Software agents interact to solve tasks, the details of which need to be described in a language understandable by all the actors involved. Ontologies provide a formalism for defining both the domain of the task and the terminology used to describe it. However, finding a shared ontology has proved difficult: different institutions and developers have different needs and formalise them in different ontologies. In a closed environment it is possible to force all the participants to share the same ontology, while in open and distributed environments ontology mapping can provide interoperability between heterogeneous interacting actors. However, conventional mapping systems focus on acquiring static information, and on mapping whole ontologies, which is infeasible in open systems. This thesis shows a different approach to the problem of heterogeneity. It starts from the intuitive idea that when similar situations arise, similar interactions are performed. If the interactions between actors are specified in formal scripts, shared by all the participants, then when the same situation arises, the same script is used. The main hypothesis that this thesis aims to demonstrate is that by analysing different runs of these scripts it is possible to create a statistical model of the interactions, that reflect the frequency of terms in messages and of ontological relations between terms in different messages. The model is then used during a run of a known interaction to compute the probability distribution for terms in received messages. The probability distribution provides additional information, contextual to the interaction, that can be used by a traditional ontology matcher in order to improve efficiency, by reducing the comparisons to the most likely ones given the context, and possibly both recall and precision, in particular helping disambiguation. The ability to create a model that reflects real phenomena in this sort of environment is evaluated by analysing the quality of the predictions, in particular verifying how various features of the interactions, such as their non-stationarity, affect the predictions. The actual improvements to a matcher we developed are also evaluated. The overall results are very promising, as using the predictor can lower the overall computation time for matching by ten times, while maintaining or in some cases improving recall and precision.

With the rise of electronic integration between organizations, the need for a precise specification of interaction behavior increases. Information systems, replacing interaction previously carried out by humans via phone, faxes and emails, require a precise specification for handling all possible situations. Such interaction behavior is described in process choreographies. Choreographies enumerate the roles involved, the allowed interactions, the message contents and the behavioral dependencies between interactions. Choreographies serve as interaction contract and are the starting point for adapting existing business processes and systems or for implementing new software components. As a thorough analysis and comparison of choreography modeling languages is missing in the literature, this thesis introduces a requirements framework for choreography languages and uses it for comparing current choreography languages. Language proposals for overcoming the limitations are given for choreography modeling on the conceptual and on the technical level. Using an interconnection modeling style, behavioral dependencies are defined on a per-role basis and different roles are interconnected using message flow. This thesis reveals a number of modeling "anti-patterns" for interconnection modeling, motivating further investigations on choreography languages following the interaction modeling style. Here, interactions are seen as atomic building blocks and the behavioral dependencies between them are defined globally. Two novel language proposals are put forward for this modeling style which have already influenced industrial standardization initiatives. While avoiding many of the pitfalls of interconnection modeling, new anomalies can arise in interaction models. A choreography might not be realizable, i.e. there does not exist a set of interacting roles that collectively realize the specified behavior. This thesis investigates different dimensions of realizability. / Elektronische Integration zwischen Organisationen erfordert eine präzise Spezifikation des Interaktionsverhaltens: Informationssysteme, die Kommunikation per Telefon, Fax und Email ablösen, können nicht so flexibel und selbständig auf Ausnahmesituationen reagieren wie Menschen. Choreographien ermöglichen es, Interaktionsverhalten genau zu spezifizieren. Diese Modelle zählen die beteiligten Rollen, die erlaubten Interaktionen, Nachrichteninhalte und Verhaltensabhängigkeiten auf und dienen somit als Interaktionsvertrag zwischen den Organisationen. Auch als Ausgangspunkt für eine Anpassung existierender Prozesse und Systeme sowie für die Implementierung neuer Softwarekomponenten finden Choreographien Anwendung. Da ein