Karthikeyan Umapathy's Blog

Won Meritorious Award at the CONISAR 2008 Conference

2008-11-14T10:13:00.003-05:00

On November 8, 2008 paper titled "Computing Professional Association Membership: An Exploration of Membership Needs and Motivations" won Meritorious Award at the CONISAR 2008 Conference.

The first annual Conference on Information Systems Applied Research (CONISAR) 2008 in Phoenix, Arizona. CONISAR conference is sponsored by the Education Special Interest Group of Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP). CONSIAR conference focuses on research dealing with real-world practical applications of information sciences, systems, and technology, and provides a valuable forum for both researchers and practitioners. Topics include IS applications, ethics, technological changes, emerging applications, and IS research.

For more about CONISAR: http://conisar.org/

As per conference organizers, Award winning papers selection went through 3 rounds of review involving total of 12 reviewers.

There were three Meritorious Award and one Best Paper award for CONISAR 2008 conference. Three Meritorious Award papers are in top 5% and the Best Paper Award is in the top 1% of the conference papers.

Authors of the paper are Albert D. Ritzhaupt (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Karthikeyan Umapathy (University of North Florida), and Lisa Jamba (University of North Florida).

Here is the link to access our paper: http://isedj.org/isecon/2008/3524/index.html

Position Paper accepted for publication in ONISW 2008

2008-09-09T09:06:00.002-05:00

Position paper titled "Toward Generic, Immersive, and Collaborative Solutions to the Data Interoperability Problem which Target End-Users" is accepted for publication in the 2nd International workshop on Ontologies and Information Systems for the Semantic Web (ONISW 2008) to held along with the ACM 17th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management in Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa: Napa Valley, California, October 26-30, 2008.

Authors: Arturo J. Sánchez-Ruíz, Karthikeyan Umapathy, and Pat Hayes

Abstract:
In this position paper we describe our vision of a “just-in-time” approach to the Data Interoperability Problem (a.k.a.INTEROP.) It empowers data stakeholders (e.g. data producers and data consumers) with integrated tools to interact and collaborate with each other while directly manipulating visual representations of their data in an immersive environment
(e.g. implemented via Second Life.) The semantics of these visual representations and the operations associated with the data are supported by ontologies defined using the Common Logic Framework (CL). Data operations gestured by the stakeholders, through their avatars, are translated to a variety of generated resources such as multi-language source code, visualizations, web pages, and web services. The generality of the approach is supported by a plug-in architecture which allows expert users to customize tasks such as data admission, data manipulation in the immersive world, and automatic generation of resources. This approach is designed with a mindset aimed at enabling stakeholders from diverse domains to exchange data and generate new knowledge.

Link to ONISW 2008: http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/hhan/ONISW2008/

Publicity Chair for DESRIST 2009

2008-09-02T09:10:00.003-05:00

Fourth International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST) will be in Philadelphia, PA on May 7‐9, 2009.

This year conference theme is "Diversity in Design Science."

Here is the link to the conference site - http://desrist2009.ist.psu.edu/

Here is the link to call for papers - http://desrist2009.ist.psu.edu/submit.html

Important Dates

Submission: Jan 22, 2009
Acceptance: Mar 10, 2009
Camera Ready Submission: Apr 10, 2009
Early Registration Closes: Apr 10, 2009
Conference Dates: May 7‐9, 2009

Select Papers will be invited to Journal of the AIS

Review of Language-Action Perspective (LAP)

2008-08-30T16:35:00.001-05:00

Book chapter titled "A Review of the Language-Action Perspective (LAP) Approach in Information Systems Research" is accepted to be published as a book chapter in Handbook of Research on Contemporary Theoretical Models in Information Systems.

