Application Tier Research Articles

Energy storage strategy analysis based on the Choquet multi-criteria preference aggregation model: The Portuguese case

With the increase in renewable energy generation and its problems related to output instability, storage systems must be implemented in parallel to account for this effect. Therefore, it is valuable to deepen the study of these technologies’ performances in their several application tiers, thus understanding the potential of each alternative, both per tier and as a whole. For this reason, a collaborative multi-criteria decision-aiding framework is proposed to rank the various available options in several layers of the energy storage market, constructed alongside experts and policy-makers from each tier that serve as actors of the decision-making process and using Portugal as a case study. Based on the Choquet multi-criteria preference aggregation model, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this framework is an unprecedented application in the energy sector. Beyond a critical review of the results, a scenario analysis was performed to explore interesting future possibilities that may aid governments to make decisions in the search for an energy sustainable development. Chemical storage solutions, such as Hydrogen and Methane, as well as several electrochemical batteries, especially Lithium- and Nickel-based ones, were the standout energy storage solutions. Chemical storage was shown to have the desired characteristics for the Long-term grid tier. Meanwhile, batteries, including Redox Flow in the first case, have overperformed in the Microgrid and Mobility tiers. No standout solutions appeared in the Short-term grid tier. Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned chemical storage systems, batteries, and Hot Water have presented themselves as the most politically interesting technologies, due to their multipurpose uses and intrinsic characteristics.

Study on an architecture of ontology-based task modeling and deduction for automotive troubleshooting service

The rapid development of today’s smart automobile with increasing functionality and complexity, which results in rising requirement and cost for its troubleshooting service in the after-sales stage. Hence, to keep the firm’s competitive strength, effective design knowledge utilization of automotive created from the task model can promote the feasibility making of a troubleshooting procedure by offering available relationships and semantic scheme of task. The proposed architecture primarily consists of base, field and application three tiers. A formalized representation of ontology, OWL, is used to organize the base filed. The filed tier includes extensional notions and relations for integration of troubleshooting and a criterion repository for verifying solution feasibility, which is depicted in SWRL. In the application tier, a deducing module is generated on the basis of ontology and criterion deduction. To enhance this semantics, in this research, a task modeling and deduction mechanism with feature-intensive ontology are proposed to clearly represent correlative notions for automotive troubleshooting planning (ATP). A criterion-based deducing module on the basis of OWL-DL and SWRL is also applied to specify implied relations through merging deducing modules (DMs) to deal with complex feature data. Eventually, this proposed architecture is examined and verified with an instance relevant to automotive troubleshooting procedure.

Identifying Communication Patterns between Virtual Machines in Software-Defined Data Centers

Modern cloud data centers typically exploit management strategies to reduce the overall energy consumption. While most of the solutions focus on the energy consumption due to computational elements, the advent of the Software-Defined Network paradigm opens the possibility for more complex strategies taking into account the network traffic exchange within the data center. However, a network-aware Virtual Machine (VM) allocation requires the knowledge of data communication patterns, so that VMs exchanging significant amount of data can be placed on the same physical host or on low cost communication paths. In Infrastructure as a Service data centers, the information about VMs traffic exchange is not easily available unless a specialized monitoring function is deployed over the data center infrastructure. The main contribution of this paper is a methodology to infer VMs communication patterns starting from input/output network traffic time series of each VM and without relaying on a special purpose monitoring. Our reference scenario is a software-defined data center hosting a multi-tier application deployed using horizontal replication. The proposed methodology has two main goals to support a network-aware VMs allocation: first, to identify couples of intensively communicating VMs through correlation-based analysis of the time series; second, to identify VMs belonging to the same vertical stack of a multi-tier application. We evaluate the methodology by comparing different correlation indexes, clustering algorithms and time granularities to monitor the network traffic. The experimental results demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach to identify interacting VMs, even in a challenging scenario where the traffic patterns are similar in every VM belonging to the same application tier.

