Distributed Systems

Research team

Ioan Salomie, Mihaela Dinsoreanu, Anca Rarau, Viorica Chifu, Tudor Cioara, Ionut Anghel, Cristina Pop

Research fields

 

• Service-Oriented Distributed Systems

 

The objective of this research area is to study and develop middleware level systems that integrate a set of collaborative resources for Web Services development. Specific researches were targeted at:

- Composing, orchestrating and choreography of Web services aiming static, dynamic, decentralized and automatic and autonomic composition with simulating and verifying facilities; 

- Ensuring transactional support and defining failure tolerance coordination mechanisms for security and quality of services; 

- Capturing business rule and interaction patterns, agent based workflow execution aiming at deliberative, reactive and pro-active cooperation;

 

• Autonomic Systems

 

This research area is targeting ways of approaching the management of complex distributed systems. Within the frame of this research we approach the increasing system complexity in an autonomic way by using the CHOP computing paradigms. These paradigms allow for the design of self-Configuring, self-Healing, self-Optimizing and self-Protecting systems.

• Mobile and Pervasive Distributed Systems

The objective of this research area is the study and development of mobile and pervasive systems, reactive and pro-active in a close relationship with the context where they reside and operate. We have studied the capturing and representation of context knowledge as well as composing and creating context-aware services.

 

• Knowledge Engineering and Intelligent Systems

 

This research direction aims at knowledge representation and processing, domain ontology building and the development of intelligent systems. Currently we are involved in the development of an ontology for the food processing industry that will be used for automatic service composition in a food trace project. A second target of this research direction is the development of a generic expert system framework that is easy configurable for different application domains.

 

• Web-based Educational Systems

 

The objective of this research area is to study and develop cooperative mobile agents for student knowledge evaluation in e-Learning systems. The mobile agents of JADE and Aglet platforms have been used for coding and transporting verification questions from the virtual university to the students.

The intelligence embedded in the mobile agents was also used for driving the evaluation process and result processing.

 

• Mobile Agents based Middleware

 

The objective of this research area is to study and use mobile agents of Aglet and JADE platforms for capturing, transport and use of distributed systems know how. Other achievements include defining and implementing middleware provisions for the management, communication, coordination and interoperability of mobile agents.

Recent research projects

“MAESTRO – Ontology Driven Automatic Web Service Composition”, national research grant funded by ANCS, CNCSIS – IDEAS, (2007 – 2010)

I. Salomie project manager, M. Dinsoreanu, V. Chifu, T. Cioara, I. Anghel

The objective of this research project is to study and propose models, methods, algorithms, and techniques for automatic, ontology-driven web service composition. We aim at service annotation and dynamic discovery, the development of algorithms for service selection based on imposed quality of service criteria, research and propose strategies for planning the automatic composition and dynamic invocation of services.

For testing, assessing, validating and comparing the results against other similar researches, a flexible experimental platform is under implementation.

“ArhiNET – Integrated System for developing semantically-enhanced archive content”, national research grant funded by ANCS, CNMP-PC, no. 11-051/2007, (2007-2010)

I. Salomie coordinator, M. Dinsoreanu, V. Chifu, T. Cioara, I. Anghel, C. Pop

This inter-disciplinary project addresses the study, development and management of interactive e-content for digital enhancement of cultural heritage. The project aims at studying and developing an integrated system for creating and managing archive content based on semantic enhancements. The domain ontology enhanced content allows for semantically relevant information retrieval. The project also aims at the development of an information mining subsystem and reasoning mechanisms to identify new correlations that will be added to the domain knowledge.

„FOOD-TRACE - Integrated IT system for assuring traceability and quality control in food industry”, national research grant funded by ANCS, CEEX AGRAL, 33/2006, (2006-2008).

S. Nedevschi coordinator, I. Salomie scientific coordinator, Gh. Sebestyen, R. Potolea, M. Dinsoreanu, C. Cenan, A. Rarau, R. Marfievici, A. Pop, V. Chifu, T. Cioara, I. Anghel et. al.

