This is the second part of my reaction to this post by Kai, a fellow PhD Student at Blekinge TH and Ericsson AB. I had already introduced his blog and you can find the previous part in the previous post on this blog. In this post he reports among others about two other courses he has to take besides from software productivity. I will try to shortly analyze what he wrote about scientific publications and statistical methods.
About scientific publications, what interested me is that they get to study scientometrics. Scientometrics, according to Kai, are the methods used to assess the relevance and importance of journals and scientific conferences. If you have worked as a researcher you must know that not all scientific conferences, workshops, symposia, journals and all sorts of scholarly transactions are equal. They surpass each other in terms of popularity, reach, perceived quality and influence on the scientific community. Using Scientometrics, the impact factors of journals are established, which helps the researcher to select where he wants his papers to be published. as Kai simply expresses it: if you get a paper accepted on one of the journals with the highest impact factors for your community and area of research, then " this increases your reputation as a scientist in the area". But logically, the difficulty to get a paper accepted at one of these conferences grows with their impact factor.
What they learn in this course is to asses the impact factors of target journals and conferences, the major scientists (what my supervisor calls immediate research community), to come up with a strategy of publication and to make a review of papers. I guess the latter concerns papers that have been accepted at famous scholarly transactions or that have been written by members of the major scientists in the community.
Knowing the major scientists in the community is very important. First of all you get to know the most important directions of research, and you get to know the most important results already achieved. So you get a lot quicker to know the state of the art of the area you are working on. Also studying the references used by these scientists can help you know the foundations of your research area that you may want to read for a solid and fundamental understanding of current state of the art results. these scientists are the ones that publish the most articles and the ones at the most important transactions. These scientists normally also show you at which journals and conferences papers tackling related topics can be published and which ones are the most relevant.
The second course are statistical methods. Now, like every computer scientist I have had my share of statistical mathematics. Actually more, due to the emphasis put onto mathematics and the additional statistics options I took at my engineering school, the ENSIMAG, Grenoble. But this is not what Kai is talking about. He specifically says that they take a course dedicated to learn how to use statistics to evaluate and analyze data gathered during research (especially in software engineering, the use of case studies as qualitative analysis tools is widely done, as I can see it from the work of Sebastian). Such use cases and the accompanying statistical analysis can be of great use when tackling one of the last steps of a PhD, which is evaluating your results. The course is based on concrete problems, in 5 seminars.
The goal of these two posts was to give an idea about how a structured PhD at a university (at least partly) takes on the harsh project of a dissertation, and the tools PhD students get to learn and to use. In a totally industrial PhD, you have to try to go as structured as possible with the tools that you have. That means you shouldn't expect to have time, resources to learn or mentors who will teach you how to optimally get on with your PhD. You are in quite some extent an auto-didact, a multi-disciplinary researcher and necessarily one with extended curiosity. The desire to work in a highly structured way and the ability to combine several sources of information, from areas that do not necessarily have much to do with your direct area of research, is a must. being open to learn from the techniques of others and to get the best out of all who you meet or you read about can only make your PhD better.
I hope that my two small analyses have helped better explain what an industrial PhD is about. I will write some other posts about this, since I have quite some opinions to share concerning the topic.
Marwane El Kharbili
Dec 22, 2008
Dec 1, 2008
Having a PhD Strategy (Part One)
This is my reaction to this post by Kai, a fellow PhD Student at Blekinge TH and Ericsson AB. I had already introduced his blog.
In this post he reports about his (at the time he wrote the post) next steps for the PhD, He lists three courses he has to take at the university and explains ho he wants to approach the PhD Thesis.
Kai explains that he is going to do what is called a "Systematic Literature Review" (SLR. A systematic literature review is different from a normal Literature Review (LR) in the following points:
I was surprised. I had never heard of the clear specification of a Literature Review (LR) strategy. of course you have always your own strategy when conducting one, but it is only "in your head" and your are the only one who knows what you are really looking for. In addition, no one would bother to describe an LR´s strategy because it would not be of a direct use for the expected outcome of the LR. So I was very intrigued. I think that in the scope of a PhD Thesis, dressing strong, clear and most importantly far-reaching fundamentals for the dissertation is a requirement for the thesis. That's why I am really convinced of the utility of a Systematic Literature review (SLR).
The most interesting in this is that I have noticed my non-intended attempt at the beginning of my PhD to do the same for my Thesis. For example, my attempts to have a taxonomy of the domain were in the form of complex mind-maps. Unfortunately , Minds Maps do not scale wekll with complex research domains, you will need a structured approach using several mind maps on several layers of the same domain and use hyperlinks between the mind maps. But I thought (mostly due to comments from colleagues and my entourage) that I shouldn't go for it because it is just a waste of time and that I should focus a lot more on certain topics. Knowing my tendency to tackle a lot wider range of reources to solve one problem (which I call the Sponge Effect (SE) which I will come to later in this Blog), in an attempt to let no information escape my research I thought I had to stop it. But this is not the main reason.
The real reason is that doing a PhD in 3 years necessitates extremely focused work on getting results for a well defined problem. The main fear of a PhD student is not to be able to fully understand the problems he has to deal with and to need a lot more years to conduct his research than intended. This is the real reason why my working method has been to cluster the domain I am working on in sub-domains, and studying one of these sub-domains fully in order to achieve some results for this sub-domain. My strategy is to examine the results I get from my research on this first target sub-domain in comparison to the other sub-domains afterwards. And thus to be able to get a more global overview on my first intended target PhD Domain by criticizing, completing, correcting and extending initial results. Whether 3 years are enough for this, I really doubt. But hope keeps alive :D
Marwane El Kharbili
In this post he reports about his (at the time he wrote the post) next steps for the PhD, He lists three courses he has to take at the university and explains ho he wants to approach the PhD Thesis.
Kai explains that he is going to do what is called a "Systematic Literature Review" (SLR. A systematic literature review is different from a normal Literature Review (LR) in the following points:
- Allows to analyze the current state of knowledge about a whole scientific Area, such as Software productivity (Kai's example) or Compliance Management (my example).
- It is easier to see what has been done in an area and what hasn't been done yet.
- It is easier to argue why a PhD Student took a certain direction, and why this direction of research will bring outcomes which are useful to the scientific community.
- It also easier to motivate the use of certain methods, tools or approaches.
- it typically covers a way wider scientific scope than a normal SOTA (State Of The Art) review since it doesn't seek to focus on a certain problematic as an efficiency criteria.
- "Systematic means that one has to document search strategy (keywords, search strings, scientific databases), paper selection criteria, paper evaluation criteria, how to synthesize the findings of the identified studies and so forth."
I was surprised. I had never heard of the clear specification of a Literature Review (LR) strategy. of course you have always your own strategy when conducting one, but it is only "in your head" and your are the only one who knows what you are really looking for. In addition, no one would bother to describe an LR´s strategy because it would not be of a direct use for the expected outcome of the LR. So I was very intrigued. I think that in the scope of a PhD Thesis, dressing strong, clear and most importantly far-reaching fundamentals for the dissertation is a requirement for the thesis. That's why I am really convinced of the utility of a Systematic Literature review (SLR).
The most interesting in this is that I have noticed my non-intended attempt at the beginning of my PhD to do the same for my Thesis. For example, my attempts to have a taxonomy of the domain were in the form of complex mind-maps. Unfortunately , Minds Maps do not scale wekll with complex research domains, you will need a structured approach using several mind maps on several layers of the same domain and use hyperlinks between the mind maps. But I thought (mostly due to comments from colleagues and my entourage) that I shouldn't go for it because it is just a waste of time and that I should focus a lot more on certain topics. Knowing my tendency to tackle a lot wider range of reources to solve one problem (which I call the Sponge Effect (SE) which I will come to later in this Blog), in an attempt to let no information escape my research I thought I had to stop it. But this is not the main reason.
The real reason is that doing a PhD in 3 years necessitates extremely focused work on getting results for a well defined problem. The main fear of a PhD student is not to be able to fully understand the problems he has to deal with and to need a lot more years to conduct his research than intended. This is the real reason why my working method has been to cluster the domain I am working on in sub-domains, and studying one of these sub-domains fully in order to achieve some results for this sub-domain. My strategy is to examine the results I get from my research on this first target sub-domain in comparison to the other sub-domains afterwards. And thus to be able to get a more global overview on my first intended target PhD Domain by criticizing, completing, correcting and extending initial results. Whether 3 years are enough for this, I really doubt. But hope keeps alive :D
Marwane El Kharbili
Nov 24, 2008
Big players and their IDEs
Just an observation that hit me here as I was analyzing the restructuration and integration of BEA products into Oracle's FUSION platform. IBM started and contribute significantly to the Eclipse project. Even websphere is available in a light version called community edition, free of course. Oracle's Jdeveloper is free. Oracle contributes to Eclipse. Oracle took BEA's WebLogic Workbench and integrated it with its own contributions to eclipse forming the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. The strategy of Oracle being what it is, this pack of tools is free, to the great delight of developers who can try out technologies and compare. Sun has since a long time a very good IDE (the famous Netbeans) that may be built on a different strategy than Eclipse but that is not that less popular than Eclipse and has some arguments for it. Microsoft has express editions of its visual studio .net IDEs and tools. SAP has no free tool available.
This is just one observation to whom it my be interesting, I just wish SAP would make some tools they have developed internally freely available, especially in the Enterprise SOA & BPM category. Let's wait, hope and see.
Marwane El Kharbili
This is just one observation to whom it my be interesting, I just wish SAP would make some tools they have developed internally freely available, especially in the Enterprise SOA & BPM category. Let's wait, hope and see.
Marwane El Kharbili
Oct 6, 2008
Vote for a cause on Tripadvisor.com
Vote for a cause on tripadvisor.com and help them donate one million dollar to a world cause!
I have just fulfilled my duty as a human being and cituzen of the world and voted for my preferate NGO, so do the same. You even get a small 9 pages long green holiday trip booklet by email.
Link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Causes.
Marwane El Kharbili
I have just fulfilled my duty as a human being and cituzen of the world and voted for my preferate NGO, so do the same. You even get a small 9 pages long green holiday trip booklet by email.
Link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Causes.
Marwane El Kharbili
Sep 19, 2008
L'amour a la marocaine...