Vergleich von Choreographiemodellierungssprachen in der Literatur bislang fehlt, präsentiert diese Arbeit einen Anforderungskatalog, der als Basis für eine Evaluierung existierender Sprachen angewandt wird. Im Kern führt diese Arbeit Spracherweiterungen ein, um die Schwächen existierender Sprachen zu überwinden. Die vorgestellten Erweiterungen adressieren dabei Modellierung auf konzeptioneller und auf technischer Ebene. Beim Verlinkungsmodellierungsstil werden Verhaltensabhängigkeiten innerhalb der beteiligten Rollen spezifiziert und das Interaktionsverhalten entsteht durch eine Verlinkung der Kommunikationsaktivitäten. Diese Arbeit stellt einige "Anti-Pattern" für die Verlinkungsmodellierung vor, welche wiederum Untersuchungen bzgl. Choreographiesprachen des Interaktionsmodellierungsstils motivieren. Hier werden Interaktionen als atomare Blöcke verstanden und Verhaltensabhängigkeiten werden global definiert. Diese Arbeit führt zwei neue Choreographiesprachen dieses zweiten Modellierungsstils ein, welche bereits in industrielle Standardisierungsinitiativen eingeflossen sind. Während auf der einen Seite zahlreiche Fallstricke der Verlinkungsmodellierung umgangen werden, können in Interaktionsmodellen allerdings neue Anomalien entstehen. Eine Choreographie kann z.B. "unrealisierbar" sein, d.h. es ist nicht möglich interagierende Rollen zu finden, die zusammen genommen das spezifizierte Verhalten abbilden. Dieses Phänomen wird in dieser Arbeit über verschiedene Dimensionen von Realisierbarkeit untersucht.

This master‟s thesis is part of LP1 Formation, Knowledge and Professional Development research line from the Graduate Program in Education of the Federal University of Santa Maria, aiming at understanding the influences of digital pedagogical ambience in learning of teaching and in the production of digital didactic choreographies of elementary school teachers. The master‟s thesis unfolds in the following specific objectives: a) to know the configuration of digital pedagogical ambience in the context of first years of elementary school in a basic education school; b) to identify how teachers organize their pedagogical practices using digital technologies; c) to recognize how teachers manifest technological pedagogical knowledge. This study adopts a qualitative approach of sociocultural nature as its methodology, with narrative interviews, contributing to the elucidation of the proposed theme. Results demonstrate that the school researched is promoting a digital pedagogical ambience through a computer laboratory, properly maintained and available to all teachers and students; teaching training about the operational system LINUX and tools and applications; assistance and guidance from a technologically fluent teacher, who is responsible for the laboratory; and that this space is already part of the school culture. Teachers redefied themselves through reflections on their practices, sharing with peers and through the appropriation of technological pedagogical knowledge. Therewith, they include activities involving technology in their pedagogical practices, making the identification development of the four levels of didactic choreographies possible: anticipation, scene placement, learning basic model and student learning product. / Esta dissertação insere-se na LP1 - linha de pesquisa Formação, Saberes e Desenvolvimento Profissional do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, tendo como objetivo geral compreender quais as influências da ambiência pedagógica digital na aprendizagem da docência e na produção de coreografias didáticas digitais nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental. Desdobra-se nos seguintes objetivos específicos: a) conhecer a configuração da ambiência pedagógica digital no contexto dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental em uma escola de educação básica; b) identificar como as professoras organizam sua dinâmica pedagógica com a utilização das tecnologias digitais; c) reconhecer como as professoras manifestam os saberes pedagógicos tecnológicos. Teve como metodologia a abordagem qualitativa de cunho sociocultural com entrevistas narrativas, contribuindo para a elucidação do tema proposto. Os resultados demonstram que a escola pesquisada é promovedora de uma ambiência pedagógica digital, por meio de um laboratório de informática, devidamente mantido e disponível a todos os professores e alunos; formação docente sobre o programa operacional LINUX e ferramentas e aplicativos; auxílio e orientação de um professor responsável pelo laboratório com fluência tecnológica; e que esse espaço já faz parte da cultura escolar. Os professores se reconstruíram por meio de reflexões sobre as suas práticas, compartilhamento entre pares e por meio da apropriação dos saberes pedagógicos tecnológicos. Com isso, incluem no trabalho pedagógico atividades envolvendo as tecnologias, tornando possível a identificação do desenvolvimento dos quatro níveis das coreografias didáticas: antecipação, a colocação em cena; o modelo base da aprendizagem e o produto da aprendizagem do estudante.

