Paper accepted at the Conceptual Modeling (ER) 2007 Conference

Paper Title: Exploring Alternatives for Representing and Accessing Design Knowledge about Enterprise Integration

Abstract: Enterprise integration refers to solutions that facilitate meaningful interactions among heterogeneous legacy applications. The scale, complexity and specificity of most enterprise integration efforts mean that design knowledge for enterprise integration has resisted codification. Important exceptions to this include: use of Business Process Modeling (BPM) techniques to understand integration requirements; and Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP), which present designers with abstract descriptions of recurring design tactics for integrating applications. The two, however, can be at odds. BPM encourages the control flow perspective; whereas EIP codifies an operational perspective. Mapping between the two to develop coherent solutions, therefore, tends to be problematic. To bridge the gap, we suggest an alternative that builds on the theory of speech acts. We develop essential components of such an alternative, including a re-representation of EIP as structures of speech acts, a characterization of tasks in BPM with action types, and a mapping between speech acts and action types. The components are accompanied by inference rules that produce a mapping between sets of tasks in a business process, and structures of speech acts as integration patterns. Through a short industry case, we demonstrate usefulness of the proposed alternative.

Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.

Link to the conference ER 2007

Paper accepted at the IEEE Services 2007 PhD Symposium on Service Computing

Paper Title:
A Study of Language-Action Perspective as a Theoretical Framework for Web Services

Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the services science discipline by examining appropriateness of Language-Action Perspective (LAP) as a theoretical framework for web services, the technology component of services science. This research consists of three inter-dependent studies. The first study (completed) investigates whether LAP constructs can describe and explain the web services architecture. Findings from this study indicate that there is a lack of mechanisms to generate conversation specifications that guide interactions among services. Conversation specifications are crucial for developing large-scaled enterprise integration solutions using web services. The second study (work-in-progress) builds on this finding and demonstrates the appropriateness of LAP constructs to access design knowledge to develop web service solutions for enterprise integration. The third study (work-in-progress) evaluates the usefulness of LAP constructs to develop effective web service solutions (artifact developed in the second study).

Link to the PhD Symposium

Paper accepted at the Services Computing Conference (SCC) 2007

Paper Title:
Towards A Theoretical Foundation for Web Services – The Language-Action Perspective (LAP) Approach

Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to stimulate a discourse and search for appropriate theoretical foundations for web services. The complexity of web services technology demands such a foundation. A theoretical foundation can provide adequate guidance not only to accelerate research related to web services, but can also promote their acceptance. Based on an extensive review of prior work in SCC and ICWS, we identify theories implicitly used for web services research, and propose the Language-Action Perspective (LAP) as an important and necessary complement to these. Our proposal follows the observation that there is a close match between the core concerns of web services and the LAP approach. Our ongoing work is aimed at validating appropriateness of LAP as a theoretical framework for web services through empirical research.

Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.

Link to conference page: SCC 2007

Web-based slide presentation

If you are interested in creating web-based slides for your presentation, I recommend you using S5 slide show system.

S5 uses combination of XHTML, CSS and Javascript for creating and presenting slides. Single XHTML file holds all slide details, CSS is used for presentation style formating and Javascript is used for slide navigation. You need knowledge on HTML and CSS to use S5 slide show system. Below is the link for the more information.
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

Link to sample S5 based presentation created by me is given below:
http://www.karthikeyan.umapathy.com/distprop/

You can use browser fullscreen option (press F11 key) during presentation to get maximum screen coverage.

If you are firefox user, you can complete fullscreen (i.e., removing address and tabs in fullscreen) using fullscreen addons.

FullerScreen firefox addon by Daniel Glazman is good one for this purpose. Link to addon is given below:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4650

Science Magazine Tips on scientific writing

Following are the articles from the Science Magazine

Getting Published in Scientific Journals

Tips for Publishing in Scientific Journals

Writing Science: The Story's the Thing

Language-Action Perspective(LAP) summary

Association for Information Systems maintains a repository containing description of various theories used in Information Systems field.