J'ai toujours ete un facon de l'humour noir bien sombre et mechant, a la sauce ironie acide... Bon, c'est peut-etre une facon un peu extreme de voir les choses :D Mais pour en venir au sujet, il s'agit de l'amour au maroc. Vous me direz, mais l'amour...c'est une chose universelle, tout le monde doit connaitre, tout le monde doit avoir des idees similaires sur le sujet...Non, les marocains, pour ceux qui ne les connaissent pas, sont une sous-espece du genre humain qu'aucune science connue ne pourrait ni comprendre ni expliquer. Les journalistes de TelQuel, periodique que j'adore tout simplement, avec lesquels je ne suis pas d'accord sur un nombre de choses, surtout lorsqu'il s'agit de religion, avaient ecrit une chronique il y a 3 ans sur l'amour au maroc. ceux qui connaissent le style des petits gars de TelQuel ne seront pas surpris par le melange d'ironie et de serieux avec lequel ils parlent de la chose. cette ironie qui nous est bien propre nouspermet de rire de nos problemes, de nos defauts et de nos peurs sans pour autant deprimer ou penser au suicide, c'est la solution miracle qui a permis au marocains de survivre a des siecles d'histoire mouvante. Done tout cela, c'est pour vous motiver a jeter un coup d'oeil a l'article en ligne de TelQuel: Les marocains et l'amour. Bonne lecture!
Marwane El Kharbili.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Sep 10, 2008
Control SOX ROI Calculator
Doing it once not being a rule, this time I got something useful to say actually :D
I found this Internal Controls ROI calculator through the Inside Sarbanes-Oxley Blog. This calculator by Aline should help you explain your management that every penny spent of creating and managing internal controls actually get back in your pocket in ways that are not directly to see.
Marwane El Kharbili
I found this Internal Controls ROI calculator through the Inside Sarbanes-Oxley Blog. This calculator by Aline should help you explain your management that every penny spent of creating and managing internal controls actually get back in your pocket in ways that are not directly to see.
Marwane El Kharbili
Sep 6, 2008
Check your nerdiness!
On Dr. gernot Starke's blog (IT & more), I discovered a link to a page evaluating one's own nerdiness score. I decided I had no problem with that and that I would be very curious to know what my score would be. I do not think being nerdy is a bad thing, I even appreciate working with nerds. I have to say because of my background I have been in contact with many of them, but a lot less now that I have started my professional career. Nerds are actually very funny people, and most of them have very specific views on the world and on people. It is always very interesting to talk to nerds, but you certainly have got to come from the same background as them, at least to understand what they are saying and be able to discuss with them.
I will say nothing about the questions you'll get, so you'll be able to be surprised. But the questions are really asked by a nerd, although these questions are really primary class level for a real nerd, i.e. they are extremely easy and quick to answer if you have at least been a nerd or lived and spent much time around nerds :D
One thing before I tell the results, I have been trying for years to quit my short but intensive nerdy times and I really answered intuitively, as quick as possibel and most of all, honestly (means that I answered what I think and not what I know a nerd would answer). So I took the test and....my score is...:
______________________________________________
High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!.
______________________________________________
Lol, isn't that funny....euuh...I guess only a nerd would find this funny...ok, ok, it's not funny :D
Oh and now my score is from now on to be seen for ever on my blog, look for it!
Marwane El Kharbili.
PS: If you are really a nerd, then this website is for you: plenty of nerd tests.
I will say nothing about the questions you'll get, so you'll be able to be surprised. But the questions are really asked by a nerd, although these questions are really primary class level for a real nerd, i.e. they are extremely easy and quick to answer if you have at least been a nerd or lived and spent much time around nerds :D
One thing before I tell the results, I have been trying for years to quit my short but intensive nerdy times and I really answered intuitively, as quick as possibel and most of all, honestly (means that I answered what I think and not what I know a nerd would answer). So I took the test and....my score is...:
______________________________________________
Overall, you scored as follows:
16% scored higher (more nerdy),
1% scored the same, and
83% scored lower (less nerdy).
High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!.
______________________________________________
Lol, isn't that funny....euuh...I guess only a nerd would find this funny...ok, ok, it's not funny :D
Oh and now my score is from now on to be seen for ever on my blog, look for it!
Marwane El Kharbili.
PS: If you are really a nerd, then this website is for you: plenty of nerd tests.
Sep 2, 2008
Google's protocol buffers
Google made its protocol buffers language publicly available. Our american pals have been using this data description language internally for a long time and because of its simplicity and thus ease (and speed) of processing has quite some advantages when compared to XML. If you only need a simple serialization data format to convey information and do not need complex processing techniques, then you might wanna have a look at protocol buffers. Protocol buffers provides simple models: lists and records while making the size of data necessary to encode information 3 to 10 times smaller than XML-based formats (dialects). Parsing is said to be 20 to 100 times quicker. Using the simple list and record structures, it is possible to generate classes in a target language such as python or java or any language of choice in order to write logic for those structures.
The language has now gone open source. So something similar to IDL but google guys say it is not as complicated. See google's announcement here and the page of the project on google code here, where you can among other things download the project.
Marwane El Kharbili
Source: JournalDuNet: http://www.journaldunet.com/developpeur/breve/international/29225/google-propose-une-alternative-a-xml.shtml
The language has now gone open source. So something similar to IDL but google guys say it is not as complicated. See google's announcement here and the page of the project on google code here, where you can among other things download the project.
Marwane El Kharbili
Source: JournalDuNet: http://www.journaldunet.com/developpeur/breve/international/29225/google-propose-une-alternative-a-xml.shtml
Aug 14, 2008
BPM Standards Presentation by Prof. zur Muehlen
I think you really have to see this presentation by Prof. zur Muehlen on BPM standards, Origins, Overview, and Directions. Very thourough work by somebody with years of experience in research on BPM. You may be surprise by the insights and the novel perspectives under which the fuzzy concept of BPM, which is more than ever on the verge of becoming yet another inflated buzz word can bring you. I am very glad Pro. zur Muehlen wrote this 80 slides long presentation. I think it is useful to both business people and researchers. Enjoy!
Marwane El Kharbili
Marwane El Kharbili
Aug 12, 2008
Gratis Seminare in Karlsruhe
A friend of mine let me know about this company inKkarlsruhe which offers free seminars to students and freshly graduated individuals. The seminars are very relevant to ypoung people that are abou to or have just recently entered the job market. Seminar topics are among others:
Berufsstarter-Seminar,Karriere-Tag: Bewerbung und Assessment-Center-Training, Assessment-Center Trainings, Rhetorik- & Kommunikationsseminar.
Check out the link here: http://www.karrierecoaching-karlsruhe.de/seminare.asp
Marwane El Kharbili
Berufsstarter-Seminar,Karriere-Tag: Bewerbung und Assessment-Center-Training, Assessment-Center Trainings, Rhetorik- & Kommunikationsseminar.
Check out the link here: http://www.karrierecoaching-karlsruhe.de/seminare.asp
Marwane El Kharbili
Aug 4, 2008
Business rules and decision tables workshop
This event took place in Dortmund, at the university of applied sciences. I had an invited talk there with my IDS Scheer colleague Dr. Markus Fischer. We basically explained the ARIS approach in building business rule-enhanced applications by integrating business process management with business rule management. we motivated the use of business rules in BPM and showed conceptually how they allow increasing business flexibility and business agility. Another aspect is business control, by outsourcing decisions from business processes and modeling these in deicated ARIS business rule models. We also further explained how the ARIS Business Rules Designer (ABRD) tool shall fit into the ARIS BPM lifecycle and introduced in our talk how process monitoring techniques can be used to monitor business rule execution as a mean of controlling business and making it better.
we got a quite a few questions from the professionals in the attendency about how the alogorithms work underneath the GUI and how the engine optimizes and discovers inconsistencies in the decision tables. This is normal becaus ethe attendency were actually business rules and decision table specialists such as Prof. Horst Strunz. Prof. Strunz gave an enlightning talk about the beginnings of business rules and thnaks to this pioneer, I now understand a lot more about the histrory of a techniques for which international standards have been written already in the seventies.
the other interesting talks were among others, some application cases by students of the european master in project management directed by Pro. Reusch who has also more than ten years experience in the decision tables domain. Then came the talk by a colleague from LF-ET, a partner of Software AG, who presented their approach for decision tables and has shown what functionalities were integrated in theor tooling. He also talked about new directions of work by opening the use of LF-ET to other application systems than Software AG's. LF-ET have quite a big range of references in Germany. I have seen a couple of nice functionalities in the tool, which I think are nice for the user. Unfortunately I didn't come to discuss with the guy from LF-ET because I had some small talk with other attendees.
Through the workshop, I got to know about one tool, apparently very recent, called common knowledge studio, an australian company. Although I thought the only australian guys who kick it at a high level were Ruleburs, which was acquired by Haley Ltd. recently this year, common knowledge studion ahs a quite nice approach in many ways similar to the ABRD. Of course, the BPM aspects which are core to the ABRD are not present, and this is all that makes the real difference in the ABRD, besides from the model driven approach whch allows to think of any rule execution engine as a potential execution environment for ABRD rules. The guys from ILOG didn't show up because of some time management problems, which is a pity since these guys have a nice tool I think (although very IT oriented) and I had some targeted questions. But I hope I will get to asking them some time if I make it to meeting them at any other venue.
All in all, the workshop on friday was quite nice for me, we got to show what the very recent ABRD does, and also got me to enrich my mind with odeas from the other colleagues who each do a nice job I think. After summer holiday, I will thake some time on my own and rethink what we are curently doing in the business rules management community as a whole and look for interesting directions of practical research and enhancements. One aspect which I already find exciting is on the methodological level and is about some initiative for agile rule modeling which I was introduced to by the VP Methodology of ILOG. I am looking forward to that.
I'll keep you update with any new things that happen in the ARIS business rule management worls and from a more research perspective too.
Marwane El Kharbili
we got a quite a few questions from the professionals in the attendency about how the alogorithms work underneath the GUI and how the engine optimizes and discovers inconsistencies in the decision tables. This is normal becaus ethe attendency were actually business rules and decision table specialists such as Prof. Horst Strunz. Prof. Strunz gave an enlightning talk about the beginnings of business rules and thnaks to this pioneer, I now understand a lot more about the histrory of a techniques for which international standards have been written already in the seventies.
the other interesting talks were among others, some application cases by students of the european master in project management directed by Pro. Reusch who has also more than ten years experience in the decision tables domain. Then came the talk by a colleague from LF-ET, a partner of Software AG, who presented their approach for decision tables and has shown what functionalities were integrated in theor tooling. He also talked about new directions of work by opening the use of LF-ET to other application systems than Software AG's. LF-ET have quite a big range of references in Germany. I have seen a couple of nice functionalities in the tool, which I think are nice for the user. Unfortunately I didn't come to discuss with the guy from LF-ET because I had some small talk with other attendees.