This project aims to study and design an integrated IT system for food industry processing organizations, in response to the EU requirements regarding up-stream and down-stream internal and external food traceability and quality assurance. The internal traceability system model includes both the infrastructure for monitoring the processes executed on a food industry production line and the resources and services necessary to capture, classify, store and access data regarding product traceability and quality data associated with each manufacturing process. The external traceability model includes the necessary infrastructure and resources to trace the products along their life cycle.

The traceability and quality information regarding the products and processes are accessible through Web Services to business partners and to the authorities and organizations for food quality. To ensure platform and language level interoperability and scalability the traceability system is modeled using SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

„SCANURGENT - Screening, profilaxy and correction of children's genital-urinal congenital malformations using minimal invasive techniques (laparoscopy, endoscopy)”, national research grant funded by ANCS, CEEX – VIASAN, 154/2006, (2006 – 2008).

I. Salomie scientific coordinator, M. Dinsoreanu, V. Chifu, T. Cioara, I. Anghel

ScanUrgent is an interdisciplinary project (developed together with the UMF - University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Cluj) whose objective is to develop an integrated system for data acquisition, data analysis / mining for knowledge discovery related to children genital and urinary malformations. The questionaire requireing information is designed by UMF. The data is aquired using mobile devices from schools and kindergardens and stored into databases for analysis and knowledge discovery.

“INTELPRO - Intelligent System for assisting the therapeutical decision at patients with prostate cancer”, national research grant funded by ANCS, CEEX – INFOSOC, 18/2005, (2005-2008).

S. Nedevschi coordinator, M. Dinsoreanu scientific coordinator, I. Salomie, R. Potolea, T. Muresan, T. Marita, C. Cenan, D. Mitrea, C. Vidrighin, et al.

Publications

I. Salomie, T. Cioara, I. Anghel, M. Dinsoreanu, T. I. Salomie, “Machine simulation for workflow integration testing”, in Proceedings of IEEE 3rd International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, September 6-8, 2007, pp. 193-199.

I. Salomie, T. Cioara, I. Anghel, M. Dinsoreanu, T. I. Salomie, “A layered workflow model enhanced with process algebra verification for industrial processes”, in Proceedings of IEEE 3rd International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, September 6-8, 2007, pp. 185-192.

V. R. Chifu, I. Salomie, E. St. Chifu, ”Ontology-enhanced description of traceability services”, in Proceedings of IEEE 3rd International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, September 6-8, 2007, pp. 1-8.

V. R. Chifu, I. Salomie, E. St. Chifu, “Ontology Model for Traceability in Food Industry”, IEEE SMC Society, ACM SigMIS, ICETE ICE-B 2007 International Conference on eBusiness, Barcelona, Spain, July 2007.

V. R. Chifu , I. Salomie, E. St. Chifu, “Taxonomy learning for semantic annotation of Web services”, in Proceedings of 11th WSEAS International Conference on Computers, Agios Nikolaos, Crete Island, Greece, July 23-28, 2007, pp. 299-305.

I. Salomie, Al. Moga, M. Dinsoreanu, J. Soos, “Enhancing Web Service Composition with Self-healing Facilities”, in, vol. 4, no. 1, January 2007, pp. 42-50. Proceedings of WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications

I. Salomie, T. Cioara, I. Anghel, M. Dinsoreanu, T. I. Salomie, “Machine and Business Modeling and Simulation for Workflow Integration”, Proc. of 9th WSEAS Int.Conference on Automatic Control, Modeling & Simulation (ACMOS'07), Istanbul, Turkey, May 2007, pp. 165 – 171.

S. Nedevschi, I. Salomie, G. Sebestyen, M. Dinsoreanu, T. Cioara, I. Anghel, V. Chifu, “Quality and traceability management system in Food Industry”, Proceedings of 5th International Congress on Food Technology, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2007, pp. 434 – 442.

