Manuel de Jesus Mendes

A Business Rule Engine Applied to Egovernment Services Integration

A great part of applications is increasingly based on the Internet and the needs for changes in these applications happen in shorter and shorter periods. Companies, governments and people who wait for almost instantaneous implementations of those changes stimulate this scenario of high demand for changes. In the context of these fast changes, the approaches based on business rules are aiming for an implementation of solutions that are more flexible to changes and that are in a language easily understandable to business people in a business perspective. This article presents a proposal of a Business Rule Engine customized for e-Government applications, considering the componentization and/or Web “servicification” of life event applications with access to several legacy back office systems. The proposed Business Rule Engine is in conformance with the Business Semantics of Business Rules (BSBR) meta-model, which is in its final phase of specification by OMG.

Recursive Bayes deconvolution in physical experiments

In the analysis of measured spectra in physical experiments, smearing effects due to instrument resolution are present. Correcting for these effects can be critical owing to statistical disturbances and limited a priori information. A recursive algorithm has been produced from the Bayes estimation theory. Computational aspects are discussed in different simulated examples.

Business rules in a service development and execution environment

In the current Web based enterprise systems the need of changes in these systems happens in periods shorter and shorter. Considering that some business logic portions are quite volatile and susceptible to the changes and other portions are quite stable and less susceptible to the changes, this paper introduces a model that can capture business changes and quickly implement them into computational systems. The model includes an approach for fast development and execution of services considering that the volatile portions of business logic can be externalized as business rules and the stable portions as Web services. It is proposed a framework for Web services composition based on business rules and service ontology. The framework provides support for business rules definition using a friendly language to the business analysts, for Web services discovery in the business rules definition time, and for making connection between the business rules and Web services in the service execution time. Business rules are modeled according to OMGs SBVR metamodel.

Unfolding of physical spectra by sequential bayes methods Part I: Linear spline models

Spline models are developed to correct smearing effects (unfolding) due to instrument resolution in measured spectra of neutron or X-ray scattering. Sequential algorithms are studied; the a-priori information has been included applying Bayes methods.

Business Rules in a Model Driven Service Environment

In the current globalized world, characterized by strong Web based interactions, relationships between people and organizations are subject to fast changes. This situation justifies the need for an approach that can capture business changes and quickly implement them into computational systems. Considering that some business logic portions are quite volatile and susceptible to changes and other portions are quite stable and less susceptible to changes, a model for flexible service integration using business rules and service ontology is proposed. The volatile portions are externalized as business rules and the stable portions as Web services. This paper presents the main concepts of the model and an overview of the proof of concept applied to validate the model.

Using Metamodels to Promote Data Integration in an E-Government Application Scenario

The increasing popularization of Internet has created unprecedented expectations and promises when dealing with a more intelligent use of the available data. This use is based on metadata and on a new dimension of metadata modeling techniques. An initiative supported by OMG culminated in the current MOF — Meta-Object Facility specification, which is an open standard with facilities to definition and manipulation of metadata and metamodel. This paper describes a metadata management system that is based on the MOF specification and presents one usage of this system in an egovernment scenario.

Extending Enterprise Portal Capabilities With a Workflow Meta-Component Framework

A key function to enterprise portals is the ability to participate in a workflow process. Business processes across enterprises can function in an integrated manner with the help of business integration servers that broker information across multiple loosely-coupled applications. A business integration server maintains workflow process definitions and routes business documents via a messaging infrastructure. In this scenario, the portal works as a workflow client handling messages as they arrive and supporting process managers. This paper describes a portal prototype implementation that is supported by an open service platform and by a framework that extend the portal capabilities with metadata and workflow management.

Unfolding of physical spectra by sequential bayes methods Part II. Estimation of parameters in non-linear models

After the first steps of unfolding described in part I and including other physical information, an analytical model of the spectra can often be made, so that the problem of estimating non-linear parameters is posed. The technique of the extended Kalman filter has been applied to this situation.