Takashi Sakairi

Collaborative customer services using synchronous Web browser sharing

For complicated transactions and inexptienced users, se~-smite may not be *cimL b addition, for marketing and sales, there maybe no substitute fm a good salesperson. Thus, there is tiue in combining ~chronous am to products and services OVHthe Web with Wchronous, human assistance v’hen needd h ord~ to pr~ vide better service to customas, increase d=, and ~erentiate their Webbased services tiom the repetition, a numbs of businesses are starting to fiTlore means of integrating Eve customs service into their Web sites.

Verification of embedded system's specification using collaborative simulation of SysML and simulink models

The authors propose an extension of SysML which enables description of continuous-time behavior. The authors also develop its execution tool integrated on Eclipse-based platform by exploiting co-simulation of SysML and MATLAB / Simulink. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool and the extension to SysML in verifying specifications of an embedded system, we create a sample model and analyze its execution results by checking constraints under a test case.

ConverStation/2: an extensible and customizable realtime multimedia conferencing system

Multimedia desktop conferencing systems provide several functions, such as connection, a shared chalkboard, a motion video and file transfer. For future extensions, the systems should provide the ability of adding or changing a module without affecting other modules. In addition, a user needs the ability of customizing each module and the ability of selecting modules. The paper describes the extensibility and customizability of the real time multimedia conferencing system called ConverStation/2. The conference kernel of ConverStation/2 is independent from conference tools, and provides an interface to tool modules. A new tool module can be added and work under the conferencing kernel by using the interface. The conferencing kernel provides a common communication interface so that tool modules are unaware of the difference of communication protocols. By developing a communication driver that works under the common communication interface, a new protocol will be easily supported. A chalkboard of ConverStation/2 also has the extensibility. A user can add a new function by writing a program in a script language or by providing the function as a dynamic link library. Moreover, a user can define parameters of each module. For example, the default size and position of the chalkboard window can be easily changed by specifying them in a parameter file.

Model based control system design using sysML, simulink, and computer algebra system

The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is a standard, general-purpose, modeling language formodel-based systems engineering (MBSE). SysML supports the specification, analysis, and design of a broad range of complex systems such as control systems. The authors demonstrate how they can integrate a SysML modeling tool (IBM Rational Rhapsody) with a proprietary simulation tool (Math Works Simulink) and a Computer Algebra System (CAS) to validate system specification. The integration with Simulink enables users to perform systems engineering process in a SysML model, while designing continuous control algorithms and plant behavior in Simulink, and to validate the behavior by simulating the overall composition in Simulink. The integration with a CAS enables the evaluation of mathematical constraints defined in SysML parametric diagrams. The authors also show the overall approach using a Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT) and a Cruise Control System as examples.

CollaborationFramework: a toolkit for sharing existing single-user applications without modification

There are two conventional approaches to building synchronous collaborative applications: collaboration unaware and collaboration-aware. Though the unaware approach, realized by graphic level synchronization, has an advantage in that it does not require any modification of the original single user applications, it makes it difficult to support groupware specific operations. On the other hand, the aware approach makes it possible to include such features, but only at the cost of rewriting the original application. Our CollaborationFramework provides a platform that is unique in combining the two approaches. It supports construction of an aware external program for controlling the original software application. The scheme is useful for the type of applications in which interfaces for querying and setting the internal status are well defined. We demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach by making off-the-shelf WWW browsers into a shared version with groupware specific synchronization capability.

rSLA: A Service Level Agreement Language for Cloud Services

The quality of Cloud services is a key determinant of the overall service level a provider offers to its customers. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are crucial for Cloud customers to ensure that promised levels of services are met, and an important sales instrument and a differentiating factor for providers. Cloud providers offer services at different levels of abstraction, from infrastructure to applications. Also, Cloud providers and services are often selected more dynamically than in traditional IT services, and as a result, SLAs need to be set up and monitoring implemented to match this speed. This paper presents the rSLA language for specifying and enforcing SLAs for Cloud services, allowing for dynamic instrumentation of heterogeneous Cloud services and instantaneous deployment of SLA monitoring. This is predicated on formal representations of SLAs in the language. We describe how the rSLA language and its supporting framework as well as underlying SLA execution model enable the fast deployment of custom SLAs in heterogeneous and hybrid Cloud environments.

The rSLA Framework: Monitoring and Enforcement of Service Level Agreements for Cloud Services

Managing service quality in heterogeneous Cloud environments is complex: different Cloud providers expose different management interfaces. To manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in this context, we have developed the rSLA framework that enables fast setup of SLA monitoring in dynamic and heterogeneous Cloud environments. The rSLA framework is made up of three main components: the rSLA language to formally represent SLAs, the rSLA Service, which interprets the SLAs and implements the behavior specified in them, and a set of Xlets - lightweight, dynamically bound adapters to monitoring and controlling interfaces. In this paper, we present the rSLA framework, and describe how it enables the monitoring and enforcement of service level agreements for heterogeneous Cloud services.

An e-business framework for developing rich and reliable client applications

This paper introduces an e-business framework for developing rich and reliable client applications. The major advantages of our framework are: (1) it improves the usability of client applications, for example, providing a rich user experience (2) it increases the scalability of a server by exchanging small messages between the server and clients, (3) it provides reliable transactions by using message-oriented middleware, and (4) it provides disconnected operations. In this paper, we introduce our framework first, then described in detail our implementation of the server and client based on it, and show some new e-business examples made possible by our framework. Finally we point out some problems in constructing such a system and make comparisons with other possible approaches.

Managing Service Quality at the Platform and Application Levels with rSLa

Managing service quality in heterogeneous Cloud environments is complex: different providers expose different management interfaces for monitoring and configuration actions that can occur at the infrastructure, platform and application levels. To manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in this context, we have developed the rSLA Manager for enabling fast setup of SLA monitoring in dynamic, heterogeneous Cloud environments. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of the rSLA Manager to manage the response time behavior of an image scaling service on the IBM Blue mix platform. We show how the system enables SLA violation reduction by facilitating platform-level adaptation (e.g., adding application instances) and application-level behavior configuration (e.g., changing image scaling quality) based on different service level objectives as well as current application configuration and workload.

Visual analysis tool for hierarchical additive time-series data

The authors developed a visual analysis tool for hierarchical additive time-series data. Additive time-series data are visualized via stacked graphs, and users can easily drill-down into the hierarchical structure by clicking a bar on the stacked graphs. The most important feature of the tool is showing multiple stacked graphs in parent-child relationship simultaneously.