Keynote lectures are plenary sessions which are scheduled for taking about 45 minutes + 10 minutes for questions

Keynote Lectures List:
- Tony Shan, Bank of America, U.S.A.

- Leszek Maciaszek, Macquarie University, Australia

- Claudia Medeiros, UNICAMP, Brazil

- Marcin Paprzycki, Systems Research Institute Polish Academy of Science, Poland

- Rainer Unland, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

- Klaus Pohl, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Brief Bio of Dr. Tony Shan

Tony Shan is a renowned expert working in the computing field for 20+ years with extensive experience on architecture engineering, technology strategies, and system designs in a number of multi-million dollar IT projects in a broad range of industries (finance/banking, telecommunications, mechanical engineering, aerospace, textile engineering, and government). He holds three advanced degrees in Engineering and Science majors, and is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect & Java Programmer, and IBM Certified eBusiness/SOA Solution Designer. Having been involved in web technologies since the earliest Html, Java and .Net versions, he has, as an enterprise/solutions/chief architect, directed the lifecycle design and development of large-scale award-winning distributed systems on diverse platforms using a variety of cutting-edge technologies and unified/agile methodologies. He has initiated advanced research on emerging computing technologies (grid computing, design patterns, frameworks, semantic web, machine learning, neural network, expert system, generic/immune algorithm, computer modeling/simulation, telephony/voice response, pervasive computing, and systems engineering automation), resulting in an invention patent and several patent-pending initiatives as well as many unified methodologies and platform models for adaptive enterprise system development. He has played a chief strategist role in leading establishing IT strategies and architecture blueprints, coupled with pragmatic technology roadmaps and enterprise architecture standards/policies, for IT governance and portfolio/asset management in Fortune 100 international organizations. He serves as a mentor/advisor on leading-edge technologies, architecture, and engineering in various technical committees, and teaches a wide variety of courses as an adjunct professor and professional trainer. In addition to dozens of top-notch technical publications, he has authored several books on asynchronous web services, heterogeneous business integration, application frameworks, and data caching, while currently writing multiple books on next-generation technologies. He is a member of numerous professional associations and honorary society, a frequent speaker and Chair/Panel/Program Committee/Advisor in key IEEE/ACM conferences/workshops, an editor/editorial advisory board member of IT research journals and books, as well as a founder of Greater Charlotte Rational User Group and Charlotte Architecture & Technology Symposium.

Abstract:

This paper analyzes the uniqueness of IT industry and investigated the major challenges of IT projects in the real world from a practitioner’s perspective. The growing architecture complexity led to unrealistic expectations of Service-Oriented Architecture in a lot of companies. The increasing integration, dynamics, disparate notations, and fragmented activities of WS-* specifications even widen the communication gap in the unorganized, superfluous, and short-sighted SOA adventures, resulting in chaotic outcome and unsuccessful project execution in heterogeneous environments. To effectively manage the architecture design practices and the solution development lifecycle of information systems in a service-oriented paradigm, a methodical approach is presented, which consists of four dimensions – Methodology, Automation, Patterns, and Strategy (MAPS).
This comprehensive framework aims to provide an integrated method of leveraging appropriate knowledge and capabilities to filter the inessential from the essential. The Methodology dimension comprises the SOA philosophy, a top-down and bottom-up combined method, and a service engineering process. The Automation dimension covers design/development tools, service lifecycle, and semi-automated architecting process. The prominent elements of the Patterns dimension are data caching patterns, technology and information platform, and solutions architecture reference model. Finally, the Strategy dimension addresses the strategy metamodel, maturity-driven incremental optimization, and strategy roadmapping.
In addition, a holistic 9-point list of SOA wisdom is introduced as the best-practice guidelines to pragmatically adopt and implement SOA in large organizations, followed by a case study that demonstrates the SOA wisdom in action. The real-life use case prescribes a comprehensive method characterized by both art and engineering disciplines, with the components of Hybrid Service-Orientation Methodology, Architecture Baseline Model, Service Patterns, Enterprise Service Model, and Domain-Specific Model.

Brief Bio of Dr. Leszek Maciaszek

Leszek A. Maciaszek is an Associate Professor of Computing at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He obtained his MSc and PhD degrees in Informatics from Academy of Economics, Wroclaw, Poland (in 1972 and 1977, respectively). He has been working interchangeably in academia and industry. His assignments have included national organizations, international corporations and educational institutions in countries spanning four continents, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, Macao, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, Thailand, The Netherlands, and USA.