ABSTRACT

The Language-Action Perspective (LAP) provides an alternative foundation for analyzing and designing effective information systems. The fundamental principle of the LAP approach is people perform actions through communication; therefore, the role of information systems is to support such communications among people to achieve business goals. Basing on linguistic and communicative theories, the LAP approach provides guidance for researchers to gain understanding on how people use communication to coordinate their activities to achieve common goal. Web services, a leading technology to develop information systems, aims to support communication among services to achieve business goals. The close match between fundamental principles of web services and the LAP approach suggests that researchers can use the LAP approach as a theoretical guidance to analyze and resolve web service problems. This chapter provides a comprehensive starting point for researchers, practitioners, and students to gain understanding of the LAP approach.

Nominated for Best Paper Award at DESRIST 2008

2008-05-10T10:49:00.004-05:00

I presented paper titled "Designing Enterprise Integration Solutions - Effectively" at the Design Science Research Conference in Atlanta, GA, USA on Thursday May 8.

Paper was nominated for Best Paper Award.

However, the award went to Paper titled "Twelve Theses on Information Systems as a Design Science" authored by Juhani Iivari (University of Oulu).

Best student paper award went to paper titled "Secure Activity Resource Coordination: A Method to Design Secure Business Processes" authored by Fergle D'Aubeterre, Rahul Singh, and Lakshmi Iyer (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).

Jay Nunamaker (University of Arizona) and Salvatore March (Vanderbilt University) were inducted to the Information Systems Design Science Hall of Fame.

Next year Design Science Conference (DESRIST) 2009 will be held at Philadelphia, PA, USA. Program Chair for DESRIST 2009 would be Sandeep Purao from College of Information Science and Technology, Pennsylvania State University.

Paper accepted in the IEEE Symposium on SOA Standards

2008-04-24T15:10:00.002-05:00

Paper Title: Standardizing Web Services: Overcoming ‘Design by Committee’

Abstract:
Web service standards, like several other IT standards, are anticipatory, i.e., they are designed and codified in anticipation of actual adoption and use. As a result, the setting of web service standards takes on properties that resemble the designing of software artifacts. In contrast, the traditional perspective on standards views them as law-like systems that legislate modes of
behavior, product structures or specifications. The two perspectives – ‘design’ and ‘legislation’ – can sometimes be at odds. In the software engineering community, the phrase ‘design by committee’ has come to symbolize designs that are not effective, not elegant and not addressing issues that are core to the original intentions. Current efforts and recent outcomes in web
services standards appear to have overcome this taboo. We demonstrate, with the help of an empirical study, how the participants interact, and the roles they take on to produce web service standards.

Authors: Sandeep Purao, John Bagby, and Karthikeyan Umapathy

This paper will be published in the IEEE Symposium on SOA Standards, which will be held along with IEEE Services 2008 conference.

http://conferences.computer.org/services/2008/ieee.htm

Paper accepted in the Services Computing Conference (SCC) 2008

2008-04-11T12:58:00.002-05:00

Paper Title:
Representing and Accessing Design Knowledge for Service Integration

Abstract:
Process construction from existing services requires use of appropriate design knowledge. For services that are mapped to underlying legacy applications, this takes the form of enterprise integration solutions. Design knowledge in this domain is available in the form of Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). These patterns are, however, difficult to understand; they also use primitives that are different from those used for process representation. As a result, accessing EIP based on process requirements remains a cognitively demanding task for designers. In this paper, we describe a knowledge-base that represents the EIPs, infusing them with semantics derived from speech acts; and a set of heuristics, which can be used to retrieve EIPs for a set of requirements. An example serves to illustrate how the two can work in tandem to assist the designer.

Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.

IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2008) will be held on July 8-11, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
http://conferences.computer.org/scc/2008/

Paper accepted in the Design Science Research 2008 Conference

2008-03-26T09:21:00.003-05:00

Paper Title: Designing Enterprise Integration Solutions - Effectively

Abstract: The design of large and complex enterprise integration solutions is a difficult task because designers must respond not only to the ‘requirements’ from a diverse set of users, but also because a successful design outcome must respond to the ‘constraints’ provided by the current set of legacy applications. The problem, therefore, belongs to a category of problems where design knowledge is difficult to articulate and reuse. In particular, the nature and form of knowledge for conceptual design of systems integration solutions continues to be a concern. In this paper, we investigate whether design knowledge in the form of patterns can be reused to develop systems integration solutions, and whether such reuse leads to more effective design outcomes. The research follows Design Science guidelines in that we describe a research artifact, and evaluate it to assess whether it meets the intended goals. The results indicate that approaches to facilitate reuse of conceptual design knowledge are feasible in the domain of enterprise integration, and that such reuse does, in fact, lead to more effective design solutions.

