AJAX is a web application programming technique that allows portions of a web page to be loaded dynamically, separately from other parts of the web page. This gives the user a much smoother experience when viewing the web page. This technique also conserves bandwidth by transmitting only new data relevant to the user, keeping all other content on the web page unchanged. The migration from traditional round-trip web application to AJAX-based web application can be difficult to implement due to the many details required by AJAX. In this thesis, an approach is presented to automate the process of AJAX conversion using source transformation and backward slicing techniques. The result is an AJAX-based web page that will enhance the user experience and also conserve bandwidth. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2008-06-13 09:43:55.515

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The use of urea fertiliser has been associated with relatively poor nitrogen (N) use efficiency (NUE) due to heavy N losses such as gaseous emissions of ammonia (NH₃) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) and nitrate (NO₃⁻) leaching into surface and ground waters. Improving N use-efficiency of applied urea is therefore critical to maximise its uptake and to minimise its footprint on the environment. The study was conducted under laboratory-glasshouse conditions (Chapter 2-4)and lysimiter-field plot studies (Chapter 5). In chapter 2, Two glasshouse-based experimentswere conducted to investigate the potential of incorporating urea fertiliser with ureaseinhibitor, (N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (nBTPT) or ‘Agrotain’) to enhance fertiliser N uptake efficiency. Urea, with or without Agrotain, was applied to Ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) grown in standard plant trays maintained at soil moisture contents of 75–80% field capacity, at rates equivalent to 25 or 50 kg Nha⁻¹. These treatments were compared with other common forms of N fertilisers (ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulphate and sodium nitrate). In a separate pot experiment, granular ¹⁵N urea (10 atom %) with or without Agrotain, was applied at 25 kg Nh⁻¹ to track N use-efficiency and the fate of ¹⁵N-labelled fertiliser. In both experiments, Agrotain-treated urea improved bioavailability (defined as the fraction of total soil N that can interact with a biological target in the plant or that can be taken up by plant) of added N and resulted in significantly higher herbage DM yield and N uptake than urea alone or other forms of N fertilisers. Results from the ¹⁵N experiment support the suggestion that a delay in urea hydrolysis by Agrotain provided an opportunity for direct plant uptake of an increased proportion of the applied urea-N than in the case of urea alone. In chapter 3, two more glasshouse-based experiments were conducted to investigate if urea applied in fine particle application (FPA), with or without Agrotain, had any effect on fertiliser-N uptake efficiency (defined as the difference in N uptake between the fertiliser treatment and the control as a percentage of the amount of N applied) under optimum soil moisture (75-80% field capacity) and temperature (25 °C) conditions, in comparison with other common forms of N fertilisers applied, either in FPA or in granular form. In a separate pot experiment, ¹⁵N urea (10 atom %), with or without Agrotain, was applied to either shoots or leaves only or to the soil surface (avoiding the shoots and leaves) to determine urea hydrolysis, herbage DM and ¹⁵N uptake. In both experiments, herbage DM yield and N uptake were significantly greater in the FPA treatments than in those receiving granular application. Agrotain-treated urea FPA resulted in significantly higher N response efficiency (difference between the dry matter produced by the various fertiliser treatments and the control, divided by the amount of N applied) than urea FPA alone or other forms of N fertilisers. Results from the ¹⁵N experiment support the idea that Agrotain treatment improves the N response of urea applied in FPA form due to a delay in hydrolysis of urea, thus providing herbage an extended opportunity to absorb added urea directly through leaves, cuticles and roots. A further glasshouse-based study was conducted to investigate the effect of Agrotain and irrigation on urea hydrolysis and its movement in a Typic Haplustepts silt loam soil (Chapter 4). A total of 72 repacked soil cores (140 mm inner diameter and 100 mm deep) were used - half (36) of these cores were adjusted to soil moisture contents of 80% field capacity (FC) and the remaining 36 cores to 50% FC. Granular urea, with or without Agrotain, was applied at a rate equivalent to 100 kg N ha⁻¹. Twelve pots were destructively sampled at each day after 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 10 days of treatment application to determine urea hydrolysis and its lateral and vertical movement in different soil layers. Agrotain-treated urea delayed urea hydrolysis compared with urea alone during the first 7 days of its application. This delay in urea hydrolysis by Agrotain enabled added urea to disperse and move away from the surface soil layer to the sub-surface soil layer both vertically and laterally. In contrast, most urea in the absence of Agrotain hydrolysed within 2 days of its application. Irrigation after 1 day resulted in further urea movement from the surface soil layer (0-10 mm) to the sub-soil layer (30-50 mm) in Agrotain-treated urea. These results suggest that Agrotain delayed urea hydrolysis and allowed more time for rainfall or irrigation to move the added urea from the surface layer to sub-soil layers where it is likely to make good contact with plant roots. This distribution of urea in the rooting zone (0-200 mm) has the potential to enhance N use efficiency and minimise N losses via ammonia (NH₃) volatilisation from surface-applied urea. Finally, a field study using lysimeters (300 mm inner diameter and 400 mm deep), and small field plots (1 m² in area) was established using a silt loam Typic Haplustepts soil (Soil Survey Staff 1998) to investigate the effect of FPA and granular applications of urea, with or without Agrotain, on N losses and N use efficiency (Chapter 5). The five treatments were: control (no N) and ¹⁵N-labelled urea (10 atom %), with or without Agrotain, applied to lysimeters or mini plots (un-labelled urea), either in granular form to the soil surface or in FPA form (through a spray) at a rate equivalent to 100 kg N ha⁻¹. Gaseous emissions of NH₃ and N₂O, NO₃⁻ leaching, herbage production, N response efficiency, total N uptake and total recovery of applied ¹⁵N in the plant and soil were determined up to 63 days. Urea-alone and urea with Agrotain, applied in FPA form, was more effective than its granular form and reduced N2O emissions by 5-12% and NO3- leaching losses by 31-55%. Urea-alone applied in FPA form had no significant effect in reducing NH₃ losses compared with granular form. However, urea with Agrotain applied in FPA form reduced NH₃ emissions by 69% compared with the equivalent granular treatment. Urea-alone and with Agrotain applied in FPA form increased herbage dry matter production by 27% and 38%, and N response efficiency compared with the equivalent granular urea application, respectively. Urea applied in FPA form resulted in significantly higher ¹⁵N recovery in the shoots compared with granular treatments – this was improved further when urea in FPA form was applied with Agrotain. Thus, treating urea with Agrotain in FPA under field conditions has the potential to delay its hydrolysis, minimise N losses and improve N use efficiency and herbage production. The lower dry matter production and N-response efficiency to urea applied in FPA form in Chapter 3 are probably because of additional factors such as lower application rates (25 kg N ha⁻¹ ) or lack of interception of urea by the leaves. Applying urea in FPA form is a good management strategy and I conclude that combining FPA urea with Agrotain has the potential to increase N use efficiency and herbage production further.