A Web-based Visual Analytic Framework for Understanding Large-scale Environmental Models: A Use Case for The Community Land Model

This study introduces a web-based visual analytic framework to better understand the software structures of large-scale environmental models. The framework integrates data management, software structures analysis, and web-based visualizations. A system for the Community Land Model (CLM) is developed to demonstrate the capability of the proposed framework. It consists of three major components: (1) a Fortran-syntax analysis tool that decomposes CLM source code into simpler forms; (2) an application tier that further analyzes and converts the prepro-cessed data into meaningful software structural information; (3) a web-based front end that is developed using state-of-the-art web technologies and visualization toolkit (e.g., D3.js). The framework provides users with easy access to the internal structures of complex environmental models. Currently, the prototype system is being used by CLM modelers and field scientists to tackle different environmental research problems.

Network Aware Composition for Internet of Thing Services

To enhance the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) philosophy for the internet, research into IoT service composition has gathered momentum. In a distributed IoT environment, identifying IoT service among a set of similar service offerings that meets both functional and performance requirements of an IoT application has become important. However, the performance of a service cannot be guaranteed. Therefore service’s QoS and network characteristics are required to aggregate IoT services. Most existing composition approaches only consider non-network related QoS properties at the application tier. However they do not consider the network parameters such as network latency at the application level in selection and composition of services. Therefore we propose two evolutionary algorithms for IoT service composition that consider not only QoS but also network latency at the IoT application layer. The algorithms are discussed and results of evaluation are presented. The results indicate that our algorithms are efficient in finding QoS optimal and low latency solutions.

Reusable Business Tier Components

Call Level Interfaces (CLI) are software API used for building business tiers of relational database applications whenever performance is a key requirement. Nevertheless, their use is cumbersome, mainly in large database applications with many and complex Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) expressions. CLI are low level API conveying several difficulties during the development process of relational business tiers. Four of them are herein emphasized: 1) Programmers need to master the schemas of the underlying databases; 2) the same CRUD expression is frequently re-written to address different business needs; 3) CLI are not suited to cope with evolving business tiers and, finally, 4) CLI do not provide any feature to decouple development process of relational business tiers from the development process of application tiers. To tackle these difficulties, this paper proposes an architecture for building reusable relational business tier components based on CLI herein referred to as the Reusable Business Tier Architecture (RBTA). It relies on a customizable wide typed service to address a business area, such as accountability. The typed service is able to manage CRUD expressions, deployed at runtime, on behalf of application tiers and in accordance with users' needs. The only constraint is that the required service to manage each CRUD expression must be a sub-set of the implemented wide typed service. A proof of concept is also presented.

C-MART: Benchmarking the Cloud

Cloud computing environments provide on-demand resource provisioning, allowing applications to elastically scale. However, application benchmarks currently being used to test cloud management systems are not designed for this purpose. This results in resource underprovisioning and quality-of-service (QoS) violations when systems tested using these benchmarks are deployed in production environments. We present C-MART, a benchmark designed to emulate a modern web application running in a cloud computing environment. It is designed using the cloud computing paradigm of elastic scalability at every application tier and utilizes modern web-based technologies such as HTML5, AJAX, jQuery, and SQLite. C-MART consists of a web application, client emulator, deployment server, and scaling API. The deployment server automatically deploys and configures the test environment in orders of magnitude less time than current benchmarks. The scaling API allows users to define and provision their own customized datacenter. The client emulator generates the web workload for the application by emulating complex and varied client behaviors, including decisions based on page content and prior history. We show that C-MART can detect problems in management systems that previous benchmarks fail to identify, such as an increase from 4.4 to 50 percent error in predicting server CPU utilization and resource underprovisioning in 22 percent of QoS measurements.