Co-authors: Sandeep Purao and Russell R. Barton

Link to DESRIST 2008 Conference

When Requirements Go Bad: Requirements Errors

2008-01-09T14:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I attended a talk on “When Requirements Go Bad: Requirements Errors - Sources and Avoidance Strategies” by Kurt Bittner. Kurt Bittner has co-authored two books: Managing Iterative Software Development Projects and Use Case Modeling.

Kurt Bittner Bio on InformIT
http://www.informit.com/authors/bio.aspx?a=4B75C773-9B16-4283-88F9-888B641A7058&rl=1

He categorized requirements errors into three categories
1. Misconception errors – user needs misconstrued
2. Specification errors – user needs understood but written ambiguously
3. Implementation errors – communication breakdowns and lack of enough reviews and testing

While above were the core of the talk, he also provided some typical errors and strategies to avoid them. The entire talk was excellent and worth the money, given that I am teaching a requirements management course this spring.

Date of the talk: January 8, 2008
Venue: University center, University of North Florida
Organized by: North Florida Rational Users Group
http://www.nf-rug.com/index.php

Visual Interactive Search Engine

2007-09-10T09:20:00.001-05:00

I recently came across a flash-based, interactive and visual search engine, that groups search results into different categories. It visually shows which categories has associated links. I thought it is really interesting and does produce good results.

Below is the link for it
http://www.kartoo.com/

Joined School of Computing, University of North Florida

2007-08-28T13:33:00.000-05:00

From Fall 2007 onwards I will be Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the School of Computing, University of North Florida (UNF). UNF is located in Jacksonville, Florida. For Fall 2007, I will be teaching Introduction to Object Oriented Programming with Java.

My contact address at UNF is
Karthikeyan Umapathy
3214 Mathews Building (15)
School of Computing
University of North Florida
1 UNF Drive
Jacksonville FL 32224
Email: k . umapathy @ unf . edu (remove blank spaces when you send email)
Work Phone: 904-620-1329
Fax: 904-620-2988
website: http://www.unf.edu/~k.umapathy/

Paper accepted in the Conceptual Modeling (ER) 2007 Conference

2007-06-19T19:50:00.000-05:00

Paper Title: Exploring Alternatives for Representing and Accessing Design Knowledge about Enterprise Integration

Abstract: Enterprise integration refers to solutions that facilitate meaningful interactions among heterogeneous legacy applications. The scale, complexity and specificity of most enterprise integration efforts mean that design knowledge for enterprise integration has resisted codification. Important exceptions to this include: use of Business Process Modeling (BPM) techniques to understand integration requirements; and Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP), which present designers with abstract descriptions of recurring design tactics for integrating applications. The two, however, can be at odds. BPM encourages the control flow perspective; whereas EIP codifies an operational perspective. Mapping between the two to develop coherent solutions, therefore, tends to be problematic. To bridge the gap, we suggest an alternative that builds on the theory of speech acts. We develop essential components of such an alternative, including a re-representation of EIP as structures of speech acts, a characterization of tasks in BPM with action types, and a mapping between speech acts and action types. The components are accompanied by inference rules that produce a mapping between sets of tasks in a business process, and structures of speech acts as integration patterns. Through a short industry case, we demonstrate usefulness of the proposed alternative.

Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.