Servicos web sao componentes de software fracamente acoplados projetados para promover a comunicacao interoperavel entre aplicacoes na Internet. O acesso a servicos web da-se de maneira padronizada (via protocolos definidos pelo W3C), independente da linguagem de programacao, sistema operacional ou plataforma em que sao desenvolvidos. Devido a essas caracteristicas, servicos simples podem ser combinados em servicos mais completos. Coreografia consiste em uma abordagem descentralizada para a composicao de servicos. Diferentemente de orquestracoes, abordagem na qual servicos distribuidos sao coordenados de modo centralizado, a interacao entre os servicos de uma coreografia e colaborativa e a coordenacao descentralizada. Apesar das vantagens, o desenvolvimento de coreografias, incluindo as atividades de testes, nao e algo consolidado. O objetivo desta dissertacao foi desenvolver uma arcabouco de teste que facilite o uso de Desenvolvimento Guiado por Testes (Test-Driven Development, TDD) em coreografias de servicos web. Rehearsal, o arcabouco proposto, fornece funcionalidades para o teste automatizado de (i) servicos web atomicos (teste de unidade); (ii) composicao de servicos (teste de integracao) e (iii) uma parte ou toda a coreografia (teste de aceitacao). Esses testes podem ser implementados utilizando funcionalidades do arcabouco, tais como a criacao dinamica de clientes para servicos web, o interceptador de mensagens e a abstracao da coreografia em objetos Java. Alem disso, Rehearsal facilita a criacao e uso de Mocks de servicos web, uma importante pratica de TDD. Além de avaliar o arcabouco desenvolvido, um estudo ex- ploratorio qualitativo foi conduzido com estudantes de Ciencia da Computacao. De acordo com os resultados obtidos, as funcionalidades do Rehearsal mostraram-se adequadas para a utilizacao de TDD em coreografias de servicos web. / Web services are loosely-coupled software components designed to support interoperable machine- to-machine interaction over the Internet. To achieve such interoperability, web services are accesible through W3C web standards, independently of which language, operating system, or hardware platform they are developed. Due to these characteristics, simple web services can be combined in more complex ones. Choreographies are a distributed approach for composing web services. Compared to orchestrations, which have a centralized approach to distributed service management, the interaction among the choreographed services is collaborative with decentralized coordination. Despite the advantages, choreography development, including the testing activities, is not consolidated. The goal of this research is to develop a testing framework to support Test-Driven Development (TDD) of choreographies. Rehearsal, the proposed framework, provides features for automating the testing of (i) atomic web services (unit testing); (ii) their integration in the choreography (integration testing); and (iii) part of or the entire choreography (acceptance testing). These several levels of testing are implemented by using framework features such as the dynamic generation of web service clients, message interception, and the abstraction of the choreography into Java objects. In addition, Rehearsal supports important practices of TDD such as service mocking. To assess the developed framework, we conducted a qualitative exploratory study with Computer Science students. According to the results obtained, the features of Rehearsal were adequate for applying TDD to web service choreography development successfully.

This thesis presents new numerical methods for solving differential equations with periodicity. Spectral methods for solving linear and nonlinear ODEs, linear ODE eigenvalue problems and linear time-dependent PDEs on a periodic interval are reviewed, and a novel approach for computing multiplication matrices is presented. Choreographies, periodic solutions of the n-body problem that share a common orbit, are computed for the first time to high accuracy using an algorithm based on approximation by trigonometric polynomials and optimization techniques with exact gradient and exact Hessian matrix. New choreographies in spaces of constant curvature are found. Exponential integrators for solving periodic semilinear stiff PDEs in 1D, 2D and 3D periodic domains are reviewed, and 30 exponential integrators are compared on 11 PDEs. It is shown that the complicated fifth-, sixth- and seventh-order methods do not really outperform one of the simplest exponential integrators, the fourth-order ETDRK4 scheme of Cox and Matthews. Finally, algorithms for solving semilinear stiff PDEs on the sphere with spectral accuracy in space and fourth-order accuracy in time are proposed. These are based on a new variant of the double Fourier sphere method in coefficient space and standard implicit-explicit time-stepping schemes. A comparison is made against exponential integrators and it is found that implicit-explicit schemes perform better. The algorithms described in each chapter of this thesis have been implemented in MATLAB and made available as part of Chebfun.