Through the workshop, I got to know about one tool, apparently very recent, called common knowledge studio, an australian company. Although I thought the only australian guys who kick it at a high level were Ruleburs, which was acquired by Haley Ltd. recently this year, common knowledge studion ahs a quite nice approach in many ways similar to the ABRD. Of course, the BPM aspects which are core to the ABRD are not present, and this is all that makes the real difference in the ABRD, besides from the model driven approach whch allows to think of any rule execution engine as a potential execution environment for ABRD rules. The guys from ILOG didn't show up because of some time management problems, which is a pity since these guys have a nice tool I think (although very IT oriented) and I had some targeted questions. But I hope I will get to asking them some time if I make it to meeting them at any other venue.
All in all, the workshop on friday was quite nice for me, we got to show what the very recent ABRD does, and also got me to enrich my mind with odeas from the other colleagues who each do a nice job I think. After summer holiday, I will thake some time on my own and rethink what we are curently doing in the business rules management community as a whole and look for interesting directions of practical research and enhancements. One aspect which I already find exciting is on the methodological level and is about some initiative for agile rule modeling which I was introduced to by the VP Methodology of ILOG. I am looking forward to that.
I'll keep you update with any new things that happen in the ARIS business rule management worls and from a more research perspective too.
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 31, 2008
Learn Project Management in 15 Minutes
This is the title of the free offer by Bar de Baas, the owner of my preferred project management website, SoftwareProjects.Org, actually the only one I have selected the RSS feed of and bookmarked because of the quality of the content. The title sounds like one of those hit and flashy larketing slogans for cheap books. But this shouldn't drive you in an error, underestimating the author and hos website might be a big one. The page to learn project management in 15 minutes contains three videos that'll introduce you to the conceptions of the author about project management. Bas de Baar also has several books to the topics and many many posts on the topic on his dedicated website. I am sure you'll enjoy some pretty entertaining and informative views on project management.
Marwane El Kharbili
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 30, 2008
Stevens Institute of Technology joins IDS Scheer's Innovation & Education Network
Not much to say, listen to this interview of Prof Michael zur Muehlen on Stevens Institute of Technology being one of 2 canadian intitutions part of the currently 8-members strong IDS Innovation & Education network.
Source: http://howe.stevens.edu/index.php?id=124
Marwane El Kharbili
Source: http://howe.stevens.edu/index.php?id=124
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 29, 2008
IBM Buys ILOG
Sandy Kemsley was again faster than me and reported on the press releases by IBM and ILOG saying that IBM will buy ILOG for 340$ million. One independant BRM vendor is not independant any more. The difference between the acquisition of YASU by SAP and the one of ILOG by IBM is that ILOG is one of the leaders in BRM and has a big number of partnerships in the industry and with BPM vendors in particular.
Marwane El Kharbili
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 24, 2008
Some Python IDEs
Following a discussion with some colleagues about python, I decided to write a short article about it. I have the feeling not many Python fans are around, honestly I can't understand it, but again this judgment is highly subjective, since I pretty much like everything about the language, including the syntax and tabs interpretation, all available data structures, the flexible object orientation, dynamic typing, readability, the many libraries to do pretty much anything, the possibility to embed components written in other languages such as C and TKinter. And if you are not convinced, have a look at Zope, Plone and Peak. If you've been using internet in the last 10 years, you can't have missed on these.
One of the main critics of one of my colleagues was that he didn't know of a suitable IDE for developing python programs. that annoyed me somewhat since I know of many, which are even both free and open-source, at least in some versions. My preferate IDE was alway SPE's Python IDS. You can download it here. I have been developing on SPE for 3 years now, although not much in later time because of lack of time. SPE offers you pretty much everything you expect from an IDE, no need to list them all. Just download it, install it and test some scripts and classes. You can even try to quickly write some graphical user interfaces using TKinter or WxWidgets. Here is a website where you can get started although I personally have started using the official page, which documentation I find very well done. And hop, another link to a repository of open source software written in python repository. Python is fun!
Marwane El Kharbili.
One of the main critics of one of my colleagues was that he didn't know of a suitable IDE for developing python programs. that annoyed me somewhat since I know of many, which are even both free and open-source, at least in some versions. My preferate IDE was alway SPE's Python IDS. You can download it here. I have been developing on SPE for 3 years now, although not much in later time because of lack of time. SPE offers you pretty much everything you expect from an IDE, no need to list them all. Just download it, install it and test some scripts and classes. You can even try to quickly write some graphical user interfaces using TKinter or WxWidgets. Here is a website where you can get started although I personally have started using the official page, which documentation I find very well done. And hop, another link to a repository of open source software written in python repository. Python is fun!
Marwane El Kharbili.
Jul 22, 2008
10 research Positions open
At the HPI in Potsdam in Germany, there are 8 positions for PhD students and 2 Postdocs that are open now. You'll find the detailed announcement here:
http://kolleg.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/
mention is given of the approached topics and the salary.
Good luck to whom it may be of interest.
Marwane El Kharbili
http://kolleg.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/
mention is given of the approached topics and the salary.
Good luck to whom it may be of interest.
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 11, 2008
ESWC - Part III
And the last part of this post series will be dedicated to something I am really fed of, and that is something you'll inevitably see in any conference or symposium yo go to: Poor presentation skills, poor speaking skills and oh my god poor slides! I have just gathered some of the (to my opinion) worst errors that are done again and again by people. Of course, most of these are young researchers but also the elderly and some of the established ones do the same errors:
Capital Error I: Slides are overloaded...this is the most common one, people try to make books fit on one single slide, this can be no good.
Capital Error II: People rarely use schemata or images to explain complex ideas. Instead, they rather have 3 slides with 15 lines of text on each..no need to say that anyone gets lost. This is why at the end of presentations you get questions that should have been clearly answered by the presentation such as: "why are you doing this?"...
Capital Error III: people just do not establish any contact with the audience, they just talk, do their thing and go. Just as some people are brilliant about writing papers (because there are precise techniques for this, that I still have to learn to get more papers accepted :D), they just do not care about presenting them well. The worst example of this is when hosts just speak for like 2 or 3 minutes (this is a lot of time believe me) while turning their back to the audience and looking at the screen. The ones who look the audience in the eyes and are able to check if people are following are not legions...
Capital Error IV: Slides are mostly hardly readable, either because the font used is too small, because slides are overloaded, because figures are too big and complex or because there are none, sometimes figures are not even explained. Imagine one attendee seeing a new slide with a super revolutionary graphic popping up and the host explaining things without making any reference to any part of the graphic. I know this too well because I used to make the same error in my papers, but now I am at least explaining my figures explicitly. Unfortunately I found no clear guide out there telling you how to write a good paper, it seems like some dark secret science that only professors are giving up to their best PhD students..when they have time.
Capital Error V: also, the stance usually taken by people, if they are not forced to stand somewhere because of a microphone for example, is not always the best. People sometimes hide completely the screen to half the audience, look the hole time on their laptop to read their slides (litterally) or something else.
Anyways, this was no inventory of bad presentation errors, this was simply what I noted while attending the conference. But it made me aware that I must have lots of things I may not be conscious about neither that I have to learn in order to achieve my goal of becoming a good presenter one day. So I will start looking for some resources on the net and watch carefully the videos of presentations by experienced people. I would also appreciate any help guys , you are welcome to help out here.
Marwane El Kharbili
Capital Error I: Slides are overloaded...this is the most common one, people try to make books fit on one single slide, this can be no good.
Capital Error II: People rarely use schemata or images to explain complex ideas. Instead, they rather have 3 slides with 15 lines of text on each..no need to say that anyone gets lost. This is why at the end of presentations you get questions that should have been clearly answered by the presentation such as: "why are you doing this?"...
Capital Error III: people just do not establish any contact with the audience, they just talk, do their thing and go. Just as some people are brilliant about writing papers (because there are precise techniques for this, that I still have to learn to get more papers accepted :D), they just do not care about presenting them well. The worst example of this is when hosts just speak for like 2 or 3 minutes (this is a lot of time believe me) while turning their back to the audience and looking at the screen. The ones who look the audience in the eyes and are able to check if people are following are not legions...
Capital Error IV: Slides are mostly hardly readable, either because the font used is too small, because slides are overloaded, because figures are too big and complex or because there are none, sometimes figures are not even explained. Imagine one attendee seeing a new slide with a super revolutionary graphic popping up and the host explaining things without making any reference to any part of the graphic. I know this too well because I used to make the same error in my papers, but now I am at least explaining my figures explicitly. Unfortunately I found no clear guide out there telling you how to write a good paper, it seems like some dark secret science that only professors are giving up to their best PhD students..when they have time.
Capital Error V: also, the stance usually taken by people, if they are not forced to stand somewhere because of a microphone for example, is not always the best. People sometimes hide completely the screen to half the audience, look the hole time on their laptop to read their slides (litterally) or something else.
Anyways, this was no inventory of bad presentation errors, this was simply what I noted while attending the conference. But it made me aware that I must have lots of things I may not be conscious about neither that I have to learn in order to achieve my goal of becoming a good presenter one day. So I will start looking for some resources on the net and watch carefully the videos of presentations by experienced people. I would also appreciate any help guys , you are welcome to help out here.
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 7, 2008
ESWC - Part II
I know this is a very strange post here, since it had to be written one month ago now, as I was still at the ESWC conference in teneriffe. But the things being what hey already are, I have decided to still publish it.Here is the content:
"Now a week after I left Teneriffe, here is the rest of my report about the conference. Here I will tell a bit about the interesting talks I have heard, the demos I have seen and the poster sessions where I could ask deeper questions about some tools such as Nepomuk, WSMX and the WSMT.
First of all many presentations were about searches in triple stores. If one knows that the semantic language that is most widely used is still RDF, one can understand that. Ususally, the most simple things are the best accepted by people, and scientists are no exception. So RDF triples are stored in repositories and retrieving and querying information is all about searching these triple stores. So no wonder that there were several tracks precisely tackling this and other related issues. Pure semantic web is not really my area of predilection, even if I always keep an eye on the advances reached in this field. I didn't visit those talks.
