Open distributed environments such as the World Wide Web facilitate information sharing but provide limited support to the protection of sensitive information and resources. Web services have become a part of components for quickly building a business process that satisfies the business goal of an organization, and access control is imperative to prevent the illegal access of sensitive information. In recent years, several researches have investigated the Web services-based workflow access control problem, and selection approaches for choosing the performer for each task so as to satisfy all access control constraints have been proposed. Based on the role-based access control model, we focus on two types of access control: separation of duties and binding of duties. Both role-level and participant-level of SoDs and of BoDs that need to be dynamically enforced are considered in this thesis. While dealing with complex and flexible business logics, we use rule engine to reasons with the business facts to get the result based on business rules. The proposed approach is evaluated by a workflow scenario and is shown to be flexible to develop new process with dynamic access control constraints at the cost of higher execution time.

This thesis describes a proposed design and implementation of a predictive maintenance engine developed to fulfill the requirements of the STO Company (Societe de transport de l'Outaouais) for maintaining vehicles in the fleet. Predictive maintenance is proven to be an effective approach and has become an industry standard in many fields. However, in the transportation industry, it is still in the stages of development due to the complexity of moving systems and the high level dimensions of involved parameters. Because it is almost impossible to cover all use cases of the vehicle operational process using one particular approach to predictive maintenance, in our work we take a systematic approach to designing a predictive maintenance system in several steps. Each step is implemented at the corresponding development stage based on the available data accumulated during system funсtioning cycle. % by dividing the entire system into modules and implementing different approaches. This thesis delves into the process of designing the general infrastructural model of the fleet management system (FMS), while focusing on the edge gateway module located on the vehicle and its function of detecting maintenance events based on current vehicle status. Several approaches may be used to detect maintenance events, such as a machine learning approach or an expert system-based approach. While the final version of fleet management system will use a hybrid approach, in this thesis paper we chose to focus on the second option based on expert knowledge, while machine learning has been left for future implementation since it requires extensive training data to be gathered prior to conducting experiments and actualizing operations. Inspired by the IDEA methodology which promotes mapping business rules as software classes and using the object-relational model for mapping objects to database entities, we take active database features as a base for developing a rule engine implementation. However, in contrast to the IDEA methodology which seeks to describe the specific system and its sub-modules, then build active rules based on the interaction between sub-systems, we are not aware of the functional structure of the vehicle due to its complexity. Instead, we develop a framework for creating specific active rules based on abstract classifications structured as ECA rules (event-condition-action), but with some expansions made due to the specifics of vehicle maintenance. The thesis describes an attempt to implement such a framework, and particularly the rule engine module, using active database features making it possible to encapsulate the active behaviour inside the database and decouple event detection from other functionalities. We provide the system with a set of example rules and then conduct a series of experiments analyzing the system for performance and correctness of events detection.

Route specification can be a time consuming process in flight planning, and at the same time, it should be done very diligently for the sake of a safe flight and to reach the target on time. An autonomous decision support system can save time spent on finding the most accurate and shortest route from departure to destination. Different kinds of external sources are used as input for making intelligent decisions by taking advantage of a rule based reasoning approach. In this regard, a rule based decision support concept based on Drools rule engine is proposed in order to ease the workload of pilots during route specification. / Flygruttsplanering är en tidskrävande process vid uppdragsplanering. Den bör göras med stor omsorg för att garantera en säker flygning som når målet på utsatt tid. Ett autonomt beslutstödssystem kan spara tid genom att hitta den säkraste och kortaste rutten mellan avgång och destination. I detta sammanhang används olika externa källor som indata och de ligger till grund för att fatta intelligenta beslut med hjälp av regelbaserat resonerande. Konceptet regelbaserat beslutsstöd är baserat på Drools regelmotor för att minska arbetsbördan för piloter under ruttplanering.