Servicos web sao componentes de software fracamente acoplados projetados para promover a comunicacao interoperavel entre aplicacoes na Internet. O acesso a servicos web da-se de maneira padronizada (via protocolos definidos pelo W3C), independente da linguagem de programacao, sistema operacional ou plataforma em que sao desenvolvidos. Devido a essas caracteristicas, servicos simples podem ser combinados em servicos mais completos. Coreografia consiste em uma abordagem descentralizada para a composicao de servicos. Diferentemente de orquestracoes, abordagem na qual servicos distribuidos sao coordenados de modo centralizado, a interacao entre os servicos de uma coreografia e colaborativa e a coordenacao descentralizada. Apesar das vantagens, o desenvolvimento de coreografias, incluindo as atividades de testes, nao e algo consolidado. O objetivo desta dissertacao foi desenvolver uma arcabouco de teste que facilite o uso de Desenvolvimento Guiado por Testes (Test-Driven Development, TDD) em coreografias de servicos web. Rehearsal, o arcabouco proposto, fornece funcionalidades para o teste automatizado de (i) servicos web atomicos (teste de unidade); (ii) composicao de servicos (teste de integracao) e (iii) uma parte ou toda a coreografia (teste de aceitacao). Esses testes podem ser implementados utilizando funcionalidades do arcabouco, tais como a criacao dinamica de clientes para servicos web, o interceptador de mensagens e a abstracao da coreografia em objetos Java. Alem disso, Rehearsal facilita a criacao e uso de Mocks de servicos web, uma importante pratica de TDD. Além de avaliar o arcabouco desenvolvido, um estudo ex- ploratorio qualitativo foi conduzido com estudantes de Ciencia da Computacao. De acordo com os resultados obtidos, as funcionalidades do Rehearsal mostraram-se adequadas para a utilizacao de TDD em coreografias de servicos web. / Web services are loosely-coupled software components designed to support interoperable machine- to-machine interaction over the Internet. To achieve such interoperability, web services are accesible through W3C web standards, independently of which language, operating system, or hardware platform they are developed. Due to these characteristics, simple web services can be combined in more complex ones. Choreographies are a distributed approach for composing web services. Compared to orchestrations, which have a centralized approach to distributed service management, the interaction among the choreographed services is collaborative with decentralized coordination. Despite the advantages, choreography development, including the testing activities, is not consolidated. The goal of this research is to develop a testing framework to support Test-Driven Development (TDD) of choreographies. Rehearsal, the proposed framework, provides features for automating the testing of (i) atomic web services (unit testing); (ii) their integration in the choreography (integration testing); and (iii) part of or the entire choreography (acceptance testing). These several levels of testing are implemented by using framework features such as the dynamic generation of web service clients, message interception, and the abstraction of the choreography into Java objects. In addition, Rehearsal supports important practices of TDD such as service mocking. To assess the developed framework, we conducted a qualitative exploratory study with Computer Science students. According to the results obtained, the features of Rehearsal were adequate for applying TDD to web service choreography development successfully.