I had submitted summary of LAP description to repository editors. Summary has been accepted and added in the repository.

Below is the link for LAP summary in the repository
http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/languageactionperspective.htm

Homepage for repository
http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/default.htm

Please do send me your comments, suggestions, additions or any modifications that you think needs to be made in LAP summary.

Information Systems Frontiers Journal paper

Finally! My Information Systems Frontiers Journal paper is published.

Here is the link to access the paper from Publisher web site
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r282201465372g67/

Title of the paper:
A theoretical investigation of the emerging standards for web services

Abstract:
Currently, standards for web services are being developed via three different initiatives (W3C, Semantic web services and ebXML). To the best of our knowledge, no theoretical perspectives underlie these standardization efforts. Without the benefit of a strong theoretical basis, the results, within and across these initiatives, have remained piecemeal. We suggest ‘Language–Action Theories’ as a plausible perspective that can effectively define, assess and refine web services standards. In this paper, we first investigate the existing initiatives to identify commonalities that point to theories of ‘Language–Action’ as an appropriate theoretical basis for web services standards. Next, we adapt work from these theories to develop a comprehensive reference framework for understanding web services standards. Finally, we use this reference framework to assess the three initiatives, and analyze the findings to provide insights for future development and refinement of web services standards.

Paper accepted at the ICSOC PhD Symposium

Paper Title:
A Study of Language-Action Perspective as a Theoretical Framework for Web Services

Abstract:
This dissertation contributes to services science discipline by examining appropriateness of Language-Action Perspective (LAP) as a theoretical framework for web services, the technology component of services science. This study is conducted through three essays. The first (completed) investigates whether LAP constructs can describe and explain the web services architecture. Findings from this essay indicate that there is lack of mechanisms to generate conversation policies that guide interactions between applications. Conversation polices are crucial for developing large-scaled enterprise integration solutions using web services. The second (work-in-progress) builds on this finding. This essay demonstrates appropriateness of LAP constructs to structure design knowledge to develop web services solutions for enterprise integration. The third (work-in-progress) evaluates usefulness of LAP structured design knowledge to develop web services solutions (artifact developed in the second essay).

Link to PhD Symposium
http://infolab.uvt.nl/phd-icsoc06/

CACM special issue on Services Science

Services Science discipline explores the underlying phenomenon beyond services economy. Services economy currently dominates global economy; nearly 2/3 of the global economy activity is from services sector. This shows how important services science discipline is. However, this discipline is taking its baby steps with lot much more to be explored and challenges to be faced.

CACM special issue on Services Science that appeared in July 2006, show cases shows importance of this discipline and challenges it faces.

Link for table of contents for July 2006 CACM issue.

CACM special issue on Language-Action Perspective (LAP)

My dissertation aim is to show that Language-Action Perspective (LAP) is appropriate theoretical framework for web services.

LAP has been around for two decades but it has not reached mainstream organization computing. It is not part of teaching curriculum in universities is mere evidence of it.

Web service provides an opportunity for this community to reach mainstream. I explore this possibility in my dissertation.

CACM Special issue on LAP which appeared in May 2006 show cases some of works of prominent LAP researchers.

Link for table of contents of CACM special issue on LAP.

MS Thesis Software helps to reduce 23% leadtime

As part of Master of Science with Major in Industrial Engineering (from Penn State University), I had developed a software tool to guide metal casting pattern designer to design better pattern in their first iteration.

It should be note that design pattern is more of art than science. Penn State was involved with larger project where huge amounts of data was gathered. Data analysis on these date produced certain analytical value that can be used for designing patterns.

I had used those analytical values and developed a designer-friendly software guide tool to design metal casting patterns. Trail run of this tool was conducted at McConway & Torley Group, Pittsburgh PA. Trail run of this software has improved casting feature dimensional conformance from 59% to 82% for large green sand castings.

