Server-side Solution Research Articles

A Scalable Server-Side Solution for the Real-Time Handling of Road Safety Notifications

A Scalable Server-Side Solution for the Real-Time Handling of Road Safety Notifications

Client Applications and Server-Side Docker for Management of RNASeq and/or VariantSeq Workflows and Pipelines of the GPRO Suite.

The GPRO suite is an in-progress bioinformatic project for -omics data analysis. As part of the continued growth of this project, we introduce a client- and server-side solution for comparative transcriptomics and analysis of variants. The client-side consists of two Java applications called "RNASeq" and "VariantSeq" to manage pipelines and workflows based on the most common command line interface tools for RNA-seq and Variant-seq analysis, respectively. As such, "RNASeq" and "VariantSeq" are coupled with a Linux server infrastructure (named GPRO Server-Side) that hosts all dependencies of each application (scripts, databases, and command line interface software). Implementation of the Server-Side requires a Linux operating system, PHP, SQL, Python, bash scripting, and third-party software. The GPRO Server-Side can be installed, via a Docker container, in the user's PC under any operating system or on remote servers, as a cloud solution. "RNASeq" and "VariantSeq" are both available as desktop (RCP compilation) and web (RAP compilation) applications. Each application has two execution modes: a step-by-step mode enables each step of the workflow to be executed independently, and a pipeline mode allows all steps to be run sequentially. "RNASeq" and "VariantSeq" also feature an experimental, online support system called GENIE that consists of a virtual (chatbot) assistant and a pipeline jobs panel coupled with an expert system. The chatbot can troubleshoot issues with the usage of each tool, the pipeline jobs panel provides information about the status of each computational job executed in the GPRO Server-Side, while the expert system provides the user with a potential recommendation to identify or fix failed analyses. Our solution is a ready-to-use topic specific platform that combines the user-friendliness, robustness, and security of desktop software, with the efficiency of cloud/web applications to manage pipelines and workflows based on command line interface software.

Supporting Long-Term Archaeological Research in Southern Romania Chalcolithic Sites Using Multi-Platform UAV Mapping

Spatial data play a crucial role in archaeological research, and orthophotos, digital elevation models, and 3D models are frequently used for the mapping, documentation, and monitoring of archaeological sites. Thanks to the availability of compact and low-cost uncrewed airborne vehicles, the use of UAV-based photogrammetry matured in this field over the past two decades. More recently, compact airborne systems are also available that allow the recording of thermal data, multispectral data, and airborne laser scanning. In this article, various platforms and sensors are applied at the Chalcolithic archaeological sites in the Mostiștea Basin and Danube Valley (Southern Romania). By analysing the performance of the systems and the resulting data, insight is given into the selection of the appropriate system for the right application. This analysis requires thorough knowledge of data acquisition and data processing, as well. As both laser scanning and photogrammetry typically result in very large amounts of data, a special focus is also required on the storage and publication of the data. Hence, the objective of this article is to provide a full overview of various aspects of 3D data acquisition for UAV-based mapping. Based on the conclusions drawn in this article, it is stated that photogrammetry and laser scanning can result in data with similar geometrical properties when acquisition parameters are appropriately set. On the one hand, the used ALS-based system outperforms the photogrammetric platforms in terms of operational time and the area covered. On the other hand, conventional photogrammetry provides flexibility that might be required for very low-altitude flights, or emergency mapping. Furthermore, as the used ALS sensor only provides a geometrical representation of the topography, photogrammetric sensors are still required to obtain true colour or false colour composites of the surface. Lastly, the variety of data, such as pre- and post-rendered raster data, 3D models, and point clouds, requires the implementation of multiple methods for the online publication of data. Various client-side and server-side solutions are presented to make the data available for other researchers.

Client Puzzle Protocols as Countermeasure Against Automated Threats to Web Applications

Proof-of-work (PoW) schemes implemented in client puzzle protocols (CPPs) have been proposed as a protection from Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks against internet facing servers. A CPP designed to thwart attacks against a certain client-server protocol is layered independently on top of this protocol or is integrated into it. Such a general solution requires a great deal of standardization. On the other hand, different web applications that may also become targets of DoS attacks can be protected by different schemes, which greatly reduces standardization requirements and makes implementations substantially easier. In the present study, we discuss the utility of CPPs as a practical layer of protection of web applications against DoS and other automated threat events. We define several requirements that must be met by such CPPs, and we propose a general concept and a particular PoW algorithm that fulfills these requirements. The general concept includes recursive definition of sub-puzzles and partial server-side solution verification. The proposed PoW algorithm is based on this concept and on hash inversion/collision tasks. We also introduce a few prototype implementations of this algorithm in JavaScript, WebAssembly, Python, and C, and we present the results of some benchmark tests comparing the performances of these implementations on different hardware. These results show that CPPs can provide an effective layer of mitigation against certain automated threats to web applications.