Link to the conference ER 2007

Paper accepted in the IEEE Services 2007 PhD Symposium on Service Computing

2007-05-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

Paper Title:
A Study of Language-Action Perspective as a Theoretical Framework for Web Services

Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the services science discipline by examining appropriateness of Language-Action Perspective (LAP) as a theoretical framework for web services, the technology component of services science. This research consists of three inter-dependent studies. The first study (completed) investigates whether LAP constructs can describe and explain the web services architecture. Findings from this study indicate that there is a lack of mechanisms to generate conversation specifications that guide interactions among services. Conversation specifications are crucial for developing large-scaled enterprise integration solutions using web services. The second study (work-in-progress) builds on this finding and demonstrates the appropriateness of LAP constructs to access design knowledge to develop web service solutions for enterprise integration. The third study (work-in-progress) evaluates the usefulness of LAP constructs to develop effective web service solutions (artifact developed in the second study).

Link to the PhD Symposium

Paper accepted in the Services Computing Conference (SCC) 2007

2007-05-02T12:10:00.000-05:00

Paper Title:
Towards A Theoretical Foundation for Web Services – The Language-Action Perspective (LAP) Approach

Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to stimulate a discourse and search for appropriate theoretical foundations for web services. The complexity of web services technology demands such a foundation. A theoretical foundation can provide adequate guidance not only to accelerate research related to web services, but can also promote their acceptance. Based on an extensive review of prior work in SCC and ICWS, we identify theories implicitly used for web services research, and propose the Language-Action Perspective (LAP) as an important and necessary complement to these. Our proposal follows the observation that there is a close match between the core concerns of web services and the LAP approach. Our ongoing work is aimed at validating appropriateness of LAP as a theoretical framework for web services through empirical research.

Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.

Link to conference page: SCC 2007

Web-based slide presentation

2007-04-25T15:24:00.000-05:00

If you are interested in creating web-based slides for your presentation, I recommend you using S5 slide show system.

S5 uses combination of XHTML, CSS and Javascript for creating and presenting slides. Single XHTML file holds all slide details, CSS is used for presentation style formating and Javascript is used for slide navigation. You need knowledge on HTML and CSS to use S5 slide show system. Below is the link for the more information.
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

Link to sample S5 based presentation created by me is given below:
http://www.karthikeyan.umapathy.com/distprop/

You can use browser fullscreen option (press F11 key) during presentation to get maximum screen coverage.

If you are firefox user, you can complete fullscreen (i.e., removing address and tabs in fullscreen) using fullscreen addons.

FullerScreen firefox addon by Daniel Glazman is good one for this purpose. Link to addon is given below:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4650

Science Magazine Tips on scientific writing

2007-04-07T21:16:00.000-05:00

Following are the articles from the Science Magazine

Getting Published in Scientific Journals

Tips for Publishing in Scientific Journals

Writing Science: The Story's the Thing

Language-Action Perspective(LAP) summary

2007-02-26T14:21:00.000-05:00

Association for Information Systems maintains a repository containing description of various theories used in Information Systems field.

I had submitted summary of LAP description to repository editors. Summary has been accepted and added in the repository.

Below is the link for LAP summary in the repository
http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/languageactionperspective.htm

Homepage for repository
http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/default.htm

Please do send me your comments, suggestions, additions or any modifications that you think needs to be made in LAP summary.

Information Systems Frontiers Journal paper

2007-01-20T11:16:00.000-05:00

Finally! My Information Systems Frontiers Journal paper is published.

Here is the link to access the paper from Publisher web site
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r282201465372g67/

Title of the paper:
A theoretical investigation of the emerging standards for web services

Abstract:
Currently, standards for web services are being developed via three different initiatives (W3C, Semantic web services and ebXML). To the best of our knowledge, no theoretical perspectives underlie these standardization efforts. Without the benefit of a strong theoretical basis, the results, within and across these initiatives, have remained piecemeal. We suggest ‘Language–Action Theories’ as a plausible perspective that can effectively define, assess and refine web services standards. In this paper, we first investigate the existing initiatives to identify commonalities that point to theories of ‘Language–Action’ as an appropriate theoretical basis for web services standards. Next, we adapt work from these theories to develop a comprehensive reference framework for understanding web services standards. Finally, we use this reference framework to assess the three initiatives, and analyze the findings to provide insights for future development and refinement of web services standards.

