Submitted by Lucienne Costa (lucienneferreira@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-05-04T20:33:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RODRIGO DE ALMEIDA VILAR DE MIRANDA – TESE (PPGCC) 2017.pdf: 5018332 bytes, checksum: 3305ba84ae725675348e6e3b9a1684e9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-04T20:33:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RODRIGO DE ALMEIDA VILAR DE MIRANDA – TESE (PPGCC) 2017.pdf: 5018332 bytes, checksum: 3305ba84ae725675348e6e3b9a1684e9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-09-04 / Developers can use metadata in enterprise applications in order to reduce coupling between graphical user interface and domain model layers. Therefore, user interface components are replaced by meta components, which can be easily reused in different domains, enhancing productivity of application development. However, the current metadata-based approaches define complex components for graphical interface, mixing responsibilities in an artifact and reducing maintainability. In this work, we propose an approach to implement meta components s into small artifacts with encapsulated responsibilities, increasing its reuse and easing its customization. This approach has been developed as a pattern language with seven design patterns and two architectural patterns, which were defined based on existing approaches, abstracting good practices and proposing solutions for weaknesses. Two open source framworks, Geneguis and Angular M, were implemented using the pattern language concepts in order to support User interface development for enterprise applications. The productivity of Angular M was compared to Ruby on Rails in an experiment with 15 software developers that performed 12 user interface customization tasks. The statistical analysis of experiment results has shown that: for the six customization tasks where components were reused, Angular M was significantly more productive in all tasks; and for the six tasks without reused components, Angular M was significantly more productive in two tasks, Ruby on Rails was significantly more productive in one task and the other three tasks did not show significant difference. The average increase of productivity for Angular M, in comparison with Ruby on Rails, was 20% for all 12 scenarios and 64% for the six scenarios with component reuse. / Metadados podem ser manipulados em aplicações corporativas a fim de reduzir o acoplamento entre a camada da interface gráfica do usuário e a camada do modelo do domínio. Dessa forma, os componentes da interface gráfica são substituídos por meta componentes, que podem ser facilmente reutilizados em domínios diferentes, aumentando a produtividade no desenvolvimento desse tipo de aplicação. Todavia, nas abordagens baseadas em metadados existentes, os meta componentes de interface são complexos, entrelaçam responsabilidades em um mesmo artefato e possuem baixa manutenibilidade. Neste trabalho propõe-se uma abordagem que organiza os meta componentes através de artefatos pequenos e com responsabilidades bem definidas, com a finalidade de aumentar o potencial de reúso e facilitar a sua customização. A abordagem proposta foi desenvolvida conceitualmente por meio de uma linguagem de padrões, contendo sete padrões de projeto e dois padrões arquiteturais que foram catalogados a partir de abordagens existentes, abstraindo as boas práticas e propondo correções para as deficiências. Concretamente a abordagem foi implementada em dois arcabouços de código aberto, Geneguis e Angular M, para o desenvolvimento de interface gráfica em aplicações corporativas. Angular M teve a produtividade comparada com Ruby on Rails em um experimento com 15 desenvolvedores de software que atuaram sobre 12 cenários de customização de interface gráfica. Após uma análise da significância estatística dos resultados, foi observado que: nos seis cenários propostos onde havia reúso de componentes, Angular M foi mais produtivo em todos; e nos seis cenários onde não havia reúso de componentes, Angular M foi mais produtivo em dois, Ruby on Rails foi mais produtivo em um e não houve diferença significante nos outros três cenários. O ganho médio de produtividade com Angular M, em relação a Ruby on Rails, foi 20% nos cenários gerais e 64% ao considerar apenas os cenários com reúso de componentes.