What I was very much interested into however, was everything that has something to do with sws (semantic web services) in a first place, and with inference engines in a second place. For inference engines...I'll make it short, I only got one 10 minutes long presentation in the demo session of day two of the conference about some probablistic extension to an existing OWL-DL inference engine....the idea seems nice bt you ain't becoming an expert by listening to such shorties..I guess my journey deep into inference engines is going to take me some time and cost me lots of energy, since I will have to learn it alone (as always). But I would really appreciate any help guys, really :D
I attended several talks about semantic web services which essentially explain the advances made in the main tools currently existing with the WSMO framework. Those tools were also presented during the demo session that took place in the first 2 days of the conference from 19:00 till 20:00. I had the opportunity to talk to many developers on those research tools and I particularly liked the new things done in the new WSMX environment, in the WSMT tool (Web Service Modeling Toolkit) concurrent of the WSMO Studio and the service discovery functionalities of the Maestro tool. In the SUPER research project, we use the WSMO studio as a platform for implementation and also for modeling our ontologies in WSML.
I also attended talks which present new ontologies. The two that I liked most were the business process analysis ontology (by colleagues from the SUPER project) and the a software model that takes an MDA approach to the SDLC by the guys over at the SAP CEC in Dresden. I ask some questions to the host of the first talk and decided that I would read both papers. The reason for this is simple, everybody in research is by nature curious about a lot of things, but nobody has the time to cover even an infinite part of the things that sound interesting. So researchers are particularly selective about what they read. It is publish or perish but the reverse side of the medallion is "Read it in the morning if you''ll need it in the evening". I want to first have an idea about how to write a good paper to present a new ontology (and conferences are particularly selective when it comes to ontologies because there is just an explosion of them) and an unpublished ontology is not recognized by anybody in the community. The second reason is that I have very similar ideas to the ones presented in the second ontology but right now, PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is not my focus, I am concentrating on BPM. However, the MDA ideas and concepts developed by this community are always similar to those needed in the more software oriented BPM community.
I must also say that I was very much impressed by the demos of the tools coming out of the nepomuk project, which seeks to develop a semantic desktop. the reason for this is that tese guys just decided to illustrate all their concepts by integrating many of them into the newest release of the Gnome system, a desktop layer for Linux distributions. I watched and discussed some of the tools with the guys and I think it is really the bedtest for future development software inresearch on social semantic desktops and interfaces in general. Or you guys will have to do at least as good as the nepomuk guys.
Marwane El Kharbili
"Now a week after I left Teneriffe, here is the rest of my report about the conference. Here I will tell a bit about the interesting talks I have heard, the demos I have seen and the poster sessions where I could ask deeper questions about some tools such as Nepomuk, WSMX and the WSMT.
First of all many presentations were about searches in triple stores. If one knows that the semantic language that is most widely used is still RDF, one can understand that. Ususally, the most simple things are the best accepted by people, and scientists are no exception. So RDF triples are stored in repositories and retrieving and querying information is all about searching these triple stores. So no wonder that there were several tracks precisely tackling this and other related issues. Pure semantic web is not really my area of predilection, even if I always keep an eye on the advances reached in this field. I didn't visit those talks.
What I was very much interested into however, was everything that has something to do with sws (semantic web services) in a first place, and with inference engines in a second place. For inference engines...I'll make it short, I only got one 10 minutes long presentation in the demo session of day two of the conference about some probablistic extension to an existing OWL-DL inference engine....the idea seems nice bt you ain't becoming an expert by listening to such shorties..I guess my journey deep into inference engines is going to take me some time and cost me lots of energy, since I will have to learn it alone (as always). But I would really appreciate any help guys, really :D
I attended several talks about semantic web services which essentially explain the advances made in the main tools currently existing with the WSMO framework. Those tools were also presented during the demo session that took place in the first 2 days of the conference from 19:00 till 20:00. I had the opportunity to talk to many developers on those research tools and I particularly liked the new things done in the new WSMX environment, in the WSMT tool (Web Service Modeling Toolkit) concurrent of the WSMO Studio and the service discovery functionalities of the Maestro tool. In the SUPER research project, we use the WSMO studio as a platform for implementation and also for modeling our ontologies in WSML.
I also attended talks which present new ontologies. The two that I liked most were the business process analysis ontology (by colleagues from the SUPER project) and the a software model that takes an MDA approach to the SDLC by the guys over at the SAP CEC in Dresden. I ask some questions to the host of the first talk and decided that I would read both papers. The reason for this is simple, everybody in research is by nature curious about a lot of things, but nobody has the time to cover even an infinite part of the things that sound interesting. So researchers are particularly selective about what they read. It is publish or perish but the reverse side of the medallion is "Read it in the morning if you''ll need it in the evening". I want to first have an idea about how to write a good paper to present a new ontology (and conferences are particularly selective when it comes to ontologies because there is just an explosion of them) and an unpublished ontology is not recognized by anybody in the community. The second reason is that I have very similar ideas to the ones presented in the second ontology but right now, PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is not my focus, I am concentrating on BPM. However, the MDA ideas and concepts developed by this community are always similar to those needed in the more software oriented BPM community.
I must also say that I was very much impressed by the demos of the tools coming out of the nepomuk project, which seeks to develop a semantic desktop. the reason for this is that tese guys just decided to illustrate all their concepts by integrating many of them into the newest release of the Gnome system, a desktop layer for Linux distributions. I watched and discussed some of the tools with the guys and I think it is really the bedtest for future development software inresearch on social semantic desktops and interfaces in general. Or you guys will have to do at least as good as the nepomuk guys.
Marwane El Kharbili
Jul 2, 2008
Reaction on EDM/BPM
This is my reaction to the post by James taylor on his blog "Smart Enough Systems" entitled:
Here's why to use decision management not just process management. I have been reading the blog since quite a long time now and must acknowledge that I haven't read the book yet, althoug I have only heard good things about this book. Now to the matter, it is about Enterprise decision Management (EDM) (in extenso BRM= Business Rules Management) and Business process Management (BPM). Please read the post by james first otherwise my answer will be hard to understand. Now here is my reaction:
Here's why to use decision management not just process management. I have been reading the blog since quite a long time now and must acknowledge that I haven't read the book yet, althoug I have only heard good things about this book. Now to the matter, it is about Enterprise decision Management (EDM) (in extenso BRM= Business Rules Management) and Business process Management (BPM). Please read the post by james first otherwise my answer will be hard to understand. Now here is my reaction:
Thanks for this post and the comments on the ARIS blog. I just wanted to insist on the fact that the synergy between BRM and BPM can only help optimize the business itself and that the community at this stage is not anymore trying to motivate the use of BRM in processes anymore (everybody now sees this and that explains the flourishing of posts on the blogosphere about BRM), it is rather trying to develop concrete methodologies or at least approaches to support such a synergy. Business rules are used all the time in business processes (and not simply in workflows, I insist on this point and will get back to this later). It is just unmanageable to have them all completely or at least partly hard-coded in processes. Moreover, this leads to inconsistencies in the processes themselves, either through inconsistencies in the definition of the business rules, or because of a lack of efficient BR management techniques/tools to make sure changes to the business processes and/or to the rules are done while keeping the business process working correctly. This is even more critical when having a real process-oriented organization (of which there are more and more) which actually really deploys executable versions of its business processes, here, there is even less place for inconsistencies.
The second point I wanted to insist on is that BRM suffers from the same problems (although to less extent) that BPM suffers from. People understand under BRM either the language used to formalize rules or the underlying BRE (business rules engine) responsible for the interpretation and enforcement of the rules. BRM is (a lot) more than that, be it just because of all the methodological aspects it contains. If BRM is to be eficiently allied to BPM, it is going to be done on a methodological and paradigma layer, and not on any technological or system layer. It was in fact a comment to James' post that rminded me of this observation. As a parallel, BPM suffers from the fact that many people link it to a concrete BPMS, vendor, or worse, to workflows. typically, the most interesting and complex rules involve enterprise artifacts, humans, etc. that have nothing to do with workflows.
I will get back to this matter in future posts, but I think the post by james and the one by Kai-Uwe give quite a good idea about what the question really is about.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Jun 4, 2008
ESW2008
Written on the 03.06.2008:
I am in Teneriffe since a couple of days now and taking part in the ESWC (European Semantic Web Conference 2008) where I have presented a paper on policy-based enterprise compliance management on monday at the SBPM08 (Semantic Business Process Management) workshop. It is dead season here so there are really only a few people and the weather is on the opposite to what one may think, mild and nice, not very hot, around 20°C. I didn't have time to see around the island during the conference since there are just too many interesting things here at the conference to see, in fact, there are too much for my passionate mind to even follow. what I like here about the food is that you get fish, a lot of fish everywhere, in fact, in many restaurants you only get fish! I flew in to teneriffe two days before the conference and went as a backpacker to the north of the island where mass tourism is a lot lss present, but where the island is just a lot more beautiful to see. And I can confirm that. In a future post I will tell about my mini-backpacker trip and let you know the best places and tricks.
The conference is really big, and there are quite a lot of people from various backgrounds and organizations, so I took on the task of networking a bit and have had several interesting discussions with mainly scientists, which open my mind to some new things. I also talked to some business people from companies simply attending the workshop because they are interested in following up with what the community is currently doing. I also helped out a little by assisting the brits during one panel session and making sure everybody who had a question could get a microphone on time.
On the first day I have presented my paper at the workshop and got some reactions from the other scientists, but I have noticed that many people are not familiar with the problem of compliance management. Policies and business rules are also a big source of questions, since people with background in formal languages and logics are specialized in quite very different sectors. The same goes for artificial intelligence folks. One of the talks that most interested me was one colleague from the university of Gent in belgium whose work is on supporting business modelers in eliciting and managing requirements in order to exploit them in business process modeling.
On the second day, I have listened to talks about one company called Garlik that was created quite recently by one british professor and profesisonals from the banking sector. Garlik basically made use of and extended semantic web technologies in order to extract data about any person on the web and make sure that your privacy is protected and that nobody steals your identity.
some other talks were even more interesting, particularly the one by ricardo yates from yahoo research about the virtuous circle of the semantic web and how yahoo understood the problems created by the web of data and designed and implemented solutions (which are not yet available as standard yahoo products) for allowing us to get to a personalized and semantically enhanced search on the web. you would basically get personalized search results based on what the web knows about you.
I am going to avoid talking about the concrete knowledge that I got from the conference for now since it helped me to get to know about a lot of work I was not aware of before, and get to know some potentially future close research collaborators from two diffreent institutions. I will get back to these more detailed aspects in future posts on my personal blog.