3-TIER 구조 소프트웨어의 다국어 지원 방식의 설계와 구현

해외 시장을 겨냥한 소프트웨어의 상품화를 위해서는 여러 나라의 언어를 지원하는 다국어 지원 기능이 필요하다. 3-tier 구조는 2-tier 구조의 문제점을 해결하기 위해 애플리케이션을 분리하여 응용 계층을 두고 프리젠테이션 로직과 데이터베이스를 미들웨어로 연결하는 형태이다. 3-tier 구조의 장점은 애플리케이션의 부하 분산으로 성능이 향상되며 확장이 쉽고, 유지보수와 재사용이 용이하다는 점이다. 본 논문에서는 3-tier 구조의 기업용 소프트웨어를 대상으로 소프트웨어 개발과 유지보수, 지원 언어의 추가가 용이한 공통 리소스 활용 방식을 제안하고 빌링 솔루션의 다국어 버전 개발에 적용하여 유용성을 확인한다. 제안하는 방식은 기능 모듈마다 언어별 리소스 파일을 별도로 유지하는 닷넷의 기존 방식을 개선하여 언어별로 하나만 유지하고 다국어 지원 클래스 라이브러리 형태로 제공하여 메모리와 디스크의 공간 낭비를 줄인다. 또한 다국어 지원 클래스 라이브러리를 응용 계층에 배치하여 소프트웨어 개발과 유지보수, 지원 언어 추가가 용이하다. 한편 리소스 파일에 대한 부적절한 변경을 막기 위해 다국어 지원 클래스 라이브러리는 dll 파일로 제공한다. Multilingual support of software is necessary for entering global market. 3-tier architecture is a solution for problems of 2-tier architecture. It divides an application into a client-tier and an application-tier, and presentation logic and database are connected by middleware. The advantage of 3-tier architecture is the enhanced performance through load balancing, scalability, easier maintenance and reusability. This paper proposes a multilingual support method that utilizes common resource files for 3-tier enterprise softwares, applies the proposed method to development of multilingual version of billing solution, and verify the usefulness of it. It is easy for development and maintenance of software, the addition of language supported. Proposed method holds a resource file for each language and provides a multilingual support class library. Therefore this method reduces a waste of memory and disk space. Deployment of a class library into an application tier makes development and maintenance of software, the addition of new language supported easy. To avoid inappropriate modification of a resource file, a multilingual support class library is provided in a dll file.

The Network Protocol Analysis Technique in Snort

Network protocol analysis is a network sniffer to capture data for further analysis and understanding of the technical means necessary packets. Network sniffing is intercepted by packet assembly binary format of the original message content. In order to obtain the information contained. Required based on TCP / IP protocol stack protocol specification. Again to restore the data packets at protocol format and content in each protocol layer. Actual data transferred, as well as the application tier.

Development and implementation of an Integrated Water Resources Management System (IWRMS)

Abstract. One of the innovative objectives in the EC project BRAHMATWINN was the development of a stakeholder oriented Integrated Water Resources Management System (IWRMS). The toolset integrates the findings of the project and presents it in a user friendly way for decision support in sustainable integrated water resources management (IWRM) in river basins. IWRMS is a framework, which integrates different types of basin information and which supports the development of IWRM options for climate change mitigation. It is based on the River Basin Information System (RBIS) data models and delivers a graphical user interface for stakeholders. A special interface was developed for the integration of the enhanced DANUBIA model input and the NetSyMod model with its Mulino decision support system (mulino mDss) component. The web based IWRMS contains and combines different types of data and methods to provide river basin data and information for decision support. IWRMS is based on a three tier software framework which uses (i) html/javascript at the client tier, (ii) PHP programming language to realize the application tier, and (iii) a postgresql/postgis database tier to manage and storage all data, except the DANUBIA modelling raw data, which are file based and registered in the database tier. All three tiers can reside on one or different computers and are adapted to the local hardware infrastructure. IWRMS as well as RBIS are based on Open Source Software (OSS) components and flexible and time saving access to that database is guaranteed by web-based interfaces for data visualization and retrieval. The IWRMS is accessible via the BRAHMATWINN homepage: http://www.brahmatwinn.uni-jena.de and a user manual for the RBIS is available for download as well.