Paper accepted in ICSOC PhD Symposium

2006-11-06T22:09:00.000-05:00

Paper Title:
A Study of Language-Action Perspective as a Theoretical Framework for Web Services

Abstract:
This dissertation contributes to services science discipline by examining appropriateness of Language-Action Perspective (LAP) as a theoretical framework for web services, the technology component of services science. This study is conducted through three essays. The first (completed) investigates whether LAP constructs can describe and explain the web services architecture. Findings from this essay indicate that there is lack of mechanisms to generate conversation policies that guide interactions between applications. Conversation polices are crucial for developing large-scaled enterprise integration solutions using web services. The second (work-in-progress) builds on this finding. This essay demonstrates appropriateness of LAP constructs to structure design knowledge to develop web services solutions for enterprise integration. The third (work-in-progress) evaluates usefulness of LAP structured design knowledge to develop web services solutions (artifact developed in the second essay).

Link to PhD Symposium
http://infolab.uvt.nl/phd-icsoc06/

CACM special issue on Services Science

2006-08-07T19:26:00.000-05:00

Services Science discipline explores the underlying phenomenon beyond services economy. Services economy currently dominates global economy; nearly 2/3 of the global economy activity is from services sector. This shows how important services science discipline is. However, this discipline is taking its baby steps with lot much more to be explored and challenges to be faced.

CACM special issue on Services Science that appeared in July 2006, show cases shows importance of this discipline and challenges it faces.

Link for table of contents for July 2006 CACM issue.

CACM special issue on Language-Action Perspective (LAP)

2006-08-07T19:17:00.000-05:00

My dissertation aim is to show that Language-Action Perspective (LAP) is appropriate theoretical framework for web services.

LAP has been around for two decades but it has not reached mainstream organization computing. It is not part of teaching curriculum in universities is mere evidence of it.

Web service provides an opportunity for this community to reach mainstream. I explore this possibility in my dissertation.

CACM Special issue on LAP which appeared in May 2006 show cases some of works of prominent LAP researchers.

Link for table of contents of CACM special issue on LAP.

MS Thesis Software helps to reduce 23% leadtime

2006-08-01T12:34:00.000-05:00

As part of Master of Science with Major in Industrial Engineering (from Penn State University), I had developed a software tool to guide metal casting pattern designer to design better pattern in their first iteration.

It should be note that design pattern is more of art than science. Penn State was involved with larger project where huge amounts of data was gathered. Data analysis on these date produced certain analytical value that can be used for designing patterns.

I had used those analytical values and developed a designer-friendly software guide tool to design metal casting patterns. Trail run of this tool was conducted at McConway & Torley Group, Pittsburgh PA. Trail run of this software has improved casting feature dimensional conformance from 59% to 82% for large green sand castings.

Link for report regarding this (see page 22 in the report).

Link for more information on Software Guide Tool.

Yeah! I am Quoted

2006-08-01T12:25:00.000-05:00

I had posted some comments to an article on required IT skills.

My comment was quoted by an article in TechRepublic online magazine.

Here is the link to that article: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,39020648,2107670,00.htm

Paper accepted in SCC 2006

2006-07-25T22:03:00.000-05:00

Paper Title
Designing Enterprise Solutions with Web Services and Integration Patterns
Abstract
Web services are an ideal implementation platform for integrating disparate legacy systems because they are platform-independent. Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) represent possible design solutions that may be used to construct these enterprise integration solutions. Constructing design solutions with EIP that build on the platform-independence allowed by web services requires that the former be converted into mechanisms that may be implemented with the latter. One such mechanism is conversation models that may be used to implement interactions among web services representing different legacy systems. No methodologies exist that designers can use to construct integration solutions using web services and EIP in this manner. In this paper, we outline such a methodology that generates the design elements in the form of conversation policies for web services.
Co-Authored with
Sandeep Purao

Waterfall 2006 -- "Come on in, the water's fine."

2006-02-03T16:27:00.000-05:00

Well it seems Waterfall system of developing software is making a come-back.

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

Some one is working too hard to bring it back into our life and make us laugh.