Marwane El Kharbili
I am in Teneriffe since a couple of days now and taking part in the ESWC (European Semantic Web Conference 2008) where I have presented a paper on policy-based enterprise compliance management on monday at the SBPM08 (Semantic Business Process Management) workshop. It is dead season here so there are really only a few people and the weather is on the opposite to what one may think, mild and nice, not very hot, around 20°C. I didn't have time to see around the island during the conference since there are just too many interesting things here at the conference to see, in fact, there are too much for my passionate mind to even follow. what I like here about the food is that you get fish, a lot of fish everywhere, in fact, in many restaurants you only get fish! I flew in to teneriffe two days before the conference and went as a backpacker to the north of the island where mass tourism is a lot lss present, but where the island is just a lot more beautiful to see. And I can confirm that. In a future post I will tell about my mini-backpacker trip and let you know the best places and tricks.
The conference is really big, and there are quite a lot of people from various backgrounds and organizations, so I took on the task of networking a bit and have had several interesting discussions with mainly scientists, which open my mind to some new things. I also talked to some business people from companies simply attending the workshop because they are interested in following up with what the community is currently doing. I also helped out a little by assisting the brits during one panel session and making sure everybody who had a question could get a microphone on time.
On the first day I have presented my paper at the workshop and got some reactions from the other scientists, but I have noticed that many people are not familiar with the problem of compliance management. Policies and business rules are also a big source of questions, since people with background in formal languages and logics are specialized in quite very different sectors. The same goes for artificial intelligence folks. One of the talks that most interested me was one colleague from the university of Gent in belgium whose work is on supporting business modelers in eliciting and managing requirements in order to exploit them in business process modeling.
On the second day, I have listened to talks about one company called Garlik that was created quite recently by one british professor and profesisonals from the banking sector. Garlik basically made use of and extended semantic web technologies in order to extract data about any person on the web and make sure that your privacy is protected and that nobody steals your identity.
some other talks were even more interesting, particularly the one by ricardo yates from yahoo research about the virtuous circle of the semantic web and how yahoo understood the problems created by the web of data and designed and implemented solutions (which are not yet available as standard yahoo products) for allowing us to get to a personalized and semantically enhanced search on the web. you would basically get personalized search results based on what the web knows about you.
I am going to avoid talking about the concrete knowledge that I got from the conference for now since it helped me to get to know about a lot of work I was not aware of before, and get to know some potentially future close research collaborators from two diffreent institutions. I will get back to these more detailed aspects in future posts on my personal blog.
Marwane El Kharbili
May 28, 2008
Another argument for internal controls
I stumbled on this post on the SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) life blog about implementing controls and Segregation of Duty (SoD). Although the post is quite old (19.05.2007), I felt it contained important points that I wanted to report on.
First of all the post gives another argumentation for the need for controls (for me, the need for policies can be justified in a similar way). The authors reports on experience with controls and SoD. He observes two problems in companies:
so these are two points coming from the reality of the business. Although most companies starting to struggle with compliance management do so because of the legal pressure applied on them, taking such concerns int o account will eventually make its place, when companies understand the value they get out of internal controls because they allow them to actively manage risks and avoid unexpected failures of business processes.
Marwane El Kharbili.
[1] Explaining Segregation of Duties. SOX Life Blog Post. http://www.insidesarbanesoxley.com/soxlife/2007/05/explaining-segregation-of-duties.asp.
First of all the post gives another argumentation for the need for controls (for me, the need for policies can be justified in a similar way). The authors reports on experience with controls and SoD. He observes two problems in companies:
- An employee having too much responsibilities can be tempted to diminish the quality of his work, either by frauding the realization of his tasks because of improper supervision or by simply not being ready to deliver the performance that is expected from him. Not being able to discover and control these discrepancies is certainly a big leak in a company's internal procedures. This point related to SoD controls.
- The second problem according to [1] is that there is a inherent risk in companies, and that is of continuously forgetting about the most important things to do and concentrating on the most urgent things to do. He makes a parallel between our own lives and companies. We tend to give a higher priority to urging tasks that have to be done and neglect what is really important, although we know that it is. Example: I know that it is important to control the quality of the development of an application that is being developed in India by providing and testing adequate test data. the problem is that at the same time, I have to deliver reports to the management about project planning and expenses for development projects for the region. I will eventually forget about the first task and accept the delivered product because of no time to test it. The same thing happens to companies when it is about designing internal controls.
so these are two points coming from the reality of the business. Although most companies starting to struggle with compliance management do so because of the legal pressure applied on them, taking such concerns int o account will eventually make its place, when companies understand the value they get out of internal controls because they allow them to actively manage risks and avoid unexpected failures of business processes.
Marwane El Kharbili.
[1] Explaining Segregation of Duties. SOX Life Blog Post. http://www.insidesarbanesoxley.com/soxlife/2007/05/explaining-segregation-of-duties.asp.
May 26, 2008
Some Tip Rules for International Travelers
Thanks to some well known TV broadcaster, I got some interesting information about Asian tipping habits. So I thought I would share this.
First of all the simplest are the Japanese, it is advised not to tip anyone, cause giving money could be perceived as an insult out there, so you'd better keep your money in your wallet. Now the two other "countries" are china and Hong-Kong (hope I didn't shock any Chinese government official :-)). In china, giving up to 3% in Restaurants is good, and for a taxi-fare, you don't need to give anything. Whereas in Hong-Kong you are expected to give 10% to 15% tip money in Restaurants, and to at least round-up your fare to the next dollar in taxis. Now for the rest, I know nothing more so I guess you'll have to check that out by yourself! :
Marwane El Kharbili.
First of all the simplest are the Japanese, it is advised not to tip anyone, cause giving money could be perceived as an insult out there, so you'd better keep your money in your wallet. Now the two other "countries" are china and Hong-Kong (hope I didn't shock any Chinese government official :-)). In china, giving up to 3% in Restaurants is good, and for a taxi-fare, you don't need to give anything. Whereas in Hong-Kong you are expected to give 10% to 15% tip money in Restaurants, and to at least round-up your fare to the next dollar in taxis. Now for the rest, I know nothing more so I guess you'll have to check that out by yourself! :
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 22, 2008
Selection of Upcoming Conferences!
Once again, I will list here 3 conferences that I think are a no-miss for anyone wanting to stay ahead of the game. I included here the links to the programs so that you can have a quick idea about the content of the talks and make your decision for what is most relevant to you this year:
Marwane El Kharbili.
- The 2008 Semantic Technology Conference: May 18-20, San Jose California. Have a look at the program here. One sentence about this, so that you get an idea about the content. People like Deborah L. Mc Guinness and Elisa F. Kendall are holding the Ontology 101: An Introduction to Knowledge Representation, Ontology Development, and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). One cool feature of the website, you can use a scheduler to make your own program and include it into your calendar. On the website you can also like me download the "Semantic Wave 2008 Report: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 & Multibillion Dollar Market Opportunities", a 30 pages report on an industrial strategy to make semantics a real life business.
- The International Business Rules Forum, October 26-30, 2008, BUENA VISTA Palace, Orlando, Florida. Note the interesting pre-conference tutorial program, which you can consult here. Examples are: "Developing a Business Process Architecture and Program of Change", by Roger Burlton (Founder Process Renewal Consulting Group Inc.), and "SOA and Business Rules - Building a Powerful, Flexible Application Platform", by Michael Krouze (Chief Technology Officer and Director of Management Consulting Services, Charter Solutions). Finally, you may not miss this, " Business Rules from A-Z: What You Need to Know", by none other than Ronald G. Ross (Principal & Executive Editor, Business Rule Solutions, LLC, and www.BRCommunity.com)
- Last but not least is the international wirtschaftsinformatik conference, this year under the motto: "Business Services: Concepts, technologies, Applications". This year's edition will take place in Vienna, from the 25-27 february 2009. So you've got quite some time to register. The linked page os in German.
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 19, 2008
What does iLOG do?
In this article by Simon holloway (Senior Analyst, Bloor research) on iLOG. I am not going to copy paste the post or try to analyze it, since there is nothing to analyze. Simon Holloway gives an overview on the activities of iLOG, which simply answers the question: "What is really the business of iLOG"? iLOG is a french company with headquarters in both France and the USA. iLOG is mostly known for their business rules management product JRules.
I appreciated the structured description of the various business iLOG is at the front of: operations research optimization, constraints programming, business rules management (with three tools, one for Java, one for C++ and one for .NET), and the one I didn't know about, which are visualization products. after the recent acquisition of another company, iLOG now have a set of supply chain management products. Simon Holloway notes that with such a line of products, iLOG have now a solution and not just a set of products as until now. Last point are the many industrial partnerships iLOG has, among others with Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle. So iLOG with their 800 employees are up on quite some fronts.
Marwane El Kharbili.
I appreciated the structured description of the various business iLOG is at the front of: operations research optimization, constraints programming, business rules management (with three tools, one for Java, one for C++ and one for .NET), and the one I didn't know about, which are visualization products. after the recent acquisition of another company, iLOG now have a set of supply chain management products. Simon Holloway notes that with such a line of products, iLOG have now a solution and not just a set of products as until now. Last point are the many industrial partnerships iLOG has, among others with Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle. So iLOG with their 800 employees are up on quite some fronts.
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 17, 2008
You wanna talk to ramona?
If you want to test how well robots (or artificial intelligence agents if you think about a human robot when hearing the word robot) can have a normal discussion, then you can test it here. Ramona is a virtual person, and here, you can chat with her. I tested her ability to follow a normal conversation with and I have to say she does quite well.
Accoring to KuzweilAI.net (the hosts of Ramona), Ramona is the first live virtual performing and recording artist. You can learn more about her here.
I noticed that the discussion flows a lot better if you just answer her questions at the start till she has enough information about you. It's astonishing to see how much progress artificial intelligence has made. when are we going to have a pet imitation which is not dirty and to which you can talk (I am ironic of course)? Imagine virtual medical assistants which could talk to old people so that they do not feel alone! I can't wait for the future!
Marwane El Kharbili
Accoring to KuzweilAI.net (the hosts of Ramona), Ramona is the first live virtual performing and recording artist. You can learn more about her here.
I noticed that the discussion flows a lot better if you just answer her questions at the start till she has enough information about you. It's astonishing to see how much progress artificial intelligence has made. when are we going to have a pet imitation which is not dirty and to which you can talk (I am ironic of course)? Imagine virtual medical assistants which could talk to old people so that they do not feel alone! I can't wait for the future!