Autenticación de usuarios en aplicaciones empresariales mediante Spring Security

En la actualidad, la seguridad representa un factor clave en el desarrollo de aplicaciones web de tipo empresarial, debido al hecho de administrar de manera eficiente un número alto de solicitudes efectuadas por varios usuarios de manera simultánea, en ese sentido, la autentificación y autorización juegan un rol importante debiendo ser consideradas en el diseño de la funcionalidad durante el desarrollo de la aplicación. En este artículo, proponemos la implementación de una estrategia de seguridad basada en el framework Spring Security, abordando los temas de autentificación de usuarios, administración de roles y permisos de acceso a componentes, y manejo de sesiones; todo ello, bajo un esquema de arquitectura multicapa aplicando los conceptos del patrón MVC (Modelo-Vista-Controlador) y el paradigma de la programación orientada a objetos. La fácil integración y configuración de Spring Security con otros componentes de software, también se discute en este artículo; permitiendo la construcción de soluciones confiables, robustas y seguras de lado del servidor. Asimismo, la estrategia de seguridad que se describe en este artículo, puede ser considerada para la construcción de API REST, Microservicios o sistemas bidireccionales basados en eventos.

Client-Driven Personalized Trailer Framework Using Thumbnail Containers

Movie trailers are prepared using a one-size-fits-all framework. These days, however, streaming platforms seek to overcome this problem and provide personalized trailers via the investigation of centralized server-side solutions. This can be achieved by analyzing personal user data, and can lead to two major issues: privacy violation and enormous demand in computational resources. This paper proposes an innovative, low-power, client-driven method to facilitate the personalized trailer generation process. It tackles the complex process of detecting personalized actions in real-time from lightweight thumbnail containers. The HTTP live streaming (HLS) server and client are locally configured to validate the proposed method. The system is designed to support a wide range of client hardware with different computational capabilities and has the flexibility to adapt to network conditions. To test the effectiveness of this method, twenty-five broadcast movies, specifically in the western and sports genres, are evaluated. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever client-driven framework that uses thumbnail containers as input to facilitate the trailer generation process.

WiLoVe: A WiFi-coverage based Location Verification System in LBS

With the proliferation of mobile devices, location-based services (LBS) have penetrated into our daily life in recent years. In an LBS system, the users check in at different venues to acquire rewards such as virtual points or real-world coupons/discounts, and easily share with their friends the recent activities. While these rewards benefit benign users a lot, they are incentives for malicious users to cheat on their locations. Recent researches have revealed that location cheating can be launched automatically on a large scale at ease. In current practice, the defense against location cheating relies on the server side solution, which has been proven to be insufficient. In this paper, we propose a novel verification system named WiLoVe. It maps the physical area of a venue to the local WiFi coverage and involves the venue owner as the verifier, hence utilizes the user's capability of one-hop communication with the verifier to verify the user's presence at the venue. In this work, we implement the verifier as an independent application, which can easily be installed on the venue owner's existing devices (laptops, cellphones, etc.). Hence, no additional hardware is needed. An adaptive algorithm is designed to defend against proxy attacks based on the check-in delay. Extensive experiments show that WiLoVe achieves low false rate, as well as consistent user experience, acceptable power consumption, and good applicability to different WiFi environments.

Forcing Johnny to login safely

We present the results of the first long-term user study of site-based login mechanisms which force and train users to login safely. We found that interactive site-identifying images received 70% detection rates, which is significantly better than the results received by the typical login ceremony and with passive defense indicators [in: CHI'06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, 2006, pp. 601--610; Computers & Security 281,2 2009, 63--71; in: SP'07: Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, 2007, pp. 51--65]. We also found that combining login bookmarks with interactive images and 'non-working' buttons/links achieved the best detection rates 82% and overall resistance rates 93%.We also present WAPP Web Application Phishing-Protection, an effective server-side solution which combines the login bookmark and the interactive custom image indicators. WAPP provides two-factor and two-sided authentication.

INCORPORATING LOAD BALANCING SPATIAL ANALYSIS INTO XML-BASED WEBGIS

Abstract. This article aims to introduce load balancing spatial analysis into XML-based WebGIS. In contrast to other approaches that implement spatial queries and analyses solely on server or browser sides, load balancing spatial analysis carries out spatial analysis on either the server or the browser sides depending on the execution costs (i.e., network transmission costs and computational costs). In this article, key elements of load balancing middlewares are investigated, and relevant solution is proposed. The comparison with server-side solution, browse-side solution, and our former solution shows that the proposed solution can optimize the execution of spatial analysis, greatly ease the network transmission load between the server and the browser sides, and therefore lead to a better performance. The proposed solution enables users to access high-performance spatial analysis simply via a web browser.

