Ever increasing complexity of software systems, and distributed and dynamic nature of today’s enterprise level computing have initiated the demand for more self aware, flexible and robust systems, where human beings could delegate much of their work to software agents. The Semantic Web presents new opportunities for enabling, modeling, sharing and reasoning with knowledge available on the web. These opportunities are made possible through the formal representation of knowledge domains with ontologies. Semantic Web is a vision of World Wide Web (WWW) level knowledge representation system where each piece of information is equipped with well defined meaning; enabling software agents to understand and process that information. This, in turn, enables people and software agents to work in a more smooth and collaborative way. In this thesis we have first presented a detailed overview of Semantic web vision by describing its fundamental building blocks which constitutes famous layered architecture of Semantic Web. We have discussed the mile stones Semantic Web vision has achieved so far in the areas of research, education and industry and on the other hand we have presented some of the social, business and technological barriers in the way of this vision to become reality. We have also evaluated that how Semantic vision is effecting some of the current technological and research areas like Web Services, Software Agents, Knowledge Engineering and Grid Computing. In the later part of thesis we have focused on problem of ontology mapping for agents on semantic web. We have precisely defined the problem and categorized it on the basis of syntactic and semantic aspects. Finally we have produced a survey of the current state of the art in ontology mapping research. In the survey we have presented some of the selected ontology mapping systems and described their functionality on the basis of the way they approach the problem, their efficiency, effectiveness and the part of problem space they cover. We consider that the survey of current state of the art in ontology mapping will provide a solid basis for further research in this field. / Ever increasing complexity of software systems, and distributed and dynamic nature of today’s enterprise level computing have initiated the demand for more self aware, flexible and robust systems, where human beings could delegate much of their work to software agents. The Semantic Web presents new opportunities for enabling, modeling, sharing and reasoning with knowledge available on the web. These opportunities are made possible through the formal representation of knowledge domains with ontologies. Semantic Web is a vision of World Wide Web (WWW) level knowledge representation system where each piece of information is equipped with well defined meaning; enabling software agents to understand and process that information. This, in turn, enables people and software agents to work in a more smooth and collaborative way. In this thesis we have first presented a detailed overview of Semantic web vision by describing its fundamental building blocks which constitutes famous layered architecture of Semantic Web. We have discussed the mile stones Semantic Web vision has achieved so far in the areas of research, education and industry and on the other hand we have presented some of the social, business and technological barriers in the way of this vision to become reality. We have also evaluated that how Semantic vision is effecting some of the current technological and research areas like Web Services, Software Agents, Knowledge Engineering and Grid Computing. In the later part of thesis we have focused on problem of ontology mapping for agents on semantic web. We have precisely defined the problem and categorized it on the basis of syntactic and semantic aspects. Finally we have produced a survey of the current state of the art in ontology mapping research. In the survey we have presented some of the selected ontology mapping systems and described their functionality on the basis of the way they approach the problem, their efficiency, effectiveness and the part of problem space they cover. We consider that the survey of current state of the art in ontology mapping will provide a solid basis for further research in this field. / Folkparksvagen 18:01,372 40 Ronneby. Sweden

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Yes / This paper presents a critical evaluation framework for a linguistically orientated conversational software agent (CSA) (Panesar, 2017). The CSA prototype investigates the integration, intersection and interface of the language, knowledge, and speech act constructions (SAC) based on a grammatical object (Nolan, 2014), and the sub-­‐model of belief, desires and intention (BDI) (Rao and Georgeff, 1995) and dialogue management (DM) for natural language processing (NLP). A long-­‐standing issue within NLP CSA systems is refining the accuracy of interpretation to provide realistic dialogue to support the human-­‐to-­‐computer communication. This prototype constitutes three phase models: (1) a linguistic model based on a functional linguistic theory – Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) (Van Valin Jr, 2005); (2) Agent Cognitive Model with two inner models: (a) knowledge representation model employing conceptual graphs serialised to Resource Description Framework (RDF); (b) a planning model underpinned by BDI concepts (Wooldridge, 2013) and intentionality (Searle, 1983) and rational interaction (Cohen and Levesque, 1990); and (3) a dialogue model employing common ground (Stalnaker, 2002). The evaluation approach for this Java-­‐based prototype and its phase models is a multi-­‐approach driven by grammatical testing (English language utterances), software engineering and agent practice. A set of evaluation criteria are grouped per phase model, and the testing framework aims to test the interface, intersection and integration of all phase models and their inner models. This multi-­‐approach encompasses checking performance both at internal processing, stages per model and post-­‐implementation assessments of the goals of RRG, and RRG based specifics tests. The empirical evaluations demonstrate that the CSA is a proof-­‐of-­‐concept, demonstrating RRG’s fitness for purpose for describing, and explaining phenomena, language processing and knowledge, and computational adequacy. Contrastingly, evaluations identify the complexity of lower level computational mappings of NL – agent to ontology with semantic gaps, and further addressed by a lexical bridging consideration (Panesar, 2017).