Marwane El Kharbili
May 15, 2008
Securiy Requirements Engineering PhD & PostDoc
I wanted to make some advertisement for a double vacancy at the department of computer and information science at the NTNU (Trondheim, Norway). One position is a PhD position and the second one is a Post-Doc position. Both positions are ensured for 3 years (August 2008 - July 2011) and comprehend work on a new project, the ReqSec project. The projects seeks to come up with a methodology and tools for security requirements engineering.
The topic of security engineering is ons that I am interested a lot into, and I believe that we are are far behind on security issues from a software engineering point of view. One of my probable future directions of research (which I had talked about with my professor even before starting my PhD) is security modeling for business process management. the motivation: Security requirements do not solely appear on the lowest layers of software development, many types of security concerns get their requirements and partial specifications from the business and strategic layers of an enterprise model.
The ITMEE faculty of the Trondheim university is a leading university in computer science of which I know from personal experience. Some of my classmates at the ENSIMAG in Grenoble, went to the university of Trondheim in the same year I went from Grenoble to Karlsruhe. Several research institutes in applied mathematics and computer science also exist in Trondheim, some of them private. I don't know much about Norway or Trondheim itself but I guess if you're into nordic charm and love mountains, forests, Fjords and the see you should be happy there. Like Morocco, Norway is a kingdom too.
N.B.: [IT @ NTNU] Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.
Marwane El Kharbili.
The topic of security engineering is ons that I am interested a lot into, and I believe that we are are far behind on security issues from a software engineering point of view. One of my probable future directions of research (which I had talked about with my professor even before starting my PhD) is security modeling for business process management. the motivation: Security requirements do not solely appear on the lowest layers of software development, many types of security concerns get their requirements and partial specifications from the business and strategic layers of an enterprise model.
The ITMEE faculty of the Trondheim university is a leading university in computer science of which I know from personal experience. Some of my classmates at the ENSIMAG in Grenoble, went to the university of Trondheim in the same year I went from Grenoble to Karlsruhe. Several research institutes in applied mathematics and computer science also exist in Trondheim, some of them private. I don't know much about Norway or Trondheim itself but I guess if you're into nordic charm and love mountains, forests, Fjords and the see you should be happy there. Like Morocco, Norway is a kingdom too.
N.B.: [IT @ NTNU] Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 13, 2008
An online community for BPEL
You can find it here. A community around BPEL hosted by the OASIS, sponsored by BEA and IBM.
On the site you will find a knowledge WIKI, Forums, News, Events, Products, Job Offers and Blogs.Documentation and white papers are there to be found too. I discovered the site accidentally because they put my Blog on their blogroll. I applied for an account and got the RSS feed on my feed burner (integrated in my Flock browser). For the moment I haven't found much on the website in terms of blogs but it is clearly a recent site and it needs time to mature and grow. I will make some advertisement for the site in my network and try to get some poeple working with BPEL to post on the site.
Marwane El Kharbili.
On the site you will find a knowledge WIKI, Forums, News, Events, Products, Job Offers and Blogs.Documentation and white papers are there to be found too. I discovered the site accidentally because they put my Blog on their blogroll. I applied for an account and got the RSS feed on my feed burner (integrated in my Flock browser). For the moment I haven't found much on the website in terms of blogs but it is clearly a recent site and it needs time to mature and grow. I will make some advertisement for the site in my network and try to get some poeple working with BPEL to post on the site.
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 9, 2008
Ruleburst, Haley, and the business rules market
After having acquired US Business Rules vendors Haley (See this official Press release from the 14th of November 2007), Ruleburst have rebranded as Haley Limited (See corresponding Press release of the 10th of March 2008). Haley is a recognized business rules vendor in the united states. This confirms the strategic importance of growth in the US market by the Australian natural language business rules specialist.
Haley's flagship products (2 among several products by Haley) have both rebranded:
Marwane El Kharbili.
Haley's flagship products (2 among several products by Haley) have both rebranded:
- Ruleburst Studio (a natural language based business rules management system that integrates with the office suite) as Haley Office Rules.
- HaleyAuthority (collaborative capture and management of business rules) rebrands as Haley Expert Rules.
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 8, 2008
Smell my couscous
The next generation of phone devices is there! A device from NTT that allows you to send fragrances (which is a beautiful and classy name for complex odors, so some basic marketing there) is set for commercialization soon. It works this way: you compose the desired smell on your mobile phone or you use one of a set of pre-programmed smells, and then send these to a smell generation device that is nearby using the mobile phone's infrared port. You can also sent the smell by email. This could allow you to send smells to people around the world provided they have the necessary device. The price? Around 200 dollars (200.000 yen).
I can't wait to see the miniature version of all this so that I could send some free smells that last 10 seconds from my Facebook account :D
Marwane El Kharbili.
I can't wait to see the miniature version of all this so that I could send some free smells that last 10 seconds from my Facebook account :D
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 6, 2008
Google App Engine
I just wanted to drop a line here about the recent release of the Google App Engine. If you are curious to know what it is then have a look at the introduction to the application environment here. Google App Engine ist "Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure", quote from the project's documentation home. The goal is the following: you as a user develop your application that should run on the Google App Engine runtime environment. For this you can use the development environment that is delivered by google for that purpose. For the moment it only supports Python but is destined to be extended to other programming/Scripting languages. I personnaly am a great fan of python, which I have bee using for 4 years now, and it's number 2 for after JAVA. But the language I would love to see is ruby, another language I am a big fan of. After the application has been developed you can run it on the net using the Google App Engine (from the appspot.com domain) or use Google Apps to serve the application from your own domain [source: project's documentation home]. Google App Engine provides you with a scalable infrastructure for your project to run:
Finally I would like to put some attentions on sebastian's blog article, where he reports on attempts to use the GAE (Google App Engine) and draws some conclusions about the use of it from a practical point of view. Note that it is in German.
Marwane El Kharbili
- dynamic web serving,
- persistent storage with transactions, automatic scaling and load balancing (500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month [source: project's documentation home])
- APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts
- and a local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your computer [source: project's documentation home].
Finally I would like to put some attentions on sebastian's blog article, where he reports on attempts to use the GAE (Google App Engine) and draws some conclusions about the use of it from a practical point of view. Note that it is in German.
Marwane El Kharbili
May 5, 2008
Kai's PhD Blog from Sweden
Another link to a PhD blog here, after the one about Sebastian's. This one is by Kai, a friend of Sebastian. I don't know him personnally, but I have found his blog interesting. He does hos promotion at both the Blekinge Institute of Technology and Ericsson AB, so he's in an industrial PhD program too. He tackles questions of software engineering. so drop by and leave a nice comment :D
Marwane El Kharbili.
Marwane El Kharbili.
May 2, 2008
Have you got a PhD Blog too?
I had previously registered my blog on PhDWeblogs.net. The idea behind this is to make the blog accessible to people also doing a PhD or just simply having interest in research, who do not necessarily share the same interests I have in computer science and economics. Last week I stumbled upon this other website, which looks like way more accessible and better done: http://www.wissenschafts-cafe.net/. Apart from having an very appealing name, the site covers several disciplines and offers a number of services to bloggers. You can enter a description and a link to your blog, and make it accessible from the website to other people interested in what you are doing. I even got the hard bloggin' scientist sticker of the website's creator on my blog.
Have fun!
Marwane El Kharbili.
Have fun!
Marwane El Kharbili.
Apr 28, 2008
About innovation...
I wanted to write once about innovation. Actually, this post by Scott Berkun about innovation motivated me to write my thoughts about a topic that I like a lot. Scott discusses his view on the subject and how to innovate immediately.
What is innovation? Who are innovators? And how do you innovate? Many people think that innovators are only people like Einstein, Galileo or newton. Revolutionary thinkers who have had success in bringing their ideas to the world and convince the world of the correctness of these. I am a computer scientist and a mathematician, that's why I have chosen scientists as example, but there is no reason why I should limit the scope of innovation to scientists. Innvators could be artists, architects, engineers, medicine doctors, your dog's veterinary, the guy who built all the houses in your district, the secretary of your colleague at work or any wife at home that has a full job managing a family, 4 children and a house. Innovators are not only people who have become famous for their ideas or realizations, famous innovators are only the peak of the iceberg. Most innovators will remain unknown to the general public forever, limiting themselves to the scope defined by the people their innovations influenced directly. with the pervasiveness of electronic information of the age we are living in, innovations are more likely to have a far wider reach than ever before though.
Innovation doesn't require you to revolutionize the world. Because every small thing that exists in this world can be made better, anybody can innovate. Innovation require you to simply have a different look on things as other people. If you look at the huge variety of lifestyles, of food and music in the world, you would notice that you woon't finde two places in the world where things are done the same way. The same music instruments are used in very different ways depending on the country. The way Moroccans play music with a violin, is completely different from the ways gypsies do, and even more different than the way violins are used in classical music. Another example: hamburgers are a very widely appreciated fast-food. Maybe for the wrong reasons. But is is a fact that no two restaurants in the US, europe, africa or asia do hamburgers the same way. This is a fact. people just have different perspectives on life.
Well applying your own perspective on life and on everything you may have to deal with, without caring about how it should be done, this is already innovation. Innovation is a state of mind. And innovation is sometimes the only way to bring you out of a dead end. because there is no solution to a certain problem, it doesn't necessarily mean that the problem has no solutions, it may simply mean that the problem needs to be looked at from a radically different perspective.
In order to innovate, ScottBerkun identified the following three steps:
1. Ask questions: Why are things done this way? What can be changed? How could it be done in a better way?
2. Try things: just keep on trying, and getting better. Nobody finds a solution to a problem on the first try, nobody. And experiencing things by yourself is the best way to learn what is lacking, missing, bad or good in a system. Again, here, accepting defeats or frustrations is sometimes the hard way to the top, the only way to the top. If you don not try to lose things yourself, nobody is going to do it for you. Because nobody else has asked himself the questions you have asked. If Ibn Sina (the famous Arab scientist who among other things made discoveries in human anatomy that are reference still today) also known as Avicenne in the western world, hadn't tried to find out how blood does go through our body and identified the body's veins network, it may well be that nobody would have.
