Visual Interactive Search Engine

I recently came across a flash-based, interactive and visual search engine, that groups search results into different categories. It visually shows which categories has associated links. I thought it is really interesting and does produce good results.

Below is the link for it
http://www.kartoo.com/

Joined School of Computing, University of North Florida

From Fall 2007 onwards I will be Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the School of Computing, University of North Florida (UNF). UNF is located in Jacksonville, Florida. For Fall 2007, I will be teaching Introduction to Object Oriented Programming with Java.

My contact address at UNF is
Karthikeyan Umapathy
3214 Mathews Building (15)
School of Computing
University of North Florida
1 UNF Drive
Jacksonville FL 32224
Email: k . umapathy @ unf . edu (remove blank spaces when you send email)
Work Phone: 904-620-1329
Fax: 904-620-2988
website: http://www.unf.edu/~k.umapathy/

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.