yes / This paper presents a critical evaluation framework for a linguistically motivated conversational software agent (CSA). The CSA prototype investigates the integration, intersection and interface of the language, knowledge, and speech act constructions (SAC) based on a grammatical object, and the sub-model of belief, desires and intention (BDI) and dialogue management (DM) for natural language processing (NLP). A long-standing issue within NLP CSA systems is refining the accuracy of interpretation to provide realistic dialogue to support human-to-computer communication. This prototype constitutes three phase models: (1) a linguistic model based on a functional linguistic theory – Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), (2) an Agent Cognitive Model with two inner models: (a) a knowledge representation model, (b) a planning model underpinned by BDI concepts, intentionality and rational interaction, and (3) a dialogue model. The evaluation strategy for this Java-based prototype is multi-approach driven by grammatical testing (English language utterances), software engineering and agent practice. A set of evaluation criteria are grouped per phase model, and the testing framework aims to test the interface, intersection and integration of all phase models. The empirical evaluations demonstrate that the CSA is a proof-of-concept, demonstrating RRG’s fitness for purpose for describing, and explaining phenomena, language processing and knowledge, and computational adequacy. Contrastingly, evaluations identify the complexity of lower level computational mappings of NL – agent to ontology with semantic gaps, and further addressed by a lexical bridging solution.

In this research, a multi-agent system called KMAS is presented that models an environment of intelligent, autonomous, rational, and adaptive agents that reason about trust, and adapt trust based on experience. Agents reason and adapt using a modification of the k-Nearest Neighbor algorithm called (k X n) Nearest Neighbor where k neighbors recommend reputation values for trust during each of n interactions. Reputation allows a single agent to receive recommendations about the trustworthiness of others. One goal is to present a recommendation model of trust that outperforms MAS architectures relying solely on direct agent interaction. A second goal is to converge KMAS to an emergent system state where only successful cooperation is allowed. Three experiments are chosen to compare KMAS against a non-(k X n) MAS, and between different variations of KMAS execution. Research results show KMAS converges to the desired state, and in the context of this research, KMAS outperforms a direct interaction-based system.

[pt] O projeto físico de bancos de dados cumpre um papel primordial para assegurar um desempenho adequado. Atualmente, existe uma grande quantidade de trabalhos e ferramentas na área de seleção automática do projeto físico. Tais ferramentas, contudo, adotam uma abordagem offline na solução do problema e transferem para o DBA, dentre outras tarefas, a decisão de executar ou não as recomendações sugeridas. Todavia, em ambientes dinâmicos, com consultas ad-hoc, torna-se bastante complexo identificar configurações de projeto físico que sejam adequadas. Recentemente, algumas iniciativas apresentaram descrições de protótipos que implementam funcionalidades de sintonia automática. Estes trabalhos, porém, adotam uma abordagem intrusiva e funcionam apenas com um SGBD específico. Neste trabalho, propõe-se uma abordagem não-intrusiva para a manutenção automática e on-the-fly do projeto físico de bancos de dados. A abordagem proposta é completamente desacoplada do código do SGBD, pode ser utilizada com qualquer SGBD e executada sem intervenção humana. A estratégia adotada baseia-se em heurísticas que executam continuamente e, sempre que necessário, modificam o projeto físico corrente, reagindo a alterações na carga de trabalho. Para comprovar a viabilidade das idéias apresentadas, a abordagem proposta foi instanciada para solucionar dois importantes problemas relacionados ao projeto físico: a manutenção automática de índices e de clusters alternativos de dados. / [en] The physical design of a database plays a critical role in performance. There has been considerable work on automated physical design tuning for database systems. Existing solutions require offline invocations of the tuning tool and depend on DBAs identifying representative workloads manually. However, in dynamic environments involving various ad-hoc queries it is difficult to identify potentially useful physical design in advance. Recently, a few initiatives present brief descriptions of prototypes that address some aspects of online physical tuning. Nevertheless, these references work in an intrusive manner and work only with a specific DBMS. In this work, we propose a non intrusive approach to automated and on-the-fly physical design problems, in order to speed up processing of subsequent queries. Specifically, we design algorithms that are always-on and continuously modify the current physical design, reacting to changes in the query workload. To prove the viability of the presented ideas, the proposed approach was instantiated to solve two major problems related to the database physical design: indexing and alternative data clusters automatic maintenance.