3. Believe in what you are doing: there is a difference between taking other people's comments on what you are doing and following their comments. If you are doing things the wy you are, it is because you have good enough reasons for that. If you are honest with yourself and find answers to critics and comments from other people, that there is one of two paths you are going to take: either accept the comment of at least part of it, and thus adjusting your approach, or answering the critics because you have some arguments against them. If people accept them or not, this is their problem, as long as you are convinced of what you are doing and have good enough answers for yourself. People just may not see the new things and innovation you are bringing or understand what and why you are doing it, it doesn't mean that what you are doing desn't make sense.
4. Be curious: Learn what other people in other periods of history or periods of time have been doing. Learn from past errors and successes, in one sentence: search: analyze, learn and use.
5. Learn from your tries: just as in sports, trying without analyzing and learning from the new things that you have just tried, well, the try just doesn't help anyone.
If allied to the necessary open-mindedness and experience, being able to place yourself in a state of mind that allows you to look at things in unusual ways, may well lead you to come up with your next innovation. and any job in the world is a lot more interesting if it gives the necessary place to innovation. So keep innovating!
Marwane El Kharbili.
What is innovation? Who are innovators? And how do you innovate? Many people think that innovators are only people like Einstein, Galileo or newton. Revolutionary thinkers who have had success in bringing their ideas to the world and convince the world of the correctness of these. I am a computer scientist and a mathematician, that's why I have chosen scientists as example, but there is no reason why I should limit the scope of innovation to scientists. Innvators could be artists, architects, engineers, medicine doctors, your dog's veterinary, the guy who built all the houses in your district, the secretary of your colleague at work or any wife at home that has a full job managing a family, 4 children and a house. Innovators are not only people who have become famous for their ideas or realizations, famous innovators are only the peak of the iceberg. Most innovators will remain unknown to the general public forever, limiting themselves to the scope defined by the people their innovations influenced directly. with the pervasiveness of electronic information of the age we are living in, innovations are more likely to have a far wider reach than ever before though.
Innovation doesn't require you to revolutionize the world. Because every small thing that exists in this world can be made better, anybody can innovate. Innovation require you to simply have a different look on things as other people. If you look at the huge variety of lifestyles, of food and music in the world, you would notice that you woon't finde two places in the world where things are done the same way. The same music instruments are used in very different ways depending on the country. The way Moroccans play music with a violin, is completely different from the ways gypsies do, and even more different than the way violins are used in classical music. Another example: hamburgers are a very widely appreciated fast-food. Maybe for the wrong reasons. But is is a fact that no two restaurants in the US, europe, africa or asia do hamburgers the same way. This is a fact. people just have different perspectives on life.
Well applying your own perspective on life and on everything you may have to deal with, without caring about how it should be done, this is already innovation. Innovation is a state of mind. And innovation is sometimes the only way to bring you out of a dead end. because there is no solution to a certain problem, it doesn't necessarily mean that the problem has no solutions, it may simply mean that the problem needs to be looked at from a radically different perspective.
In order to innovate, ScottBerkun identified the following three steps:
1. Ask questions: Why are things done this way? What can be changed? How could it be done in a better way?
2. Try things: just keep on trying, and getting better. Nobody finds a solution to a problem on the first try, nobody. And experiencing things by yourself is the best way to learn what is lacking, missing, bad or good in a system. Again, here, accepting defeats or frustrations is sometimes the hard way to the top, the only way to the top. If you don not try to lose things yourself, nobody is going to do it for you. Because nobody else has asked himself the questions you have asked. If Ibn Sina (the famous Arab scientist who among other things made discoveries in human anatomy that are reference still today) also known as Avicenne in the western world, hadn't tried to find out how blood does go through our body and identified the body's veins network, it may well be that nobody would have.
3. Believe in what you are doing: there is a difference between taking other people's comments on what you are doing and following their comments. If you are doing things the wy you are, it is because you have good enough reasons for that. If you are honest with yourself and find answers to critics and comments from other people, that there is one of two paths you are going to take: either accept the comment of at least part of it, and thus adjusting your approach, or answering the critics because you have some arguments against them. If people accept them or not, this is their problem, as long as you are convinced of what you are doing and have good enough answers for yourself. People just may not see the new things and innovation you are bringing or understand what and why you are doing it, it doesn't mean that what you are doing desn't make sense.
4. Be curious: Learn what other people in other periods of history or periods of time have been doing. Learn from past errors and successes, in one sentence: search: analyze, learn and use.
5. Learn from your tries: just as in sports, trying without analyzing and learning from the new things that you have just tried, well, the try just doesn't help anyone.
If allied to the necessary open-mindedness and experience, being able to place yourself in a state of mind that allows you to look at things in unusual ways, may well lead you to come up with your next innovation. and any job in the world is a lot more interesting if it gives the necessary place to innovation. So keep innovating!
Marwane El Kharbili.
Apr 26, 2008
The EBRC08 is knocking on the doors
The European Business Rules Conference is there soon. I had already made a post about it and had given my own selection of the talks I would love to be at. The EBRC is going to take place from the 16th to the 18th of June in Munich. You'll get 14 sessions on 3 tracks. The track that has got to be very appealing to me is the know-how track : "Rules & Business processes". keynotes are going to be given by Ronald G. Ross and Marc Kerremans. If you register before April the 30th, you get to profit from a special offer.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Apr 24, 2008
Is my Blog about BPEL?
Well, I might suprise you by saying among other things of course, but BPEL is certainly a topic of interest to me. yes! This question is motivated by the fact that I discovered that my blog was listed on BPEL.XML as a blog dealing with BPEL. I was surprised and pleased at the same time. You can see the whole list of blogs here, if you are interested.
It is not because BPEL like BPM, web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, SOA and other acronyms And this for many reasons has become a piece of jewelry that every blog can afford and has to wear in order to attract some readers. BPEL is a de facto standard for business process execution languages. This itself is a reason enough. All technical BPM vendors I know of support BPEL. In ARIS too BPEL is supported (Modeling and transformations from business process modeling notations like EPC and BPMN for example) in ARIS (e.g. SOA Architect). Designing Business Process Models with the background idea that these are destined to be transformed into BPEL is fundamentally different from utterly designing BP models on the business level. A whole set of additional constraints become necessary, on what the modeler is allowed to model.
Additionally, the ultimate goal of process transformations, is to achieve the ability of propagating all the models information and data you define for business processes to the execution level, where processes really take place. This would show the strength and power of such transformations. Simply because they form a transport channel of the business requirements and logic from the business level to the execution level, where the modeled and incepted added value is really realized. Every bit of information (your business system's entropy, if you will) you lose on the way to the execution system is a loss for the business.
These are the reasons why I think that although separation between BP modeling and BP execution is necessary for the sake of business, being really careful about what happens with BPEL and paying attention at how it could influence BPM is crucial.
Marwane El Kharbili.
It is not because BPEL like BPM, web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, SOA and other acronyms And this for many reasons has become a piece of jewelry that every blog can afford and has to wear in order to attract some readers. BPEL is a de facto standard for business process execution languages. This itself is a reason enough. All technical BPM vendors I know of support BPEL. In ARIS too BPEL is supported (Modeling and transformations from business process modeling notations like EPC and BPMN for example) in ARIS (e.g. SOA Architect). Designing Business Process Models with the background idea that these are destined to be transformed into BPEL is fundamentally different from utterly designing BP models on the business level. A whole set of additional constraints become necessary, on what the modeler is allowed to model.
Additionally, the ultimate goal of process transformations, is to achieve the ability of propagating all the models information and data you define for business processes to the execution level, where processes really take place. This would show the strength and power of such transformations. Simply because they form a transport channel of the business requirements and logic from the business level to the execution level, where the modeled and incepted added value is really realized. Every bit of information (your business system's entropy, if you will) you lose on the way to the execution system is a loss for the business.
These are the reasons why I think that although separation between BP modeling and BP execution is necessary for the sake of business, being really careful about what happens with BPEL and paying attention at how it could influence BPM is crucial.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Apr 22, 2008
ARIS Blog is Launched!
On the 18th of April 2008, our own blog on ARIS and related technologies has been launched. You can find it here: http://www.aris.com/blog. The blog is maintained by experts in the many areas the IDS Scheer is active in. You will find articles about governance, risk and compliance, business rules, BPM, SOA, Process Intelligence and controlling, and of course general topics around ARIS. This is not another marketing initiative, you will really find useful information on this one. Posts do not only relate to IDS's products, more to the technologies around it, our experience in BPM, to ARIS and to the topics that are relevant to the market. So make sure you don't miss on this one, get yourself subscribed to the Rss feed and come discuss with us your point of view on the topics we are writing about.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Apr 21, 2008
Sebastian's PhD Blog
A quick link to Sebastian's PhD blog here. Sebastian is also a researcher and an engineer here at the IDS Scheer working on his PhD too. Sebastian started his PhD a little more than a year and a half earlier than me, and thus tutored me during the first couple of months of my Phd by providing me with tips and introducing me to the research projects we are working on. Sebastian is now in the last sprint phase of his PhD. He is working on nicely finishing and packaging his dissertation and writing the final document. I wish him lots of luck and lots of energy in this last phase, which is the most intensive and tiring phase of a PhD, both mentally and physically.
In his blog, Sebastian discusses a number of subjects, quite various I have to say, which gives a little insight into his interests. You'll find PhD and research related posts, posts about topics of interest such as SOA, and technical posts. You'll also find some posts about quite different things such as medicine, tech or trip reports such as the one about the Kilimanjaro ascension.
It is also accessible through the permalink in my blogroll list. So make sure you have checked this out.
Marwane El Kharbili
In his blog, Sebastian discusses a number of subjects, quite various I have to say, which gives a little insight into his interests. You'll find PhD and research related posts, posts about topics of interest such as SOA, and technical posts. You'll also find some posts about quite different things such as medicine, tech or trip reports such as the one about the Kilimanjaro ascension.
It is also accessible through the permalink in my blogroll list. So make sure you have checked this out.
Marwane El Kharbili
Apr 20, 2008
Microsoft, Sun & Eclipse
What do these three have to do with another? Until now, not much. But this has now changed.
Let's start with sun. Sun always was reluctant to any collaboration with the Eclipse project. Eclipse is a project started by IBM, big concurrent of Sun, and turned open-source afterwards. Sun (creators of Java, of course) have their own open source Java IDE, named NetBeans, which has always been pushed forward by Sun and also has a substantially strong community. But now Eclipse is way more than just an IDE for Java. The 1 million members strong community turned the completely modular architecture of Eclipse (totallyPlug-In based) into a technological base for a big number of languages and technologies. And Eclipse keeps growing. At the EclipseCon 2008 (23-26 of March 2008 in Santa Clara, California), Eclipse 4 was announced for in 2 years. So what has now changed? Well, Sun made a move towards Eclipse, by choosing EclipseLink (the Eclipse Persistence Services Project) as the reference implementation for the Java Persistence API 2.0 specification. EclipseLink is an Open Source implementation (have a look at the project's blog) of the TopLink infrastructure (a project by Ocracle). So this is one of its kind for Sun.
