Contributions in Merlin

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This poster describes three static SPARQL optimization approaches for in-memory RDF graphs: (1) a selectivity estimation index (SEI) for single query triple patterns; (2) a query pattern index (QPI) for joined triple patterns; and (3) a hybrid optimization approach that combines both indexes. Using the Lehigh University Benchmark (LUBM), we show that the hybrid approach outperforms other SPARQL query engines such as ARQ and Sesame for in-memory graphs.

Starting in the eighties, increasing dynamics can be recognized in the international competition. The international service trade sector, to which also the banks belong, ex- perienced an enormous growth. Which meaning does this international adjustment have for the software in such enterprises? UBS Global WM&BB follows a compoment based approach in software development for several years. By now, IT solutions are deployed internationally which brings in some issues concerning different cultures and languages. The topic of this work is the analysis of possible strategies in UBS Global WM&BB to handle such internationalisation issues. It starts with an introduction into the topic which is followed by a description of the current situation. The result is a concept, based on internal documents and requirements specified by developers. A prototype is used to validate the findings.

In the past years, there has been a great interest in the field of data mining. All around the world, larger companies have been investing vast sums of money in enormous data-warehouses and powerful data mining facilities, in the hope of extracting new information and so attain an economic advantage over other companies. With today’s fast-growing technology, interoperability and tendencies for just-in-time systems, it is becoming more likely that one will use or depend on data that does not yet exist or belong to one’s self. Furthermore, from a software engineering point of view, direct access to an application’s database is not recommended, due to the entailing dependencies and coupling to the application. Ultimately, we will want to do a lot more than just mine a set of data from our local database. Be it a more powerful pre-processing of data, the integration with other business applications or the automatic creation of a report for management, we will not get around having to integrate data mining solutions in order to solve more complex problems. In our specific case, we are especially interested in the analysis of software evolution and require a data mining framework that will seamlessly integrate with an IDE, an integrated development environment such as eclipse, already offering a large variety of components that produce softwarerelated data. In this thesis, we present the design and development of a data mining framework, integrating arbitrary data sources, existing data mining facilities and potential data consumers. In the first two chapters, we provide a brief introduction to the world of data mining, explain the need for integration and outline the framework’s requirements. The tool’s functionality is presented as a guided tour of the framework, followed by an in-depth technical look at the framework’s main components. We then discuss the various highlights and problems encountered, present a simple proof of concept and round it off with our conclusions and an outlook to the framework’s future development.

This study analyzes the acceptance of an e-learning tool used in the financial industry based on an acceptance model. Therefore a didactics concept has been designed as a first step. This concept takes into account the target user as well as the fact that it is going to be used for e-learning and the content of the tool. The content comprises methods and best practices of Business Analysts. The concept has been implemented at UBS, a Swiss bank. After completing the technical side, 27 business analysts have been interviewed regarding their acceptance and the didactics concept. The online questionnaire has been handed out to them right after they had finished two courses out of the e-learning tool. The dispositional acceptance for the e-learning tool turned out to be high. Certain relationships between the factors which impact the dispositional acceptance were identified. For example, there is a positive relationship between the authentic and situated learning and the benefit the user sees in the e-learning tool for his (or her) daily work. In addition, factors which impact the personal learning success were identified. Concerning the didactics concept the user particularly liked the structure of the courses as they were defined in the concept. Apart from the successful rollout of the e-learning tool, the analysis also highlights the importance of support activities which need to be incorporated. For example, the support of the users in the beginning correlates significant with the dispositional acceptance. Also the relevance of stated learning objectives has a direct impact on the benefit which the user attributes to the e-learning tool.

The latest trends in distributed and mobile collabora- tion technologies allow people to move across team forms and organizational boundaries as well as to collaborate among/in organizations and communities. The ability to query the company's distributed knowledge base and to cooperate with co-workers is still a requirement, but new paradigms such as service-oriented computing increased pervasiveness, and mobility enable new scenarios and lead to higher complexity of systems. Independently of the busi- ness domain, private ""collaboration"" has become a hot is- sue. Virtual communities, may these be social networks or virtual enterprises, have enjoyed a tremendous popularity recently and are starting to require functionalities for col- laboration in the broadest sense similar to those in business environments. The wide-spread availability of mobile de- vices makes support for mobility an arising topic in this do- main as well.

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More and more software applications are deployed in dynamic computing environments. These environments are characterized by frequent and unpredictable changes in the availability of resources to software applications, as well as changes in the contextual information of interest to the applications. Some of these changes might present an opportunity for an application to improve its performance or to provide a more relevant functionality, while others might pose a threat to the continued execution of the application. In either case, a software application should be able to adapt its behavior dynamically in response to runtime changes in its execution environment. This dissertation describes the CASA (Contract-based Adaptive Software Architecture) framework, which enables the development and operation of dynamically adaptive applications. The CASA framework integrates a number of different adaptation mechanisms with an aim to comprehensively meet the adaptation needs of software applications executing in dynamic environments. These adaptation mechanisms can collectively change any part of an application’s configuration at runtime, including changing the application components, aspects, attributes and lower-level services. The design of the CASA framework is based on the software engineering principle of separation of concerns. The separation of concerns allows implementing the adaptation concerns as a reusable and shareable runtime adaptation system, while the business concerns of an application are implemented as a part of the application code. The adaptation policy of every application is defined in a so-called application contract in the CASA framework. The application contract is defined using an XML-based specification language, and allows changing the adaptation policy at runtime. The ability to carry out runtime changes in the adaptation policy is useful for customizing the adaptation policy according to a user’s current needs and preferences, as well as for evolving the adaptation policy to include new adaptation capabilities.

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