Forensics capability is becoming increasingly important for the enterprise/network environment. Therefore, businesses need to find an optimised forensics solution that suits the high level business/forensics requirements. However, most businesses are still staying with the conventional method of digital investigation, which means using forensics tools to retrieve evidential data from the target system. Many businesses lack a comprehensive model to help understand the forensics requirements on different levels. Also, businesses lack a method to integrate and manage forensics knowledge into daily operation. In this research, a forensics overlay is being developed on an existing business framework – SABSA model. The overlay helps different business roles to understand and apply forensics knowledge into their daily tasks. With help of the overlay, businesses are able to reduce the overreliance on the third party forensics tools through developing their own forensically sound applications. To test the theory of forensically sound application development, and evaluate the usability of the overlay, a forensically sound email client is designed and developed accordingly.

For the last 15 years, significant amount of resources are invested to enhance the security at system and network level, such as firewalls, IDS, anti-virus, etc. IT infrastructure tends to be more and more secure than ever before. As an ever-increasing number of businesses move to take advantage of the Internet, web applications are becoming more prevalent and increasingly more sophisticated, and as such they are critical to almost all major online businesses. The very nature of web applications, their abilities to collect, process and disseminate information over the Internet, exposes thern to rnalicious hackers. However, the traditional security solutions such as firewall, network and host IDS, do not provide comprehensive protection against the attacks common in the web applications. The thesis concentrates on the research of an advanced intrusion detection framework. An intrusion detection framework was designed which works along with any custom web application to collect and analyze HTTP traffic with various advanced algorithms. Two intrusion detection algorithms are tested and adopted in the framework. Pattern Matching is the most popular intrusion detection technology adopted by most of the commercial intrusion detection system. Behavior Modeling is a new technology that can dynamically adapt the detection algorithms in accordance with the application behavior. The combination of the two intrusion technologies has dramatically reduced false positive and false negative alarms. Moreover, a Servlet filter-based Web Agent is used to capture HTTP request. An isolated Response Module is developed to execute pre-defined action according to the analysis result. A database is involved to provide persistence support for the framework. Also, several simulation experiments are developed for evaluating the efficiency of detecting capability. ______________________________________________________________________________