A área de engenharia de software passou por muitas alterações desde sua criação. Vista como uma técnica para aumentar a produtividade e baixar os custos, a reutilização de software é um dos principais estudos dos pesquisadores da área de computação. Como a reconfiguração de software é na verdade a reutilização de um software, porém com algumas adaptações, este trabalho tem por objetivo desenvolver uma metodologia e um conjunto de ferramentas que agilizem e facilitem o processo de reutilização/reconfiguração de componentes de software. A associação destas ferramentas constitui um mecanismo de armazenamento, indexação, busca e recuperação de artefatos de software. Este mecanismo trabalha com a estrutura dos projetos de software e também com as relações semânticas existentes entre os termos utilizados no software. Para representar a estrutura interna do software (características e relacionamentos) utiliza-se de um metamodelo. Já as relações semânticas são representadas por meio de um tesauro. Por fim, todas as informações do metamodelo e do tesauro são armazenadas em um repositório de software que é manipulado por agentes de software. / Software engineering area suffered many transformations since its creation. Usually seen as a technique to raise productivity and decrease costs, softwares reusing is one of the main studies in computer field. Since softwares reconfiguration is, in essence, a software reuse, although with some adaptations, this work aims to develop a methodology and a set of tools that speed up and facilitate the process of reuse/reconfiguration of software components. These tools association constitute a mechanism of storing, indexing, search and recovering of software artifacts. This mechanism works with the structure of software projects and also with semantic relationships that exist between the software\'s terms. To represent software\'s inner structure (features and relationships) a metamodel is used. Semantic relationships are represented by a thesaurus. Finally, all the informations from metamodel and thesaurus are stored in a software repository, which is manipulated by software agents.

[pt] O aumento da complexidade dos SGBDs comerciais e a carga que suportam, além da crescente utilização destes por pessoal pouco familiarizado com a administração de bancos de dados, entre outras causas, sugerem a introdução de técnicas que automatizem o processo de sintonia de bancos de dados. A auto-sintonia (self-tuning) é uma tecnologia que permite criar sistemas adaptáveis que possam manter um bom desempenho, minimizando no possível a interação do administrador com o sistema. Este trabalho propõe uma abordagem para o ajuste automático dos parâmetros em um SGBD usando agentes de software. A tarefa de sintonia é tratada nesta pesquisa como um problema global, dado que alterações de um parâmetro podem se refletir em outros. Os detalhes da arquitetura, sua implementação e avaliação de funcionamento são também discutidos nesta dissertação. / [en] The increasing complexity of the commercial DBMSs as well the workload they manage, besides the fact that many users do not have deep knowledge about database administration, among other reasons, strongly suggests the introduction of techniques that automates the database tuning process. Self- Tuning, or auto-tuning, is a feature that makes systems adaptable in order to keep a good overall performance, reducing as possible the interaction between the administrator and the system. This work proposes an approach for the automatic tuning of DBMSs parameters using an architecture based on software agents. We consider tuning as a global issue, given that changes of a single parameter can be reflected in others. The architecture details, ets implementation and a practical evaluation are also discussed in this dissertation.