Berlin-based Singaporean dance and multimedia artist Choy Ka Fai experiments with digital mapping, the storage and transmission of choreography and Asian spiritual dance practices. He has built a comprehensive and growing archive of recorded choreographies from artistic, spiritual, folkloric, and pop cultural contexts. It includes avatars of dancers, field and video recordings of dances and rituals and interviews with various protagonists. Choy Ka Fai explores altered and expanded corporeal states and the relationships between bodies and both worldly and spiritual phenomena. In his work, organic, material and data-based bodies appear side by side on an equal level and futuristic and queer potentials of human and digital bodies are made visible. In conversation with Lucie Ortmann Choy Ka Fai emphasises the fundamental importance of the practise of archiving for his work. He talks about his methods of showing and sharing his extensive, collected and created material in constantly new formats, ranging from performance, video installation, lecture to digital games, and how he continues to develop it further. He also reflects on the challenging processes of transferring and translating spiritual practises and dance cultures to different contexts and audiences.

Coreografias de serviços Web representam uma forma mais escalável e flexível de compor serviços do que uma abordagem centralizada como a orquestração, e seu papel na integração e comunicação de sistemas de larga escala é vital para os objetivos da SOC (Computação Orientada a Serviços) e da Internet do Futuro. Atualmente coreografias de serviços Web possuem vários desafios de pesquisa, dos quais a qualidade de serviço (QoS) e o monitoramento de coreografias de serviçosWeb são linhas importantes. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor e implementar um mecanismo de monitoramento não intrusivo de coreografias de serviços Web baseado em SLAs (Acordos de Nível de Serviço) que especificam as restrições de atributos de QoS de maneira probabilística. Esta dissertação propõe um mecanismo para coreografias de serviços Web que: (1) define requisitos de QoS; (2) especifica contratos probabilísticos sobre parâmetros de QoS usando SLA; e (3) realiza um monitoramento não intrusivo de coreografias de serviços Web para detectar violações de SLA. / Web services choreographies are a more scalable and flexible way to compose services than a centralized approach like orchestrations, and its role in the integration and communication of large-scale systems is vital for the goals of SoC (Service Oriented Computing) and Future Internet. Currently,Web services choreographies have several research challenges. From all challenges, quality of service (QoS) and monitoring of Web services choreography are important research lines. The goal of this work is to propose and implement a mechanism for non-intrusive monitoring of Web services choreography based on SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that define constraints of QoS attributes in a probabilistic way. This thesis proposes a mechanism for Web services choreographies that:(1) defines QoS requirements; (2) specifies probabilistic contracts on QoS parameters using SLAs; and (3) monitors, non-intrusively, the enactment of Web services choreographies to detect SLA violations.

Coreografias de serviços Web representam uma forma mais escalável e flexível de compor serviços do que uma abordagem centralizada como a orquestração, e seu papel na integração e comunicação de sistemas de larga escala é vital para os objetivos da SOC (Computação Orientada a Serviços) e da Internet do Futuro. Atualmente coreografias de serviços Web possuem vários desafios de pesquisa, dos quais a qualidade de serviço (QoS) e o monitoramento de coreografias de serviçosWeb são linhas importantes. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor e implementar um mecanismo de monitoramento não intrusivo de coreografias de serviços Web baseado em SLAs (Acordos de Nível de Serviço) que especificam as restrições de atributos de QoS de maneira probabilística. Esta dissertação propõe um mecanismo para coreografias de serviços Web que: (1) define requisitos de QoS; (2) especifica contratos probabilísticos sobre parâmetros de QoS usando SLA; e (3) realiza um monitoramento não intrusivo de coreografias de serviços Web para detectar violações de SLA. / Web services choreographies are a more scalable and flexible way to compose services than a centralized approach like orchestrations, and its role in the integration and communication of large-scale systems is vital for the goals of SoC (Service Oriented Computing) and Future Internet. Currently,Web services choreographies have several research challenges. From all challenges, quality of service (QoS) and monitoring of Web services choreography are important research lines. The goal of this work is to propose and implement a mechanism for non-intrusive monitoring of Web services choreography based on SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that define constraints of QoS attributes in a probabilistic way. This thesis proposes a mechanism for Web services choreographies that:(1) defines QoS requirements; (2) specifies probabilistic contracts on QoS parameters using SLAs; and (3) monitors, non-intrusively, the enactment of Web services choreographies to detect SLA violations.