Won CONISAR 2012 Conference Best Paper Award

 Paper titled "Comparing Performance of Web Service Interaction Styles: SOAP vs. REST" won the best conference paper award at CONISAR 2012 conference, New Orleans, LA, USA.

Abstract:
This paper presents a comparative performance evaluation of two Web service implementations: one is based on SOAP and the other on Representational State Transfer (REST). Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and REST-based development approaches handle service interactions quite differently. SOAP is a standardized framework for constructing and processing messages independent of the technological capabilities of the receiver and can work on top of a variety of application layer protocols such as RPC, HTTP, or SMTP, whereas, REST is a set of principles for designing Web applications (HTTP as the underlying protocol). We built SOAP and REST-based Web services that perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations on a database and retrieve local files. We utilized response time and throughput metrics to compare the performance of these Web services. We found that, on average, REST has better performance compared to SOAP, though not all results were statistically conclusive. As an ancillary outcome, we found that developing Web services using SOAP was easier, due to considerable tool support. However, developing Web services using REST was time consuming and difficult due to the necessity of in-depth knowledge of HTTP and rudimentary tool support.

Authors:
Pavan Kumar Potti
Sanjay Ahuja
Karthikeyan Umapathy
Zornitza Prodanoff

This paper was written based on Pavan Kumar's master thesis. I presented this paper at the CONISAR 2012 on November 2, 2012.

Here is the link for the presentation: 

http://prezi.com/1envmwefahzt/comparing-performance-of-web-service-interaction-styles-soap-vs-rest/?auth_key=c7748dd182ba1ebdb8bd3160d9b230d581ebb035

Here is the link for the article:

http://proc.conisar.org/2012/pdf/2208.pdf

Here is the list of papers that won awards at CONISAR 2012:

http://proc.conisar.org/2012/bestpapers.html

Digging into Human Rights Violations Talk at the Western University

I was invited by Western University, Canada to give talk on the system architecture developed for the Digging into Human Rights Violation Software. Talk was part of the panel discussion titled "Digging into Human Rights Violation: What We Know and What We Don't." Panel members were Ben Miller from Georgia State University, Lu Xiao from Western University, and Karthikeyan Umapathy from University of North Florida. Panel discussion was held on June 19, 2012 from 10 AM to 11:30 AM at the Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western University, London, Canada.

For more information on the panel:

http://www.fims.uwo.ca/about/news/news_items/12-06-15/Lecture_Digging_into_Human_Rights_Violation_What_We_Know_and_What_We_Don_t.aspx

Web of Web Things Talk at the Joe Berg Seminar

On February 21, 2012, I gave a talk on Web technologies at the Joe Berg Seminar held at the Museum of Science and History, Jacksonville, FL.

Title of talk: "Web of Web Things"

Talk provided an overview of value of the Web, growth of the Web, and a discussion on past, present, and future Web technologies. Talk provided examples of global projects (such as Ushahidi, PatientsLikeMe, and Kiva) that use Web technologies to make a difference in the global society. The talk also provided examples of UNF student projects that are making a difference in the Jacksonville community.

Mission of Joe Berg Seminar:

“The Joe Berg Seminars of Jacksonville presents challenging evening seminars and programs for outstanding public and independent high school students led by experts in various fields of the sciences and humanities. Participation in the society promotes independent thinking and a love of learning while enlarging the students' awareness of career options and current societal issues and allowing association with many of the other best students in Jacksonville.”

For more information about Joe Berg Seminar:

http://www.unf.edu/coas/sci/Joe_Berg_Seminar_HOME.aspx

Won 2011 Digging into Data Grant Challenge

Project Title:
Digging into Human Rights Violations: Anaphora Resolution and Emergent Witnesses

Project description:
Unidentified victims, perpetrators, and details of human rights violations are camouflaged by the scale of archival records of witness reports; keyword based search is insufficient to extract them. Digging into Human Rights Violations will develop an automated reader for large text archives of human rights abuses that will reconstruct stories from fragments scattered across a collection, and an interface for navigating those stories. By improving on anaphora resolution techniques in Natural Language Processing for the connection of pronouns to specific nouns, this system will help researchers and courts reveal witnesses and patterns contained in their own collections. This project will read reports of historic disappearances and systemic violence in Guatemala, of abuse against women and children in Burma, and of violent incidents and rights violations in Chechnya, and provide new methods and free tools for human rights advocates.

Principal Investigators:
Ben Miller (Georgia State University), Karthikeyan Umapathy (University of North Florida), Lu Xiao (University of Western Ontario), George Pullman (Georgia State University), and Saurav Karmakar (Georgia State University).

Grant competition link: http://www.diggingintodata.org/
Grant winners listing:
http://www.diggingintodata.org/Home/AwardRecipients2011/tabid/185/Default.aspx
NSF award link: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1209172