Leszek’s main areas of expertise evolve around the modeling, design, implementation and integration of enterprise information systems. He has authored about 120 publications related to databases, object technology, software engineering, systems modeling, and workgroup computing. Leszek’s research interests in defining architectural, engineering and organizational imperatives for supportable enterprise systems stem from the experience gained in numerous consultancies, in particular as a project leader and software architect.

Leszek has authored and co-authored a number of textbooks and reference books. His main books are:

• "Database Design and Implementation" (Prentice Hall, 1990),

• “Practical Software Engineering. A Case-Study Approach” (Addison Wesley, 2005; co-authored with Bruc Lee Liong – translated to Chinese and Russian)

• "Requirements Analysis and System Design" (Addison Wesley, 2001 – translated to Chinese, Italian and Russian; 2nd edition published in 2005 and the 3rd edition in 2007)

Most commonly, software quality is defined by a set of attributes related to system's nonfunctional requirements. These requirements can be broadly divided along the temporal dimension into those observable when the system is first deployed to stakeholders and those that enable the system to serve stakeholders well into the future. This distinction is important because while software does not wear off it can (and typically does) deteriorate (it grows worse). Moreover, being a service-enabling business solution, software becomes so intertwined with business that lives as long as the business itself. Accordingly, the "future qualities" of software are of overriding importance.

While not proposing a (yet another) quality ontology, we nevertheless identify and relate the relevant quality concepts, such as understandability, maintainability, scalability, sustainability, supportability, adaptability, interoperability, etc. We then propose a system development process for building such qualities into web information systems. We suggest strategic, tactical and operational solutions as well as identify most useful and suitable software technologies. The discussion is set against the background of reductionism and holism as two contrasting approaches to science.

Brief Bio of Dra. Claudia Medeiros

Claudia Bauzer Medeiros is full professor of computer science at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, having received awards for research, teaching, and work concerning women and IT. Her research is centered on design and development of scientific databases, with emphasis on agro-environmental planning and biodiversity. She has been (co)PI on over 30 research and development projects - some of which involved partners in Germany, France, Argentina, Chile and the USA. She is a former chair of the Brazilian National Research Council evaluation Committee for CS research in Brazil, and former vice-chair in the Ministry of Education committee for evaluation of Brazil's CS graduate programs. She was the President of the Brazilian Computer Society for 4 years (2003 - 2007). For more details, see www.lis.ic.unicamp.br

The proliferation of data providers and consumers on the Web has enhanced the possibility of new kinds of collaboration and fostered all types of virtual communities. In order, however, to take full advantage of these opportunities, one must face a wide range of challenges, involving heterogeneity at all levels - e.g., devices, communication protocols, data sources, user contexts, cultural backgrounds and needs.

The notion of Semantic Web tries to attack some of these issues, with ontologies being adopted as one of the means to alleviate problems at the semantic level. Ontologies are being used in Computer Science to formalize shared conceptualizations within communities. The goal is to organize concepts to convey semantic information. As a consequence, distinct groups can cooperate by exchanging and combining ontologies, which can also be used to help interoperability among systems.

This has fostered extensive research on all aspects involving ontology construction, processing and management. In spite of very interesting results, there is a wide gap between many proposals and their actual use in real life conditions on the Web. While ontology toolkits offer a wide range of operations, they are self-contained and cannot be accessed by external applications. Thus, the many proposals for adopting ontologies to enhance interoperability in application development must either based on the use of frameworks or of services. The first supports many functions, but imposes application recoding whenever ontologies change, whereas the second supports ontology evolution, but limits functions offered.

The talk will discuss some of the challenges in the field, and problems that are being faced by researchers in the Laboratory of Information Systems at UNICAMP, Brazil, to develop Aondê - a Web service that serves operations on ontologies, for biodiversity applications. This development effort has evidenced the shortcomings of many approaches to effectively deal with ontologies, and the need for novel solutions.

Brief Bio of Dr. Marcin Paprzycki

Dr. Marcin Paprzycki (Senior Member of the IEEE and Senior Fulbright Lecturer) has received his M.S. Degree in 1986 from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland and his Ph.D. in 1990 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, USA. His initial research interests were in high performance computing and parallel computing, and over time they evolved toward distributed systems and Internet-based computing and in particular, agent systems. He has published more than 200 research papers and was invited to Program Committees of over 250 international conferences. He has presented over 40 invited and 100 contributed talks. He is on editorial boards of 11 journals and a book series.

