed GA was similar to the one obtained by J4.8, but the former, in general, discovered rules with fewer conditions. In addition it works with natural linguistic terms, which leads to the discovery of more comprehensible knowledge. The rules discovered by the proposed GA and the best rules discovered by J4.8 were shown to a user (a University Director) in an interview who evaluated the degree of interestingness (surprisingness) of the rules to him. In general the user considered the rules discovered by the GA much more interesting than the rules discovered by J4.8.

WS-CONTRACT ESTABLISHMENT WITH QOS: AN APPROACH BASED ON FEATURE MODELING

Electronic contracts describe inter-organizational business processes in terms of supply and consumption of electronic services (commonly Web services). The establishment of e-contracts in a particular business domain usually involves a set of well-defined common and variable properties. These properties are not fully exploited by the existing e-contract establishment approaches. Feature modeling is a software engineering technique that has been widely used for capturing and managing commonalities and variabilities of product families in the context of software product line. This paper presents a feature-based approach to support Web services e-contract (WS-contract) establishment. The approach aims at improving the information structure and reuse of WS-contracts, including the QoS attributes. Features are used to represent possible WS-contract elements in order to drive WS-contract template instantiation, thus acting as a configuration space manager. A toolkit named FeatureContract was developed to autom...

A search-based approach for software product line design

The Product Line Architecture (PLA) can be improved by taking into account key factors such as feature modularization, and by continuously evaluating its design according to metrics. Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) principles can be used to support an informed-design of PLAs. However, existing search-based design works address only traditional software design not considering intrinsic Software Product Line aspects. This paper presents MOA4PLA, a search-based approach to support the PLA design. It gives a multi-objective treatment to the design problem based on specific PLA metrics. A metamodel to represent the PLA and a novel search operator to improve feature modularization are proposed. Results point out that the application of MOA4PLA leads to PLA designs with well modularized features, contributing to improve features reusability and extensibility. It raises a set of solutions with different design trade-offs that can be used to improve the PLA design.

Extending UML components to develop software product-line architectures: lessons learned

This paper presents an experience in extending and evaluating UML Components for guiding the derivation of component-based product-line architectures (PLAs). We present a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of such an extension when applied to the proactive design of two PLAs. We have found that our approach supported an agile conception of architectural designs that are modular and likely to be resilient to changes over time and good enough to serve as the basis for more specific design decisions made by the architects.

Enterprise frameworks for workflow management systems

This paper proposes an enterprise framework for workflow management (WFM) systems based on the Workflow Management Coalition generic architecture. In addition, it presents one smaller object‐oriented framework for task scheduling. This framework is obtained by refining one of the packages of the overall framework. The task scheduling framework was designed following the concept of model framework as in Catalysis. This sort of framework can be used as a template to generate code components within an application domain. According to this approach we can develop WFM components that can interoperate within a well‐defined enterprise framework. This paper also presents the process of developing interoperable code components from model frameworks. Copyright

A survey on reuse in the business process management domain

Business process management (BPM) is an important technological support to improve organisation competitiveness. BPM can benefit from reuse approaches and techniques at several stages of the business process life cycle in order to increase dynamism, flexibility and competitiveness. Existing reuse techniques from areas such as software engineering can be extended to this emerging domain. This paper presents the results of a literature review of reuse in the BPM domain. It aims to provide an overview and an overall discussion of most relevant research projects that have been developed applying reuse in BPM.

A product line architecture for workflow management systems with component-based development

This paper presents a component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the proposed architecture was based on Catalysis. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The proposed architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation details.

Web service e-contract establishment using features

Electronic contracts describe inter-organizational business processes in terms of supply and consumption of electronic services (commonly Web services). In a given contract domain, it is usually possible to identify a set of well-defined common and variation points. Feature modeling is an ontology-like technique that has been widely used for capturing and managing commonalities and variabilities of product families in the context of software product line. This paper proposes a feature-based approach in order to decrease the complexity in Web service e-contract establishment. The feasibility of the approach is shown by a case study carried out within the telecom context and based on experimental software engineering concepts.

SMartySPEM: A SPEM-Based Approach for Variability Management in Software Process Lines

The definition of customized software processes can lead to improve the quality of software products and increasing the productivity. The Software Process Line (SPrL) approach might be taken into consideration to improve the establishment of customized processes for a given domain. The specific processes are derived in a systematic way, based on the resolution of variabilities explicitly represented in process notations, such as SPEM. SPEM has an UML 2 profile used to model software process elements. Therefore, this paper presents the SMartySPEM approach, which extends the SPEM profile for representing variabilities in SPrLs taking into consideration the SMarty approach for variability management. SMartySPEM is composed of an UML profile (SMartySPEMProfile) for representing variabilities and guidelines that suggest how to identify variabilities in a SPrL. A SMartySPEM application example is presented in an excerpt of a SPrL designed based on the Unified Process.

Supporting QoS Negotiation with Feature Modeling

Feature modeling is a technique that has been widely used for capturing and managing commonalities and variabilities of product families in the context of software product line. This paper presents a feature-based approach to be applied in QoS negotiation during the establishment of a Web services e-contract. Its motivation is that the e-negotiation process, aiming at defining attributes and levels for QoS --- in a particular business domain, usually involves a set of well-defined common and variation points.