A. Rarau, I. Salomie, "Adding Context Awareness to C#", in LNCS 4272, Springer, 2006, pp. 98-112.

C. Cosara, I. Salomie, M.Dinsoreanu, “A Quality Model for Service Selection”, in 2nd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Sept. 2006, pp. 129-133.

V. Chifu, I. Salomie, “An architecture for QoS driven Automatic Web Service Composition”, 2nd IEEE International Conference. on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing, Cluj, Sept. 2006, pp. 121-127.

A. Rarau, K. Pusztai, I. Salomie, “Software Framework for Building Context-Aware Applications Using MultiFacet Items”, in IWSAC '05 International Workshop on Software Aspects of Context, Santorini, Greece, 2005.

M. Ventuneac, T. Coffey, I. Salomie, “A policy-based security framework for Web-enabled applications”, in Proceedings of the 1st international Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Trinity College Dublin, 2003, vol. 49, pp. 487-492.

A. Rarau, K. Pusztai, I. Salomie, “Software Framework for Building Context-Aware Applications using MultiFacet Items”, in International Journal of Computing and Information Science (Online), vol. 3, no. 2, August 2005, pp. 10-18.

M. Dragomiroiu, R. Gyorody, I. Salomie, “Designing Reusable Web-Applications by employing Enterprise Frameworks”, in LNCS 2869, Springer, 2003, pp. 1051-1059.

Research description

Integrated IT system for assuring traceability and quality control in food industry (Food Trace)

The main objective of the Food-Trace project is to study and propose a system model for product traceability in the food processing industry.

The traceability system model includes both the infrastructure for monitoring the processes executed on a food industry production line and the resources and services necessary to capture, classify, store and access data regarding product quality associated with each manufacturing process.

The information regarding the products and processes is stored in a database and will be accessible through Web Services to business partners and to the authorities and organizations for food quality tracing.

The traceability parameters are defined and captured the quality standards imposed by both EU and national regulations. At the same time the data acquisition infrastructure (from a production line) will be configured in accordance with the UE stipulations, such that the main product parameters (i.e.: temperature, composition, etc.) could be marked on the product label.

To ensure platform and language level interoperability and scalability the traceability system is modeled by means of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) architecture.

The modules of the proposed system are described below.

Process Description / Generation Module (DGP): This module describes the food industry specific processes using workflows. A workflow consists of simple and complex processes chained according to business logic. Complex processes are obtained by composing and orchestration of simple local or remote processes represented as Web Services. Such modeled workflows, enhanced with traceability and quality related information are converted to BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and stored into a database of food industry workflows (BD_FP).

Domain Knowledge Module: This module provides the necessary domain know-how to the DGP module. The resources of this module are the following: Domain Ontology – defines domain concepts and relationships. Process design and verification should use an ontology driven approach. The database of Standards contains data and constraints from national and EU domain standards. Policy database contains company related policies to be followed when designing processes and workflows. The Process Patterns database contains a set of pre-designed processes that could be reused in food industry workflow design.

Engine for Workflow Interpreting and Execution (MIE_FP): This module loads a food industry specific process represented as a workflow (containing traceability and quality related information) from BD_FP a workflow for interpretation and execution.

The System for Process Control and Monitoring (SCMP) contains the physical monitoring and control devices deployed on the production lines (sensors, RFID devices, mobile devices, etc.). Their monitoring and control is achieved according to the process specifications, depending on the current executing process of the workflow.

The System for Collecting and Processing of Process related information (SCPIP) aims to collect and process data related to workflow process execution, record this data into BD_TQ database and generate quality and traceability labels.

Global Web Catalogues are defined in the Internet and contain useful information for using the Web as a B2B (Business to Business) facilitator. EPC (Electronic Product Code) - is a catalogue (database) containing unique codes for each product. The catalogue contains all products generated by all current industries. ONS (Object Name Service) - is a catalogue (database) that is used to translate the

EPC into a URL. This way everyone who knows a product EPC is able to access the Web page of the product. UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) - is a global registry where Web Service providers record the services. This registry is used by service consumers to lookup for a specific service they need to accomplish a certain business process.