Link for report regarding this (see page 22 in the report).

Link for more information on Software Guide Tool.

Yeah! I am Quoted

I had posted some comments to an article on required IT skills.

My comment was quoted by an article in TechRepublic online magazine.

Here is the link to that article: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,39020648,2107670,00.htm

Paper accepted in SCC 2006

Paper Title
Designing Enterprise Solutions with Web Services and Integration Patterns
Abstract
Web services are an ideal implementation platform for integrating disparate legacy systems because they are platform-independent. Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) represent possible design solutions that may be used to construct these enterprise integration solutions. Constructing design solutions with EIP that build on the platform-independence allowed by web services requires that the former be converted into mechanisms that may be implemented with the latter. One such mechanism is conversation models that may be used to implement interactions among web services representing different legacy systems. No methodologies exist that designers can use to construct integration solutions using web services and EIP in this manner. In this paper, we outline such a methodology that generates the design elements in the form of conversation policies for web services.
Co-Authored with
Sandeep Purao

Waterfall 2006 -- "Come on in, the water's fine."

Well it seems Waterfall system of developing software is making a come-back.

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

Some one is working too hard to bring it back into our life and make us laugh.

Win Eric Newcomer's Lastest Book!

Eric Newcomer, IONA Technologies CTO, is giving 50 copies of his latest book "Understanding SOA With Web Services" for free.

Go to below link to register for free copies.

Click here

Integration Imperative

This article written by Rich Schwerin appeared in Oracle Magazine in November/December 2004 issue.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/04-nov/o64industry.html

This article provides good general overview of BPEL. This article is definitely good for beginners.

For those who are interested in learning about BPEL4WS in details, should go below link

IBM BPEL4WS Tutorial

Bright Future for J2EE Web Services Development

This article appeared in Web Services Journal on October 23.

http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=46718

J2EE based Web Services does have bright future due to broad range of J2EE applications which allows us to expose our existing applications as Web Services and some of those tools does work at a minimal complexity level. Glad that author pointed out importance of security, reliability, and performance of Web Services, without which there is no future for Web Services.

Executing BPEL Process

ExecutingBPEL.pdf

This document provides information on installing JBOSS Server, installing BPEL Engine on JBOSS server, installing WASP Java server. This document also provides information on writing WSDL and BPEL4WS file to deploy a BPEL Process service. This document also provides information on writing WASP Client to execute BPEL Process service.

Technical Bulletins for WASP tools

Please follow below link to get techinical bulletins for WASP tools.

http://dev.systinet.com/support/technical_bulletins/index

In this link you will find up-to-date information on reported issues, work-arounds, and solutions to known issues between releases of WASP tools.

Application Server Architecture and BPEL - Promises and challenges

This article appeared in Web Services Journal, July 2, 2004. Author of the article - Amlan Debnath.
http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=45517&DE=1

This article provides good overview of motives of BPEL and reason outs why BPEL is the core of web service. Author says that BPEL is designed with asynchronous services at its core, but this complicates the process of building a scalable, reliable BPEL engine. Author explains functionality of BPEL process using a simple order management process. Author figuratively explains evolution of application and server platform. Author provide overview of other key standards that are being developed, which are Extensible WSDL Binding Framework (JSR-208), Process Flow Coordination (BPEL), Reliable Web Messaging (WS-Reliability), Security (WS-Security), XML Data and Transformation (JAXB, XQuery), User Interactivity (WSRP), and Choreography and Contracts (WS-CDL). Even though author suggests that many standards are less mature, he believes these developments are going to dramatically change how we build applications and that the application server and BPEL are at the core of this new wave.

I also agree with author that even though many standards are still immature, web services is going to stay and success of web services depends upon success of BPEL. It is good to see industry recognizes this fact and actively working on to produce better tools.