Mobile enterprise applications (MEAs) are found in increasing numbers in organisations as smart-devices become an everyday necessity amongst employees and customers. Large amounts are invested in these applications, so it is important to see the value in improved business processes and the consequential improvement in business performance. Realising the benefits from their use is important to obtain the value from these investments. Yet, benefits management (BM) is poorly implemented in companies and a first step to improve this situation is to improve the visibility of the benefits that can be achieved by using MEAs. Hence the primary question asked in this study is “How can MEA benefits be successfully realised?” The strategy used to answer the question was action research in a single organisation using three MEAs in two different action research cycles. The study was conducted in a short-term insurance company in the Western Cape of South Africa with an established IT and project capability. Globally, the short-term insurance industry is under a significant threat from disruption by market entrants who don’t have to navigate legacy systems and who are more agile with their product offerings. Traditional insurers are looking for innovative solutions to transform the way in which insurance is sold and serviced. A BM process, which was modified from the literature, was refined through action cycles in three MEA projects to improve benefits realisation. The result showed that for MEA projects, which are not very large investments relative to other IT projects, a lighter, less cumbersome process was more practical and acceptable in the organisation. The creation of a benefits and risks template, during the action cycles, helped the organisation to build stronger business cases for MEA projects and also allowed for more comprehensive benefit identification, measurement and tracking, ultimately realising business performance improvements. The study also used a survey amongst 88 brokers and assessors to determine the factors which influence their adoption of these MEAs. The most significant factors influencing user adoption were the company’s willingness to fund the smart-devices, the ease of use of the MEA, job relevance and location dependence. A limitation of this study is that the organisation has a particular approach to project funding whereby the importance of BM is weighed against the cost of the project, hence BM is more important for very expensive projects. While the model prescribed in this study was sufficient in this context, it may not be suitable for organisations that are more conscientious about BM. This model would need to be tested in other contexts for transferability. A further limitation was the duration of time available for conducting this study because this was a PhD research project. Further action cycles might have refined the process further. The findings from this study are relevant to researchers and to organisations wanting to deploy MEAs. The BM process defined in this study can be used in MEA projects as a process to manage the identified benefits and ensure that they are realised. The benefits template can be used as a first step in the BM process to build the business case and the risks template can be used to identify potential problems that could hinder benefits realisation and can used to put mitigating actions in place to prevent problems to benefits realisation. The identification of factors influencing adoption of MEA can help organisations focus on these factors to ensure that their MEAs are used and they thereby derive benefits. The theoretical contributions of this study are a process model for the BM body of knowledge and a model explaining the factors influencing symbolic adoption of MEA. The identification and description of benefits and risks extends the body of knowledge for mobile applications research. These specific issues in the context of MEAs in the short-term insurance industry are understudied.

The rapid increase in smartphone usage has led enterprises to start adapting their internal systems for use with smartphones; so called mobile enterprise applications. Previous research show that these mobile applications can increase the efficiency, satisfaction and productivity of a company's workforce. Developing and deploying the applications is far from trivial, and companies have struggled to fully adopt enterprise mobility. This paper gives a detailed description of the development and implementation of two smartphone applications for internal use at two companies. Through two case studies consisting of an app analysis and interviews with key stakeholders, the research presented focuses on addressing the research question: how do new smartphone applications fit into existing systems to provide added value to companies? The results show that even though the apps developed are simple in their functionality, the fact that they are used on mobile devices makes them valuable in itself. From the companies’ perspectives, availability and connectivity were the two most important aspects of the applications - they provided easy access to company information. Developmental obstacles were also identified, most notably how to integrate the apps with the different internal systems already in place. The usefulness of mobile enterprise applications is discussed, and guidelines for future stakeholders and developers are suggested to make transformations into mobile enterprises easier. / Den snabba ökningen i användandet av smartphones har lett till att företag i allt större utsträckning anpassar sina interna system för mobilanvändning: så kallade mobile enterprise applications. Tidigare forskning visar att dessa mobilapplikationer kan göra företagets anställda mer effektiva, produktiva och nöjda. Att utveckla och lansera dessa applikationer är långt ifrån trivialt, och företag har haft svårt att fullt ut anamma ett mobilt arbetssätt. Denna uppsats ger en detaljerad beskrivning av utvecklingen och implementeringen av två interna smartphone-appar hos två företag. Genom en analys av appar samt intervjuer med nyckelpersoner på två företag syftar den här uppsatsen till att besvara frågan: hur passar nya smartphone-appar in i befintliga system så att de tillför värde för företagen? Resultaten visar att även om de nya apparna har tämligen grundläggande funktionalitet, räcker det faktum att de är mobila för att göra dem värdefulla och användbara. Ur företagens synvinkel var tillgänglighet och anslutning de två viktigaste aspekterna hos apparna – de gav medarbetarna enkel tillgång till företagets information. Även hinder för utvecklingen har identifierats; främst hur man ska integrera apparna med de olika interna system som redan är i bruk. Användbarheten hos mobilappar för företag diskuteras, och det föreslås riktlinjer för framtida intressenter och utvecklare för att underlätta omvandlingen till mobila företag.