With the ascendency of data and the rise of interest in analytics, organizations are becoming more interested in the use of data to make their business processes more intelligent and reactive. BI applications are a common way that organizations integrate analytics in their processes. However, it can be days, weeks or even months before a manual response is undertaken based on a human interpreting a report. Even when information technology supports automatic responses within an organization, it is often implemented in an ad hoc manner without following a systematic framework. In this thesis, we present a reactive performance monitoring (RPM) framework which aims at automating the link from the analytical (how well is the operational achieving the strategic) to the operational (the particular process steps implemented within an organization that determine its behavior) aspects of businesses to bypass the strategic (the high level and long term goals an organization is trying to achieve) as needed and reduce the latency between knowledge and action. Our RPM framework is composed of an architecture, a methodology, and a rule environment which permits the redaction of rules possessing relevant conditions and actions. In addition, we present an OLAP rule engine which is demonstrated to be effective in our framework where events are streamed in, reacted upon in real-time, and stored in an OLAP database. To develop and evaluate our framework, two case studies were undertaken. The first was done using IBM technologies implementing an application made to identify patients at high risk of cancer recurrence. The second was done using open source technologies. With this second implementation, we created an application that has the goal of informing women from at risk populations of the different stages of pregnancy on a weekly basis.

Web application attack volume, complexity, and costs have risen as people, companies, and entire industries move online. Solutions implemented to defend web applications against malicious activity have traditionally been implemented at the network or host layer. While this is helpful for detecting some attacks, it does not provide the gran- ularity to see malicious behavior occurring at the application layer. The AppSensor project, an application level intrusion detection system (IDS), is an example of a tool that operates in this layer. AppSensor monitors users within the application by observing activity in suspicious areas not able to be seen by traditional network layer tools. This thesis aims to improve the state of web application security by supporting the development of the AppSensor project. Specifically, this thesis entails contributing a rules-based analysis engine to provide a new method for determining whether suspicious activity constitutes an attack. The rules-based method aggregates information from multiple sources into a logical rule to identify malicious activity, as opposed to relying on a single source of information. The rules-based analysis engine is designed to offer more flexible configuration for administrators and more accurate results than the incumbent analysis engine. Tests indicate that the new engine should not hamper the performance of AppSensor and use cases highlight how rules can be leveraged for more accurate results.

Denna studie ämnar att bidra till kunskap till skapandet av en regelmotor för hanteringen av verksamhetsregler ur ett systemutvecklarperspektiv. Studien har utförts hos företaget Mobilaris som själva har identiferat ett potentiellt behov av verktyg för att på bättre sätt hantera verksamhetsregler. Innan studien påbörjades, så utfördes en förstudie då regelmotor som skulle nyttjas valdes ut. Studien har genom en designstudie där en regelmotor iterativt har utvecklats för att passa systemet Planning & Scheduling™. Datainsamlingen är gjort genom enkäter och semistrukturerade intervjuer som föregåtts av en presentation av artefakten. Enkäterna har följt en kvantitativ modell som kallas System Usability Scale. De semistrukturerade intervjuerna har sedan analyserats med hjälp av en innehållsanalys för att kunna identifera behoven och göra artefakten bättre. Resultatet av studien är riktlinjer som med fördel kan användas när man implementerar en regelmotor för ett resursplanneringssystem. Studien har identiferat nio teoretiska koncept varav åtta har kunnat bekräftas utifrån empirin. Det har också identiferats fyra nya designprinciper som anses göra regelmotorn bättre. / This study aims to contribute knowledge to the creation of a rule engine for the management of business rules from a system developer perspective. The study was conducted at a company called Mobilaris, which has identifed a potential need for tool to better manage business rules in one of their systems. Before the study began, a pilot study was carried out to select the rule engine that where going to be used in the study. The study has through a design science study where a rule engine has iteratively developed to fit the system Planning & Scheduling™. The data collection is done through surveys and semi-structured interviews that are preceded by a presentation of the artifact. The surveys follow a model called the System Usability Scale. The semi-structured interviews was then analyzed using a content analysis to be able to identify needs to make the artifact better. The results of the studies are guidelines that can be benefcial when implementing a rule engine for a resource planning system. The study has identifed nine theoretical concepts, of which eight have been confrmed based on empirical evidence. Four new design principles have also been identifed that are considered to make the rule engine better.