[pt] Dispositivos portáteis dotados de computador são cada vez mais utilizados em diversos domínios de aplicações. Juntamente com as redes de telecomunicações provêem a base tecnológica para a computação móvel. Neste ambiente, os Sistemas de Gerência de Bancos de Dados (SGBDs) podem fornecer todos os mecanismos para confiança, segurança, disponibilidade, integridade e acesso eficiente a dados persistentes. Estes SGBDs podem estar localizados na rede com fio (fixa), desempenhando seu papel convencional de servidor de banco de dados, ou podem prover dados para computadores móveis e tecnologias relacionadas. Vários modelos para transações em banco de dados para o ambiente de computação móvel têm sido propostos. No entanto, não satisfazem plenamente as características únicas deste tipo de ambiente, tais como desconexões freqüentes, fraca conectividade na rede sem fio e a movimentação dos clientes. Esta tese tem por objetivo propor um modelo de computação que permita a integração de um SGBD a um ambiente de computação móvel. É apresentado um novo modelo de transações de banco de dados em múltiplos níveis no sentido de garantir o atendimento dos requisitos da computação móvel e as propriedades ACID de transações, onde há participação efetiva do SGBD. O modelo é definido em lógica de primeira ordem seguindo o formalismo ACTA. A implementação desse modelo de transações é apresentada em uma arquitetura que faz uso das abordagens de frameworks orientados a objetos e agentes de software, de forma a tratar com maior eficiência as especificidades do ambiente de computação móvel. Finalmente, é feita uma comparação entre alguns dos modelos mais relevantes de transações para bancos de dados no ambiente de computação móvel e o modelo proposto nesta tese, ressaltando o tratamento dado às propriedades ACID das transações de banco de dados. / [en] Portable computerized devices have become widely used in many different application domains and are, together with telecommunication networks, the underlying technology for mobile computing. In this environment Data- base Management Systems (DBMS) may provide reliability, security and availability, besides data integrity and efficiency persistent data access. These DBMS might be located either in conventional (fixed) networks, with the conventional data server role, or might serve global and local data for mobile computers and related technology. There are many transaction models for mobile database management. However, the particular characteristics of this mobile environment, such as frequent disconnections, weak and intermittent connectivity of wireless networks and clients movement, are not always well addressed. The goal of this thesis is to propose a computational model that enables the integration of a DBMS to a mobile environment. Indeed, we present a new multi-level database transactional model in order to handle mobile requirements and ACID transaction properties, where a DBMS is present. Our model is defined using the ACTA formalism based in first-order logic. The implementation of proposed transaction model becomes feasible through the use of object-oriented frameworks and software agents, with gave support to deal with the particularities of the mobile computing environment. Finally, we give a comparison between the most relevant transaction models for the mobile computing environment and our proposed model, emphasizing the treatment given to the ACID transactions properties.

A área de engenharia de software passou por muitas alterações desde sua criação. Vista como uma técnica para aumentar a produtividade e baixar os custos, a reutilização de software é um dos principais estudos dos pesquisadores da área de computação. Como a reconfiguração de software é na verdade a reutilização de um software, porém com algumas adaptações, este trabalho tem por objetivo desenvolver uma metodologia e um conjunto de ferramentas que agilizem e facilitem o processo de reutilização/reconfiguração de componentes de software. A associação destas ferramentas constitui um mecanismo de armazenamento, indexação, busca e recuperação de artefatos de software. Este mecanismo trabalha com a estrutura dos projetos de software e também com as relações semânticas existentes entre os termos utilizados no software. Para representar a estrutura interna do software (características e relacionamentos) utiliza-se de um metamodelo. Já as relações semânticas são representadas por meio de um tesauro. Por fim, todas as informações do metamodelo e do tesauro são armazenadas em um repositório de software que é manipulado por agentes de software. / Software engineering area suffered many transformations since its creation. Usually seen as a technique to raise productivity and decrease costs, softwares reusing is one of the main studies in computer field. Since softwares reconfiguration is, in essence, a software reuse, although with some adaptations, this work aims to develop a methodology and a set of tools that speed up and facilitate the process of reuse/reconfiguration of software components. These tools association constitute a mechanism of storing, indexing, search and recovering of software artifacts. This mechanism works with the structure of software projects and also with semantic relationships that exist between the software\'s terms. To represent software\'s inner structure (features and relationships) a metamodel is used. Semantic relationships are represented by a thesaurus. Finally, all the informations from metamodel and thesaurus are stored in a software repository, which is manipulated by software agents.