Abstract:

Recently we observe a surge in new technologies that are expected to change the way we process information and support workers in an organization. Two of them that are very often mentioned as “disruptive technologies” are: ontologies and software agents. In our recent project we attempt at conceptualizing the way in which these two technologies can be combined and utilized in information management within an organization. In the proposed approach a virtual organization is conceptualized in terms of roles to be played by agents, organization structure and information flow are represented in terms of agent-agent and agent-human interactions, while all resources (e.g. workers, brake pads, books, software artifacts, etc.) are ontologically demarcated. Finally, all information processing is semantically-driven. In the presentation current stated of our work will be summarized.

Brief Bio of Dr. Rainer Unland

Rainer Unland is a full professor in computer science at the Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB) at University of Duisburg-Essen where he heads the chair Data Management Systems and Knowledge Representation. He has authored, co-authored and edited more than 120 publications, journals and (text)books in the areas of non-standard/object-oriented database management systems, XML and database systems, object-oriented software development, component-based and aspect-oriented software engineering, advanced transaction management, computer supported cooperative work, (distributed) artificial intelligence, especially Multi-Agent Systems, and industrials informatics. Moreover, he has served as Chair and/or PC member for more than 150 national and international conferences, workshops, and symposia. He is co-founder of the annual International German Conference on Multi-Agent Systems Technology (MATES) and the annual International conference SABRE that serves as an umbrella conference for topics related to software engineering, multi-agent system, Grid computing, and Web-Services and the Internet. Together with Huaglory Tianfield he is editor-in-chief of the IOS journal Multiagent and Grid Systems (MAGS). Additionally, he is also on the editorial board of several other journals.

Abstract:

Agent technology is starting to become mature and, thus, finally starts to get deployed by industry. E-commerce, on the other hand, was one of the big buzzwords during the dot.com bubble and after that has shrunk to a more reasonable size as it turned out that e-Commerce can not only be a simple interface between businesses but has to be deeply ingrained in the IT infrastructure of the businesses in order to exploit its full potential. However, a flexible and dynamic integration into an IT infrastructure has turned out to be quite demanding. In this talk we will discuss in what role agent- and multi-agent systems technology may play when it comes to the provision of efficient, dynamic, flexible and highly user-friendly e-Commerce applications.

Brief Bio of Dr. Klaus Pohl

Klaus Pohl is a full professor for Software Systems Engineering in computer science at the Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB) at University of Duisburg-Essen. Klaus was the funding scientific director of Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre for which he currently acts as Chief Scientific Advisor. He is the coordinator of the European Network of Excellence on Services and Services-based Systems (S-Cube) and was workgroup leader in several research and industrial projects, including the ITEA projects ESAPS, CAFÉ, and FAMILIES, and the EU Projects CREWS, NATURE.

Among others, he served as program chair for the IEEE Intl. Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2002), the Experience Reports Track of the Intl. Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2005), the German Software Engineering Conference (SE 2005), the Intl. Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2005), the German Software Engineering Conference (SE 2005), the Intl. Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2006) and as general chair for the Intl. Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2008). In addition, he is/was a member of numerous program committees. Klaus Pohl is (co-)author of over 100 refereed publications and several textbooks including “Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles, and Techniques”, Springer 2005 and “Requirements Engineering: Grundlagen, Prinzipien, Techniken”, dpunkt 2007.

Abstract:

When building innovative software services and service-based systems, several challenges have to be faced. First, the complexity of those systems (e.g., implied by the coordination of a huge number of software services) as well as the complexity of their engineering processes (e.g., implied by the involvement of a multitude of different stakeholders) needs to be managed. Second, the compliance to pre-defined quality criteria and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) needs to be guaranteed across all layers of a service-based system (which range from service infrastructure to business process management). Third, service-based systems need to be built in such a way that they can adapt to dynamically changing contexts (e.g., in response to different kinds of service users). Finally, the heterogeneity of innovative service-based systems needs to be handled (e.g., when combining mobile and desktop services). Today’s approaches for building software services and service-based systems, like the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), are not capable of comprehensively and adequately addressing those challenges. A single research group or even a research community in isolation cannot deliver the results that are needed to address the above challenges. Delivering those results requires the synergy and integration of a variety of research communities, which include Business Process Management, Grid Computing, Service Oriented Computing and Software Engineering.

This talk will provide an overview of S-Cube – the European Network of Excellence in software services and service-based systems. S-Cube brings together 15 key European players from the aforementioned research communities. The talk outlines how S-Cube will enable the next generation of software services and service-based systems. Key to S-Cube’s research approach is to define a clear separation of concerns between service technologies at the infrastructure level, the service composition and coordination level, as well as the business process management level. S-Cube investigates in methodologies for engineering, monitoring and adapting service-based systems which take a holistic view and empower service composers, service providers as well as end-users to build and adapt service-based systems.