<p>The purpose of this thesis was to investigate different concepts and tools which could support the development of a middleware which persists a temporal and versioned relational data model in an enterprise environment. Further requirements for the target application was that changes to the data model had to be facilitated, so that a small change to the model would not result in changes in several files and application layers. Other requirements include permissioning and audit tracing. In the thesis the reader is presented with a comparison of a set of tools for enterprise development and object/relational mapping. One of the tools, a code generator, is chosen as a good candidate to match the requirements of the project. An implementation is presented, where the chosen tool is used. An XML-based language which is used to define a data model and to provide input data for the tool is presented. Other concepts concerning the implementation is then described in detail. Finally, the author discusses alternative solutions and future improvements.</p>

Since the advent of RPC Stub Generator, software tools that translate a high level specification into executable programs have been instrumental in facilitating the development of distributed software systems. Developers write programs at a high level abstraction with high readability and reduced initial development cost. However, existing approaches to building code generation tools for such systems have difficulties evolving these tools to meet challenges of new standards, new platforms and languages, or changing product scopes, resulting in generator tools with limited lifespan. The difficulties in evolving generator tools can be characterized as a combination of three challenges that appear inherently difficult to solve simultaneously: the abstraction mapping challenge translating a high-level abstraction into a low-level implementation), the interoperable heterogeneity challenge stemming from multiple input and output formats, and the flexible customization challenge to extend base functionality for evolution or new applications. The Clearwater approach to code generation uses XML-based technologies and software tools to resolve these three challenges with three important code generation features: specification extensibility, whereby an existing specification format can accommodate extensions or variations at low cost; generator pliability, which allows the generator to operator on an extensible specification and/or support multiple and new platforms; and flexible customization, which allows an application developer to make controlled changes to the output of a code generator to support application-specific goals. The presentation will outline the Clearwater approach and apply it to meet the above three challenges in two domain areas. The first area is information flow applications (e.g., multimedia streaming and event processing), a horizontal domain in which the ISG code generator creates QoS-customized communication code using the Infopipe abstraction and specification language. The second area is enterprise application staging (e.g., complex N-tier distributed applications), a vertical domain in which the Mulini code generator creates multiple types of source code supporting automatic staging of distributed heterogeneous applications in a data center environment. The success of applying Clearwater to these domains shows the effectiveness of our approach.

Submitted by JÚLIO HEBER SILVA (julioheber@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-05-19T17:06:06Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Alex Rabelo Ferreira - 2017.pdf: 1520702 bytes, checksum: 4d6d16d4b1045c459e8d23fc2f6a4c69 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2017-05-22T10:41:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Alex Rabelo Ferreira - 2017.pdf: 1520702 bytes, checksum: 4d6d16d4b1045c459e8d23fc2f6a4c69 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-22T10:41:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Alex Rabelo Ferreira - 2017.pdf: 1520702 bytes, checksum: 4d6d16d4b1045c459e8d23fc2f6a4c69 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-04-25 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / In large-scale data centers, power management techniques such as Dynamic Voltage/Frequency Scaling (DVFS), virtual machine consolidation, and power-capping mechanisms promise impressive energy savings compared to traditional resource management strategies. Most of these techniques rely on coarse-grained monitoring of the workload behavior to apply their optimizations. However, coarse-grained monitoring and black box observations are not satisfactory for predicting the behavior of bursty workloads such as those observed in enterprise, Web servers. In this work, we propose an analytical model to estimate the energy consumption of multi-tier Web Systems. Differently from previous works, our model captures the consumption pattern at the level of fine-grained transactions and for each tier of the system. In addition, our model is based only on CPU utilization and server architectural parameters, which can be easily obtained in today’s production environments. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in a real-world experimentation environment, based on the TPC-W benchmark. Results show that our model is able to estimate the energy consumption for a Web system with an average relative error of 6.5% in the worst-case scenario, whereas more complex models of the literature present errors within the same order of magnitude. / Em grandes centros de dados, técnicas de gerenciamento de energia como Dynamic Voltage/Frequency Scaling (DVFS), consolidação de máquinas virtuais e mecanismos de limitação de energia prometem grande economia de energia quando comparados a métodos tradicionais de gerenciamento de recursos. A maioria dessas técnicas utilizam mecanismos caixas-pretas para monitorar o comportamento da carga de trabalho. Contudo, esse tipo de monitoramento não é satisfatório para prever os fenômenos de rajadas, comumente encontrados em serviços e aplicações Web. Neste trabalho, propomos um modelo analí- tico para estimar o consumo de energia de Sistemas Web multi-camadas. Diferentemente de outros trabalhos, nosso modelo captura o padrão de consumo desses sistemas na granularidade de transações e para cada camada do sistema. Além disso, nosso modelo se baseia apenas na utilização de CPU e em parâmetros arquiteturais do servidor, os quais podem ser facilmente obtidos nos ambientes de produção atuais. Demonstramos a efetividade do nosso modelo em um ambiente de experimentação real, baseado no benchmark TPC-W. Os resultados obtidos mostram que nosso modelo é capaz de estimar o consumo de energia para um sistema Web com um erro relativo médio de 6,5% para o pior cenário, enquanto modelos mais complexos da literatura apresentam erros com a mesma ordem de grandeza.