Microsoft on the other way, have made another kind of approach. This also has indirectly something to do with Eclipse. Microsoft decided to collaborate with the Eclipse foundation and set up a team of engineers to work on interoperability between the SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit, Eclipse's pendant of SWING, used in Eclipse to implement GUIs) and the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, previously known under codename Avalon ), Microsoft's graphical Library shipped with Vista. Another team is also going to work on the Eclipse Hibbins project. Additionally, Sam Ramji (Strategy Director for technology platforms at Microsoft) announced a possible Integration of Eclipse to Silverlight (Microsoft's new web presentation platform).
No need to say there is some movement around Eclipse by big players. What this means? Where it leads to? Too soon to say it. Only one thing is for sure, One eye kept on strategic movements towards Eclipse by big players is certainly no lost time. You may not want to miss up on some synergy that could substantially add some new business models to your company. The least I can say is that Eclipse is on moving in the right direction, at the basis of its concept from the start: Interoperate with whomever you can, it'll only make more things possible.
Marwane El Kharbili.
Let's start with sun. Sun always was reluctant to any collaboration with the Eclipse project. Eclipse is a project started by IBM, big concurrent of Sun, and turned open-source afterwards. Sun (creators of Java, of course) have their own open source Java IDE, named NetBeans, which has always been pushed forward by Sun and also has a substantially strong community. But now Eclipse is way more than just an IDE for Java. The 1 million members strong community turned the completely modular architecture of Eclipse (totallyPlug-In based) into a technological base for a big number of languages and technologies. And Eclipse keeps growing. At the EclipseCon 2008 (23-26 of March 2008 in Santa Clara, California), Eclipse 4 was announced for in 2 years. So what has now changed? Well, Sun made a move towards Eclipse, by choosing EclipseLink (the Eclipse Persistence Services Project) as the reference implementation for the Java Persistence API 2.0 specification. EclipseLink is an Open Source implementation (have a look at the project's blog) of the TopLink infrastructure (a project by Ocracle). So this is one of its kind for Sun.
Microsoft on the other way, have made another kind of approach. This also has indirectly something to do with Eclipse. Microsoft decided to collaborate with the Eclipse foundation and set up a team of engineers to work on interoperability between the SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit, Eclipse's pendant of SWING, used in Eclipse to implement GUIs) and the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, previously known under codename Avalon ), Microsoft's graphical Library shipped with Vista. Another team is also going to work on the Eclipse Hibbins project. Additionally, Sam Ramji (Strategy Director for technology platforms at Microsoft) announced a possible Integration of Eclipse to Silverlight (Microsoft's new web presentation platform).
No need to say there is some movement around Eclipse by big players. What this means? Where it leads to? Too soon to say it. Only one thing is for sure, One eye kept on strategic movements towards Eclipse by big players is certainly no lost time. You may not want to miss up on some synergy that could substantially add some new business models to your company. The least I can say is that Eclipse is on moving in the right direction, at the basis of its concept from the start: Interoperate with whomever you can, it'll only make more things possible.
Marwane El Kharbili.
PhD Thesis
I am an international cotutelle PhD student enrolled at both the University of Luxemburg and the University of Osnabrück (Germany), as part of a collaboration program between both universities. My area of research is software engineering and I am particularly interested in developing a method and language for regulatory compliance modeling and verification. For more details about my research interests and contributions have a look at my research page.
I am writing my thesis under the supervision of:
I submitted my research proposal to Professors Pierre Kelsen and Elke Pulvermüller on October 2008. The proposal got accepted during the year 2009 and I officially started working on my thesis on August 2009. My research on compliance in business process management had already begun druing my duty at the ARIS Research in June 2007.
I am writing my thesis under the supervision of:
- Professor Pierre Kelsen: Model Driven Engineering (MDE) Group, Laboratory for Advanced Software Systems (LASSY), Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC), University of Luxemburg.
- Professor Elke Pulvermüller: Software Engineering Group, Faculty for mathematics and computer Science, University of Osnabrück.
I submitted my research proposal to Professors Pierre Kelsen and Elke Pulvermüller on October 2008. The proposal got accepted during the year 2009 and I officially started working on my thesis on August 2009. My research on compliance in business process management had already begun druing my duty at the ARIS Research in June 2007.
Research
Research Interests
Summary of PhD research
Business process management (BPM) is a core research area in information systems. In particular, the problem of adequate and precise modeling of semantically rich enterprise structure and behavior, as well as the problem of compliance management with regulations are challenges on which I focus in my research. My dissertation provides a formal and model driven framework for covering the regulatory compliance lifecycle in BPM. Policies are used for modeling compliance and model-checking techniques are used for verifying compliance.
Research Vision
The vision of an intelligent, real-time and adaptive enterprise is what drives my research. Therefore the study of enterprise modeling and in particular of business processes is central. However, the big scale and the speed at which data is produced and needs to be processed by information systems strongly challenges current practices and will push the limits of How we make our Information Systems (IS) and What we make them do it. I do believe that the adequate use of carefully engineered business policies and rules, complex event processing (CEP), and model-driven engineering (MDE) may very well form a unique blend of tools worth researching and applying to the governance of information systems, hence leveraging the practice into a more automated and intelligent form.
The vision of an intelligent, real-time and adaptive enterprise is what drives my research. Therefore the study of enterprise modeling and in particular of business processes is central. However, the big scale and the speed at which data is produced and needs to be processed by information systems strongly challenges current practices and will push the limits of How we make our Information Systems (IS) and What we make them do it. I do believe that the adequate use of carefully engineered business policies and rules, complex event processing (CEP), and model-driven engineering (MDE) may very well form a unique blend of tools worth researching and applying to the governance of information systems, hence leveraging the practice into a more automated and intelligent form.
Research Mission
Business process management (BPM) is a core research area in information systems. My main objective is the use of formal methods to model semantically rich enterprise business processes, which can be verified for compliance with regulations. Enterprise business processes encompass several aspects such as control flow, data flow, resource flow and also provide a link to the motivation level through risks and goals. In particular, the study of the use of policies and rules, model driven technologies and design patterns to represent regulations and verify them on business processes is tackled in my PhD research.
Business process management (BPM) is a core research area in information systems. My main objective is the use of formal methods to model semantically rich enterprise business processes, which can be verified for compliance with regulations. Enterprise business processes encompass several aspects such as control flow, data flow, resource flow and also provide a link to the motivation level through risks and goals. In particular, the study of the use of policies and rules, model driven technologies and design patterns to represent regulations and verify them on business processes is tackled in my PhD research.
Current Research Focus
The issue of Regulatory Compliance Management (RCM) in information systems is core to my research. It has been tackled in the context of enterprise models and in particular business processes in my initial research, and also in the context of processes defined over the semantic web using semantic web services and ontologies.
RCM has potentially implications for and applications to a variety of domains including enterprise architectures/models, service-oriented-architectures (SOA), requirements engineering and the semantic web.
I rely on using and adapting techniques from the software engineering sub-areas of model-driven-engineering (formal metamodeling, model transformations) and verification (model checking) to support the full lifecycle of RCM.
Key Areas of Interest
The main areas of interest listed here cover a wide range of topics, due on the one part to the multidisciplinary nature of the research I was involved in, and on the other hand to the potential applications of research results achieved up until now:
1. Business Process Management, in particular the modeling, simulation/monitoring and analysis parts of the lifecycle.
2. Policy and Rule Management, and more generally Decision Management as a means for enabling the vision of the Intelligent Enterprise.
3. Conceptual modeling and application to enterprise models/architectures.
4. Service Oriented Computing.
5. Meta-modeling, model transformation and model composition.
7. Requirements engineering of security and policy requirements.
8.I also made contributions to the semantic web as well as complex event processing.
Reviewer- For the Electronic Markets - International Journal on Networked Business. http://www.electronicmarkets.org/.
- For the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2011/. Software Engineering Track: http://paris.utdallas.edu/sacse11/.
- For the book: Electronic Business Interoperability - Concepts, Opportunities and Challenges. A book edited by: Ejub Kajan (State University of Novi Pazar, Serbia). IGI Global. To appear in 2011. http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=45956.
- For the book: Modern Software Engineering Concepts and Practices: Advanced Approaches. A book edited by (Dr. Ali H. Dogru, Middle East Technical University, Turkey and Mr. Veli Bicer, FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Germany). http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=687.
- Reviewer at the ECIS 2008: European Conference on Information Systems - Track 6: Strategic Management of IS and IT. http://www.ecis2008.ie/
- 2nd International Summer school on domain specific modeling - theory and practice, 2011, 12-16.09.2011. http://ctp.di.fct.unl.pt/DSM-TP/
- 1st International summer school on domain specific modeling - theory and practice, 2010, 06-09.09.2010. DSM-TP 2010, Casa da Cerca, Lisbon Portugal. http://ctp.di.fct.unl.pt/DSM-TP/.
- European Summer School of Logic, Language and Information. ESSLLI 2010. UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN / DENMARK / AUGUST 9-20, 2010. http://esslli2010cph.info/.
- Winter Semester 2009-2010. Practical sessions (Travaux Diriges) for the Object Oriented Programming Course. Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Mathematics. Prof. Pierre Kelsen.
- Summer Semester 2010. Practical sessions (Travaux Diriges) for the Object Oriented Programming Course. Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Mathematics. Prof. Pierre Kelsen.
- Winter Semester 2010-2011. Practical Sessions (Travaux Diriges) for the Object Oriented Programming Course. Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Mathematics. Prof. Pierre Kelsen.
Presentations
- A number of talks at international events among which EDOC, APCCM, BPSC, ECOWS, CEC, GRCIS, SBPM.
- Number of guest talks at universities: University of Ghent, Universita degli studi di Torino, University of Osnabrueck, Queensland University of Technology (jointly organized by NICTA & University of Queensland).
Scientific Stays and Summer Schools
- Scientific stays at the universities of Osnabrueck, Gent, Torino and at NICTA (Australia).
- Summer schools 1st and 2nd Domain specific modeling summer school in 2010 and 2011, ESSLLI (Logic, Language, Information) in 2010.
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