Orthodontic EMR Cloud Based on 2-Tier Cloud Architecture

Now for orthodontists there are no commercial orthodontic EMR systems suitable for their clinical needs in China, so we study orthodontist’s daily workflow, analyze the requirements, and finally develop the orthodontic EMR Cloud for Peking University School of Stomatology. We propose and adopt 2-Tier Cloud-ARchitecture (2TCAR), which contains rich client tier based on Rich Internet Application (RIA) and server-side Cloud tier based on SimpleDB, to develop the orthodontist’s EMR Cloud for orthodontics according to orthodontist’s workflow. In the 2TCAR the rich client tier is maximized to implement almost all functionalities of user interfaces and transaction logic in the EMR. Functionalities in server-side Cloud tier are simplified only to implement data storage and query. Communication between the two Cloud tiers is also simplified via REST. In the article we research corresponding technologies such as Cloud computing, REST, Flex in RIA and SimpleDB Cloud. Further, in the orthodontic EMR Cloud we use Flex to implement UI presentation & interaction, transaction logic, and REST requests & responses in rich client tier; then design SimpleDB Cloud in server-side Cloud tier, and communication between two tiers via REST. And the EMR Cloud is integrated with existing Resister, Ward and Drugstore information systems. The practice shows that the orthodontic EMR Cloud based on the 2TCAR can fit seamlessly into orthodontist’s daily workflow and effectively replace current paper medical records.

Advertisement Data Management and Application Design in WBCs

This paper describes the advertisement data management and the corresponding intelligent application design implementation for wireless billboard channel (WBC) in the emerging ubiquitous consumer wireless world (UCWW). The algorithms and application runs at the application enabler sub-layer of a WBC service provider (WBC-SP)'s node for broadcasting wireless services to mobile terminals (MTs). The advertisement data is formatted by abstract syntax notation one (ASN.l) and organized by segments with WBC algorithms to reduce the mobile user (MU)'s access time. The intelligent application was used to run the data management algorithms, which is implemented with three tiers: a service discovery and maintenance tier acting as a client-server distributed system for data collection and organization; an intelligent application tier holding all business logic and common application programming interfaces (APIs); and a multi-agent systems (MAS) tier maintaining the advertisement, discovery and association (ADA) agents' lifecycle, and supplying directory facilitator services and message transport services. The performance evaluation of the proposed data management and application architecture details are provided.

Analytic modeling of multitier Internet applications

Since many Internet applications employ a multitier architecture, in this article, we focus on the problem of analytically modeling the behavior of such applications. We present a model based on a network of queues where the queues represent different tiers of the application. Our model is sufficiently general to capture (i) the behavior of tiers with significantly different performance characteristics and (ii) application idiosyncrasies such as session-based workloads, tier replication, load imbalances across replicas, and caching at intermediate tiers. We validate our model using real multitier applications running on a Linux server cluster. Our experiments indicate that our model faithfully captures the performance of these applications for a number of workloads and configurations. Furthermore, our model successfully handles a comprehensive range of resource utilization---from 0 to near saturation for the CPU---for two separate tiers. For a variety of scenarios, including those with caching at one of the application tiers, the average response times predicted by our model were within the 95% confidence intervals of the observed average response times. Our experiments also demonstrate the utility of the model for dynamic capacity provisioning, performance prediction, bottleneck identification, and session policing. In one scenario, where the request arrival rate increased from less than 1500 to nearly 4200 requests/minute, a dynamic provisioning technique employing our model was able to maintain response time targets by increasing the capacity of two of the tiers by factors of 2 and 3.5, respectively.