<p dir="ltr">In traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) enterprise applications, there is a need for easy-to-do machine learning (ML) frameworks. Additionally, SaaS applications are closely related when they form an application suite, which brings forth the need for an ML framework that can facilitate the “lift and shift” of ML model code in similar needs in multiple enterprise applications in a suite. To add to this, some SaaS applications are still using legacy infrastructure (on-premise) mandating the need for an ML framework that is backward compatible with coexisting platforms, both cloud and legacy on-premise infrastructure. This study first demonstrated that in SaaS applications, microservices were important ingredients to deploying machine learning (ML) models successfully. In general, microservices can result in efficiencies in software service design, development, and delivery. As they become ubiquitous in the redesign of monolithic software, with the addition of machine learning, the traditional SaaS applications are also becoming increasingly intelligent. Next, the dissertation recommends a portable ML microservice framework Minerva (also known as contAIn—second generation), a Micro-services-based container framework for Applied Machine learning as an efficient way to modularize and deploy intelligent microservices in both traditional “legacy” SaaS application suite and cloud, especially in the enterprise domain. The study also identified and discussed the needs, challenges, and architecture to incorporate ML microservices in such applications. Secondly, the study further identifies that there is an impetus to innovate quickly for machine learning features in enterprise SaaS applications. Minerva’s design for optimal integration with legacy and cloud applications using microservices architecture leveraging lightweight infrastructure accelerates deploying ML models in such applications. The study highlights the real-world implementation of Minerva, doubling innovation speed with the human resources. It evaluates ML model code reusability across applications, resulting in 1.15 to 2X faster adoption compared to previous methods in a marketing application suite. Minerva’s top-tier security encompasses several advanced features designed to protect sensitive data in SaaS marketing applications. It includes end-to-end data encryption, ensuring all data remains secure both in transit and at rest using robust cryptographic algorithms. While a layered design accelerated innovation through porting existing models to related business suites, generative AI methods, while promising, hadn't yielded significant gains with smaller models yet porting over already no code optimized model code.</p>

No description available.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Corporate mergers and partnerships are common in today’s competitive environment and inevitably require organisations to integrate information and telecommunication systems when such unisons take place. One of the most important challenges in each enterprise, especially forced by global markets and the resulting competition, is the capability to efficiently interact, collaborate and exchange information with business partners and within an organisation. Many software systems within organisations are not integrated into a homogeneous structure and therefore the sharing and exchange of information, not being synchronised, leads to possible misappropriation of such information. These isolated systems in organisations, could consequently become possible platforms for corruption and fraud, leading to increase in computer crime. While key risk areas remain, new dangers are emerging. Government stakeholders require departments to be accountable and responsible, which underpins the sharing and exchanging of relevant information, which in turn necessitates the integration of inter- as well as intra-departmental systems. If corruption and fraud is committed in these departments the impact may be significant, including damage to their reputation and image and even detrimental to service delivery to communities. Government and law enforcement agencies all over the world are faced with challenges of combating corruption and fraud. Fighting corruption and fraud committed via computers necessitates the need to close the gaps created by computers which were designed without consideration for future integration. Hence organisations should seek a way to link systems that were developed in isolation in order to simplify and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible. The aim of this study is to discuss factors affecting the implementation of application systems in large organisations with special reference to the South African Department of Defence (SA DOD). Current systems will be studied and a possible approach on how the DOD Vehicle Management Systems could be integrated will be recommended. This study introduces and defines the problem, describes different research methodologies including the methodology that was used. The topics of corruption and fraud, electronic commerce and e-government will be explored through intensive research of the extant literature, drawing interpretations to be applied to the empirical data gathered on fraud and corruption in DOD and on their ITC systems. Finally the findings and recommendations of this research, based on the theoretical and empirical data, will be presented. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Korporatiewe oornames en vennootskappe is algemeen in vandag se kompeterende omgewing. Dit is dus onvermydelik dat daar van ondernemings verwag word om informasie en telekommunikasie stelsels te integreer by die paasvind van sulke verbintenisse. Een van die mees belangrike uitdagings in elke onderneming, veral in die lig van globale markte met die gevolglike kompeterende uitdagings, is die vermoë vir effektiewe interaksie, samewerking en uitruil van inligting met besigheidsvennote en ook in die onderneming self. Talle sagteware stelsels in ondernemings is nie geïntegreer in ʼn homogene struktuur nie en gevolglik, omdat dit nie gesinkroniseer is nie, lei die deel en uitruil van informasie tot moontlike wederregtelike toe-eiening van sulke informasie. Sulke geïsoleerde stelsels in ondernemings kan dus die platvorms word van korrupsie en bedrog en lei tot ʼn verhoging van rekenaarmisdywe. Terwyl sleutel risiko areas steeds van toepassing is, is daar ook weer nuwe gevare wat te voorskyn kom. Die Staat se aandeelhouers vereis dat departemente aanspreeklik en verantwoordelik sal wees wat die belangrikheid van die deel en uitruil van inligting onderstreep en wat op sy beurt weer die integrasie van inter- asook intradepartementele stelsels noodsaak. As misdaad en korrupsie gepleeg word in hierdie departemente mag die impak betekenisvol wees. Dit sluit in skade aan hul reputasie en beeld en kan selfs dienslewering aan gemeenskappe belemmer. Om korrupsie en bedrog wat met rekenaars gepleeg word te beveg, is dit nodig om die gapings toe te maak wat deur ontwerpe geskep is sonder dat toekomstige integrasie inaggeneem is. Ondernenings moet dus ‘n manier soek om stelsels te koppel wat in isolasie ontwikkel was met die doel om besigheidsprosesse tot die grootste moontlike mate te vereenvoudig en te outomatiseer. Die doel van hierdie studie is om die faktore te ondersoek wat die implementering van stelsels beïnvloed in groot ondernemings met spesifieke verwysing na die Suid Afrikaanse Departement van Verdediging (SA DVV). Huidige sisteme sal bestudeer word en ʼn moontlike benadering sal aanbeveel word oor hoe die DVV se Voertuig Bestuurstelsels geintegreer kan word. In hierdie studie word die besiheids- asook die navorsings-probleem gedefineer. Die onderwerpe van korrupsie en bedrog, elektroniese handel en e-regering sal ondersoek word deur intensiewe navorsing van bestaande literatuur te doen. Dit word aangevul deur vertolkings van die hierdie toepaslike literatuur gepaard met empiriese data versameling oor bedrog en korrupsie in die DVV en die Departement se “ITK” stelsels. As finale stap sal die bevindings en aanbevelings van hierdie navorsing, gebasseer op teoretiese en impiriese data, aangebied word.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-08-29T17:29:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MARCOS FÁBIO PEREIRA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2009..pdf: 1188660 bytes, checksum: 5038133be1ae4622c35b2e3720504775 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-29T17:29:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MARCOS FÁBIO PEREIRA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2009..pdf: 1188660 bytes, checksum: 5038133be1ae4622c35b2e3720504775 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-08-23 / Aplicações corporativas têm como principal finalidade auxiliar nas atividades dos diversos setores de uma corporação. Atualmente existe uma grande necessidade por este tipo de aplicação e este número tende a aumentar com o surgimento de novas corporações, além do crescimento das já existentes. Do ponto de vista da Engenharia de Software, uma característica importante destas aplicações é o conjunto comum de requisitos não funcionais que apresentam. Aplicações corporativas devem prover, em geral: distribuição, facilitar a escalabilidade do software; balanceamento de carga e tolerância a falhas, para garantir robustez e alta disponibilidade; segurança, para garantir a proteção dos dados da corporação; serviços transacionais, para garantir a consistência dos dados e nas operações sobre eles; dentre outras funcionalidades. Além destes requisitos, tais aplicações precisam lidar com mudanças constantes nas regras de negócio das corporações. Dada a complexidade das aplicações, tais alterações, em geral, não podem ser previstas em tempo de projeto e normalmente afetam pontos do software que não foram preparados para mudanças. Além disto, durante esta alteração, muitas vezes a aplicação corporativa precisa ser mantida em execução para evitar perdas para a corporação. Sendo assim,tem-se como requisito primordial a possibilidade de evolução nas aplicações de forma dinâmica e não antecipada. Neste trabalho apresenta-se uma infra-estrutura para o desenvolvimento de aplicações corporativas que oferece o suporte à evolução dinâmica e não antecipada. Esta infra-estrutura é uma extensão de um modelo de componentes que oferece suporte nativo à evolução dinâmica e não antecipada, tornando a tarefa de evolução mais eficaz que em soluções já existentes. A validação do trabalho foi realizada através do desenvolvimento de aplicações corporativas a partir da infra-estrutura proposta.