An SVG-based method to support spatial analysis in XML/GML/SVG-based WebGIS

XML/GML/SVG-based approaches are promising for building Web-based geographic information systems (WebGIS). However, current XML/GML/SVG-based WebGISs are lacking in spatial analysis. Some of them are designed for web mapping only. Others adopt a server-side solution for spatial analysis, which suffers from the ‘bottleneck’ problem and results in a high network transmission load. Load-balancing spatial analysis between server side and browser side can be used to solve the above problems. This article focuses on one of the key building blocks of load-balancing spatial analysis, that is, SVG-based spatial analysis which enables spatial querying and analysis directly on SVG (on the browser side). After analyzing the workflow of spatial analysis, we identify and focus on two key issues in providing spatial analysis on SVG: SVG-based spatial information representation and SVG-based spatial extended structured query language (SSESQL). For the first issue, a theoretical foundation is set up to develop an SVG-based spatial information representation model. Some spatial operators are designed and integrated into an SSESQL to support spatial querying on SVG. Finally, we design and implement two case studies. The results of these case studies show that the proposed method is feasible and operable in supporting spatial analysis directly on SVG on the browser side. The proposed method can be easily incorporated with some existing methods (e.g., GML-based spatial analysis on the server side) to provide load-balancing spatial analysis (load balancing between server side and browser side) in XML/GML/SVG-based WebGIS. As a result, users can access high-performance spatial analysis simply via a web browser (such as Internet Explorer and Firefox).

Bridging the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 With Representational State Transfer (REST)

Semantic Web technologies must integrate with Web 2.0 services for both to leverage each others strengths. We argue that the REST-based design methodologies [1] of the web present the ideal mechanism through which to align the publication of semantic data with the existing web architecture. We present the design and implementation of two solutions that combine REST-based design and RDF [2] data access: one solution for integrating existing web services and one server-side solution for creating RDF REST services. Both of these solutions enable SPARQL [13] to be a unifying data access layer for aligning the Semantic Web and Web 2.0.

Bridging the semantic Web and Web 2.0 with Representational State Transfer (REST)

Semantic Web technologies must integrate with Web 2.0 services for both to leverage each others strengths. We argue that the REST-based design methodologies [R.T. Fielding, R.N. Taylor, Principled design of the modern web architecture, ACM Trans. Internet Technol. (TOIT) 2 (2) (2002) 115–150] of the web present the ideal mechanism through which to align the publication of semantic data with the existing web architecture. We present the design and implementation of two solutions that combine REST-based design and RDF [D. Beckett (Ed.), RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised), W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004] data access: one solution for integrating existing web services and one server-side solution for creating RDF REST services. Both of these solutions enable SPARQL [E. Prud’hommeaux, A. Seaborne (Eds.), SPARQL Query Language for RDF, W3C Working Draft, March 26, 2007] to be a unifying data access layer for aligning the Semantic Web and Web 2.0.

The Object‐JavaScript language

Complex graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that support a large amount of user interaction require a fast response time, a rich set of building blocks for an esthetic look-and-feel, and a development environment that supports ongoing change. On the World Wide Web, client-side technologies offer more of these features than do server-side solutions. Java and JavaScript are the two most popular languages used for client-side GUI implementations. Java implementations require a user to download a plug-in that contains a virtual machine to execute the Java byte-code. The installation and maintenance of this plug-in is sometimes an unsurmountable barrier to using Java. JavaScript lacks some of the desirable features of Java, such as easy to use object-oriented features and having a GUI class library, but does not require a plug-in. We have enhanced JavaScript by implementing a new language Object-JavaScript (OJS) and by providing an OJS library of GUI components, thus making it a viable alternative to Java. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Object-JavaScript language

Complex graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that support a large amount of user interaction require a fast response time, a rich set of building blocks for an esthetic look-and-feel, and a development environment that supports ongoing change. On the World Wide Web, client-side technologies offer more of these features than do server-side solutions. Java and JavaScript are the two most popular languages used for client-side GUI implementations. Java implementations require a user to download a plug-in that contains a virtual machine to execute the Java byte-code. The installation and maintenance of this plug-in is sometimes an unsurmountable barrier to using Java. JavaScript lacks some of the desirable features of Java, such as easy to use object-oriented features and having a GUI class library, but does not require a plug-in. We have enhanced JavaScript by implementing a new language Object-JavaScript (OJS) and by providing an OJS library of GUI components, thus making it a viable alternative to Java. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Full-text indexing of non-textual resources

Full-text indexing of resources on the World Wide Web is limited to simple content types, such as HTML and plain text. More complex content types, such as Postscript, PDF and proprietary word-processing formats are excluded, despite the fact that such documents are usually rich in content. The reason for excluding these types of resources is simply that it would be too expensive and too difficult to attempt to extract a textual representation from them. The operator of a search engine is simply not motivated to expend the additional resources that would be needed to handle such documents. The gain would be fairly small, and search engines are extremely popular even when they are limited to HTML and plain text documents. The situation is quite different from the point-of-view of the content provider. A site may have significant amounts of its content in non-textual documents, but despite this the content provider may want to have the documents indexed in normal search engines. In this paper we present several server-side solutions that allow existing indexing software to index the textual representation of non-textual resources.