Khalid Alnafjan

QoS-adaptive service configuration framework for cloud-assisted video surveillance systems

Quality of service (QoS)-adaptive service configuration is crucial for seamless access to video services in cloud-assisted video surveillance systems. To maintain seamless access to video on a user’s preferred device, suitable video transcoding services are needed. It is a challenging task to choose and configure these services for various devices to ensure QoS-adaptive user experiences. To configure these services for the desired user devices, a suitable configuration algorithm is needed. Therefore, this paper describes a QoS-adaptive service configuration approach to choose the optimal configuration for the preferred user devices in varied contexts so that the user can access the services ubiquitously. We implemented a cloud-assisted video surveillance prototype to show how the proposed method can handle ubiquitous access to target video for possible QoS-adaptive and video processing requirements in terms of bandwidth, delay, and frame rates. The results show that the proposed configuration method outperforms the other comparable approaches.

Designing Framework for the Interoperability of C4I Systems

C4I (command, control, communication, computer and intelligence) are complex information systems designed to achieve mission objectives through better situational awareness and information superiority. C4I systems are system of systems (SOS), SOS comprised of independent constituent systems that interoperate with other systems to achieve specific mission objectives. In this paper we propose a framework for the interoperability of C4I Systems that covers key issues and challenges related to interoperability of heterogeneous C4I systems such as complexity, criticality and Information Exchanges Requirements (IER). The frameworks make use of department of defense architecture framework (DOAF) to describe data exchange requirements, source adapters, message translation, routing and destination adapters.

Empirical Study for Semantic Annotation of Web Services

Web services have become the main paradigm for the development of distributed software systems using a common set of technologies, including SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. This allows accessing to software components residing on different platforms and written in different programming languages. However, several tasks, including service discovery and composition, remain difficult to be automated. Thus, a new technology has emerged to solve this problem; it is the Semantic Web Services (SWS). One way to produce SWS is the annotation. In this paper, an approach to annotate Web services is presented. The approach consists of two main processes, categorization and matching. Both processes use ontology matching techniques. In particular, the two processes use similarity measures between entities, strategies to calculate similarities between sets and a threshold corresponding to the accuracy. Thus, an internal comparative study has been done to determine which strategy is appropriate to this approach, which measure gives best results and which threshold is optimum for the selected measure and strategy. An external comparative study has been also carried out to prove the efficacy of this approach compared to existing annotation approaches.

Challenges and Best Practices for Mobile Application Development: Review Paper

Over the last ten years or so, mobile devices technology has changed significantly, with these devices and operating systems becoming more sophisticated. These developments have led to a huge variety of mobile applications designed for mobile operating systems. These mobile applications are typically harder to design and build because of several factors such as screen size and limited processing power and so forth. Therefore, it is important to clearly identify the characteristics of mobile application development and the issues and challenges related to it, as well as, the key features that characterize a great mobile application which make them valuable and useful. This paper has reviewed existing literature of the challenge and best practices of mobile application development. This study contributes towards a great understanding of the characteristics of mobile application development process, examines real challenges faced and explores the best practices that can be effectively applied to improve the development of mobile application.

Usability evaluation of Twitter on Android platform for elderly Arab users using morae evaluation tool

Social networks have recently become widely used throughout the world. From websites accessed on computers to applications accessed on mobile phones, social networks have attracted millions of users in various categories and on numerous platforms. Improving the usability of social network mobile applications is of paramount importance, especially for elderly people that suffer from age-related problems. Usability is a quality attribute that supports the success of applications. Several methods are used to assess the usability of mobile applications. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the usability of Twitter applications using the Android platform. The evaluation method used the tool Morae to gather data from the perspective of users. This empirical study focuses on elderly Arab users. It highlights a set of recommendations that have the potential to improve the usability of Twitter applications on the Android platform for elderly Arab users.

USING AHP TO COMPARE AND EVALUATE SOFTWARE SECURITY TESTING TECHNIQUES

The number of potential vulnerabilities and threats are increasing for software. Security testing is an essential process to confirm software security requirements and to identify security related vulnerabilities. In this paper we use analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to analyze and compare different available security testing techniques based on a pre defined criteria. Five testing techniques were selected which includes Source code analysis, Fault code injection, Robustness, Stress and Penetration testing techniques. They have been evaluated against five criteria which include cost, thoroughness, ease of use, effectiveness and efficiency. The outcome of the study is helpful for researchers, testers and developers to understand effectiveness of each technique in its respective domain. Also the study helps to compare the inner working of testing techniques against a selected criterion to achieve optimum testing results.

Proposed methodology to enhance C4I systems security on architectural level

Command control, communication, computer and intelligence (C4I) systems are the back bone complex information and communication systems for modern information warfare (IW). Managing security in C4I systems is a challenge due to complexity and criticality of these systems. This paper elaborates design methodology to incorporate security in the C4I systems in systematic and consistent way instead of patching and random approach. The approach in this work exploits the opportunity provided by architecture frameworks (AF) to capture threats and devise security measures. Assurance cases have been used to model security of the C4I system in order to enhance the process of security design and overcome challenges.

A Generic Approach to Security Assured Net-Centric Communications Network Architecture for C4I Systems

The purpose of this paper is to suggest security assured data communications architecture in net-centric defense systems based on DoDAF 2.0. This architecture provides a finite security precision of network communication within the defense network like C4I System. In this proposed network communication architecture where security is being prioritized, we propose three security mechanism levels, the authentication level, the Business Rules Repository level & Security Rules Repository level and available techniques facilitating the functionality of the levels. Security can be coerced at every stage of the data transit. By utilization of various data security measures available, each level will substantiate the security of the data in the communication chain from end to end.