Significant developments in microprocessor and sensor technology make wirelessly connected small computing devices widely available / hence they are being used frequently to collect data from the environment. In this study, we construct a framework in order to extract high level information in an environment containing such pervasive computing devices. In the framework, raw data originating from wireless sensors are collected using an event driven system and converted to simple events for transmission over a network to a central processing unit. We also utilize complex event processing approach incorporating temporal constraints, aggregation and sequencing of events in order to define complex events for extracting high level information from the collected simple events. We develop a prototype using easily accessible hardware and set it up in a classroom within our university. The results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, ease of deployment and successful application of the complex event processing framework.

Orientador: Manuel de Jesus Mendes / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T10:49:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Kamada_Aqueo_D.pdf: 3886405 bytes, checksum: 8e4f2791cf72214eac7fe3d18c8bc794 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: No atual mundo globalizado, com interações fortemente baseadas na Web, as relações entre pessoas, empresas e aos orgãos de governo estão sujeitas a mudanças cada vez mais rápidas. Esse cenário torna ainda mais crítico o já antigo problema de manutenção de sistemas, uma vez que as atualizações precisam ser realizadas para contemplar novos modelos de negócio, no contexto destas mudanças rápidas. Esta situação justifica a necessidade de uma abordagem que consiga capturar as mudanças nos negóios e rapidamente implementá-las nos sistemas computacionais. Considera-se que existem porções da lógica de negócio que são bastante voláteis e suscetíveis às mudanças e outras porções que são bastante estáveis e muito pouco suscetíveis às mudanças. Neste contexto, propõe-se um modelo para desenvolvimento rápido e execussão de serviços, baseado em regras de negócio. Neste modelo as porções voláteis são externalizadas como regras de negócio e as porções estáveis como serviços. A prova de conceito desta abordagem traduz regras modeladas em linguagem natural para regras no modelo da máquina de regras instanciada, que invoca os serviços / Abstract: In the current globalized world, characterized by strong Web based interactions, relationships between people, companies and government organizations are subject to changes that occur faster and faster. This scenario makes the old problem of system maintenance even more critical, as the updating of these systems needs to contemplate new business models in the context of these fast changes. This situation justifies the need for an approach that can capture business changes and quickly implement them into computational systems. It is considered that some business logic portions are quite volatile and susceptible to the changes and other portions are quite stable and less susceptible to the changes. In this context, a model for fast development and execution of services based on business rules is proposed. In this model the volatile portions are externalized as business rules and the stable portions as services. The proof of concept of this approach translates rules which are modeled in a natural language to rules in the model of the instantiated rule engine that invokes the services / Doutorado / Engenharia de Computação / Doutor em Engenharia Elétrica

This diploma thesis defines the issue of Business Rule Approach and the technological aspects connected. The aim is to enclose this relatively new topic to the leader. This paper includes the essential techniques and recommendations for rule approach. The thesis includes basic definition of important terms and theoretical overview of used technology. Important point is to highlight the main benefits for a business people that come up from implementing rule based system into the company's information system. The part of this paper is exploring dependencies between business rules, processes and workflows. There are two classic ways to analyze and design information systems -- structure based and object based. According to business needs the new way arises -- the business rule approach. The practical part include concept of functional specification of an application using a module for analyzing a evaluating business rules. The basic policies how the Rule Engines are implemented into the information systems are specified in the technological chapter along with description. There are also elementary operations which can one do with the rules. In one part of the thesis is a description of an software tool developed by company named ILOG. It is called JRules and it provide a full-fledged tool by which you can design, develop, implement and test whole scale business rule projects.

The main goal of this thesis is to develop a new help-desk ticket management system for the Etnetera Company. The chosen platform is Java. A secondary objective is to test a suitability of using a rule engine system for this type of applications. The first part of the thesis contains a theoretical introduction to business rule systems, which is followed by a part evaluating and presenting in a detail three such systems. The chosen system used for the implementation is JBoss Drools. A project environment, description of the current situation and reasons for the development of the new system are listed in the next part. The following chapter deals with the analysis of the requirements and the next-to-last chapter describes the design and implementation of the new system. The last chapter contains documentation. The main benefit of the work is a newly developed system that optimally supports the process of processing a request and other related processes at the Etnetera Company, thereby reducing the amount of unnecessary administrative work. Another benefit is a practical demonstration and deployment of business rule system for developing similar applications.