Provisioning servers in the application tier for e-commerce systems

Server providers that support e-commerce applications as a service for multiple e-commerce Web sites traditionally use a tiered server architecture. This architecture includes an application tier to process requests for dynamically generated content. How this tier is provisioned can significantly impact a provider's profit margin. In this article we study methods to provision servers in the application serving tier that increase a server provider's profits. First, we examine actual traces of request arrivals to the application tier of an e-commerce site, and show that the arrival process is effectively Poisson. Next, we construct an optimization problem in the context of a set of application servers modeled as M / G /1/ PS queueing systems, and derive three simple methods that approximate the allocation that maximizes profits. Simulation results demonstrate that our approximation methods achieve profits that are close to optimal, and are significantly higher than those achieved via simple heuristics.

PhactaManager: A Clinical Trial Management System Incorporating an XML Layer as a Database-Independent Processing Platform

Objective: Clinical trials are the most time-consuming and expensive part of the drug development process. Clinical Trial Management Systems (CTMSs) help sponsors of clinical trials manage all aspects of planning, performance, and reporting. Most conventional systems provide data processing functions using database management system (DBMS) procedures, which cause DBMS dependency problems. Thus, it is hard to handle the system by researchers who are unfamiliar with database. It is also difficult to share Electronic Case Report Forms (eCRFs) between institutions because conventional systems rely on specific software. Methods: PhactaManager was developed for solving these problems by introducing an XML Layer in the application tier using an Entity-Attribute-Value model in the database tier. Results: PhactaManager is a three-tier clinical trial management system that has an XML layer. The XML Layer provides a common DBMS independent eCRF document processing platform. Also we developed XML based eCRF Grammar to describe eCRF documents. The XML data elements described by eCRF grammar was constitute to eCRF by PhactaDesigner which an eCRF document design program. Conclusion: We achieved DBMS independency by implementing the XML Layer in PhactaManager. The Development of the eCRF Grammar enables the standardization of eCRF design, data correction and data sharing in multicenter clinical trial. (Journal of Korean Society of Medical Informatics 13-2, 99-113, 2007)

Continuous monitoring of business process controls: A pilot implementation of a continuous auditing system at Siemens

In this paper we report on the approach we have developed and the lessons we have learned in an implementation of the monitoring and control layer for continuous monitoring of business process controls (CMBPC) in the US internal IT audit department of Siemens Corporation. The architecture developed by us implements a completely independent CMBPC system running on top of Siemens’ own enterprise information system which has read-only interaction with the application tier of the enterprise system. Among our key conclusions is that “formalizability” of audit procedures and audit judgment is grossly underestimated. Additionally, while cost savings and expedience force the implementation to closely follow the existing and approved internal audit program, a certain level of reengineering of audit processes is inevitable due to the necessity to separate formalizable and non-formalizable parts of the program. Our study identifies the management of audit alarms and the prevention of the alarm floods as critical tasks in the CMBPC implementation process. We develop an approach to solving these problems utilizing the hierarchical structure of alarms and the role-based approach to assigning alarm destinations. We also discuss the content of the audit trail of CMBPC.

An analytical model for multi-tier internet services and its applications

Since many Internet applications employ a multi-tier architecture, in this paper, we focus on the problem of analytically modeling the behavior of such applications. We present a model based on a network of queues, where the queues represent different tiers of the application. Our model is sufficiently general to capture (i) the behavior of tiers with significantly different performance characteristics and (ii) application idiosyncrasies such as session-based workloads, concurrency limits, and caching at intermediate tiers. We validate our model using real multi-tier applications running on a Linux server cluster. Our experiments indicate that our model faithfully captures the performance of these applications for a number of workloads and configurations. For a variety of scenarios, including those with caching at one of the application tiers, the average response times predicted by our model were within the 95% confidence intervals of the observed average response times. Our experiments also demonstrate the utility of the model for dynamic capacity provisioning, performance prediction, bottleneck identification, and session policing. In one scenario, where the request arrival rate increased from less than 1500 to nearly 4200 requests/min, a dynamic provisioning technique employing our model was able to maintain response time targets by increasing the capacity of two of the application tiers by factors of 2 and 3.5, respectively.