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

IT environments are turning more complex by the day and this trend is poised to rise in the coming years. To manage IT resources and maximize productivity better, large organizations are striving for better methods to control their current environments. They also have to prepare for future complexity growth as their environments cater to the growing IT needs. In the current economic recession, organizations are not only threatened by the growing complexity, but also have to cope with limited personnel due to financial constraints. Organizations are ardent about obtaining new technology to have firmer control on different platforms, vendors, and solutions at a reasonable cost. At the same time, this new technology must deliver quality services that can effectively fulfill customer needs. To deal with IT management challenges, CA developed Spectrum Service Assurance Manager (SAM), a product by CA Inc. (formerly Computer Associates) to solve complex IT environment service management problems. SAM can provide organizations with a wide-ranging view of their multi-faceted IT environments by providing vital pieces of information that no other software can perceive. Thus, SAM can monitor and manage systems, databases, networks, applications, and end-user experiences. Although, this technology is able to detect many errors and problems, it still lacks a good mechanism to diagnose the detected problems and uncover their root causes for end users to fix. Four research groups from Universities of Alberta, Toronto, Victoria and Waterloo—under the auspices of the Consortium for Software Engineering Research—built different tools for root-cause analysis and detection. To integrate these solutions, these research groups worked together with CA Inc. to produce a web-based integration tool to integrate these add-ons into the main SAM application. The resulting framework does not affect any of SAM’s existing features as the additions only involve a new web communication layer that acts from the core of the software to detect and present root causes. The detection tools only parse the log files for vital information and thus the core functionality of the software remains unaffected. My contributions to this research project are presented in this thesis. In the beginning of this thesis, I report on background research on SAM and describe how it is going to solve the increasing complexity problem in IT environments. Later on, I propose two software integration approaches to integrate root cause diagnosis tools with SAM and briefly describe CA’s latest software integration framework Catalyst. Towards the end of this thesis, I compare our integration solution with Catalyst, and discuss advantages and disadvantages of these integration solutions. / Graduate

GoCity is designed to provide city visitors with up-to-date and context-aware information while they are exploring a city using Android mobile phones. This thesis not only introduces the design and analysis of GoCity, but also discusses four problems in leveraging three concepts—context-awareness, self-adaptation, and usability—in current mobile application design. First, few contexts other than location and time have been used in actual mobile applications. Second, there is no clear classification of context information for mobile application design. Third, mobile application designers lack systematic mechanisms to address sensing and monitoring requirements under changing context situations. This is crucial for effective self-adaptation. Fourth, most mobile applications have low usability due to poor user interface (UI) design. The model proposed in this thesis addresses these issues by (i) supporting diverse context dimensions, (ii) monitoring context changes continuously and tailoring the application behavior according to these changes, and (iii) improving UI design using selected usability methods. In addition, this thesis proposes two classifications of context information for mobile applications: source-based classification—personal context, mobile device context, and environmental context; and property-based classification—static context and dynamic context. The combination of these two classifications helps determine the observed context and its polling rate—the rate at which the context is collected—effectively. A distinctive feature of GoCity is that it supports two interaction modes—static mode and dynamic mode. In static mode, the application generates results only after the user sends the request to it. In other words, it does not actively generate results for users. In contrast, in the dynamic mode, the application continuously updates results even if the user does not send any request to it. The notion of an autonomic element (AE) is used for the dynamic mode to make GoCity self-adaptive. The polling rates on different contexts are also handled differently in the dynamic mode because of the differences among context properties. In addition, GoCity is composed of, but not limited to, four sub-applications. Each sub-application employs a variety of context information and can be implemented as an independent mobile application. Regarding usability, GoCity focuses on providing a simple and clear user interface as well as supporting user expectations for personalization. An experiment which involves a person visiting the city of Victoria was conducted to evaluate GoCity. In this evaluation, three determining factors of usability were employed to qualitatively and quantitatively assess GoCity. In addition, the static mode and dynamic mode were evaluated separately. / Graduate

Information system development (ISD) projects have been associated with the "software crisis" for over three decades. A set of common "root causes" has often been cited in literature with corresponding "solutions". Yet the overall project success rate has remained low, resulting in a paradox of many solutions and little progress over the years. This study examines the management of application software acquisition from external suppliers in ISD projects. Three case studies are documented based on participant observation with complete membership roles. After within-case analyses highlighting issues in individual cases, crosscase analyses are conducted, first to identify a pattern of ISD project challenges and then to search for their explanations. Concepts from agency theory, contract theory and product development literature are used in the process of diagnosing root causes behind the observations. The proposed explanation is that the Traditional Systems Development Framework (TSDF), characterized by competitive-bidding-monopolized-development, underlies the identified root causes. Accordingly, competitive development is suggested as an alternative approach. Following the "Inference to the Best Explanation" (IBE) analytical strategy, the suggested approach is subject to two contrastive analyses, first with the prepackaged software development and then with the construction industry, to demonstrate that the suggestion is a "warranted inference". Further analogical analyses illustrate the feasibility of development competition for software product development. A Performance-Based Systems Development Framework (PBSDF) is outlined as a tentative implementation of the suggested competitive development approach for ISD projects supported by risk-sharing supplier contract and a relative product evaluation approach. A number of future research implications are described as a result of this study after summarizing the research contributions.